Facebook lets users opt out of facial recognition

Facebook’s computer systems will soon be able to recognize familiar faces.

Facebook is making changes to the process for tagging friends in photos uploaded to the social network, the company announced on Tuesday.

Starting in a few weeks, the system will scan all images posted to Facebook and suggest the names of people who appear in the frame.

Facebook’s more than 500 million users have been automatically included in the database, but the company is allowing each person to choose whether to be identified by toggling a pane in the account’s privacy settings.

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Facebook Setting you should change as quickly as possible – HTTPS

By default, Facebook sends your access credentials in the clear, with no encryption whatsoever. Switching to HTTPS is important because a browser extension called Firesheep has made it especially easy for anyone sharing your open wireless network—at cafe or conference, for example—to sniff your credentials and freely access your account. One blogger sitting in a random New York Starbucks was able to steal 20-40 Facebook identities in half an hour. HTTPS solves this longstanding problem by encrypting your login cookies and other data; in fact the inventor of Firesheep made the software to encourage companies like Facebook to finally lock down their systems.

You can sign up for Facebook HTTPS by going to Account Settings and then selecting “Account Security,” third from the bottom. Then click under “Secure Browsing” — if it’s there. Facebook says everyone should have this by the end of the day, but in the meantime you might be missing the relevant option toggle.

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Mother seeks justice after cyber-bullied daughter’s attempted suicide

When Lennell Blackwell saw her 16-year-old daughter’s suicide note on Facebook, she knew she had lost a piece of her heart that would never come back again.

Posted just mere minutes before she attempted to take her own life on Tuesday by jumping off a South Scranton bridge only a short distance from their home, it read:

“If You Got An I Love You, Know That It Means You Meant Something To Me. I’m Sorry I Disappointed You All Especially FAMILY I must Go Now, I Am A Disgrace, Love You All. GOODBYE!”

“Your heart is gone: a piece of you just leaves,” said Blackwell, 50, in an interview with Times-Shamrock newspapers. “This could have been prevented. She was being terrorized. I’m really, really angry for this even happening.”

Blackwell and authorities say it may have happened because of social media.

While Blackwell said her daughter has been the target of severe torment and bullying in and out of school over the past two months by a small group of teenagers, the trigger may have been when the harassment seeped onto the pages of Facebook
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Parents sue over Facebook photos of dead daughter

The parents of a murder victim are suing Facebook after a paramedic pleaded guilty to photographing their daughter’s corpse and posting the image to the social networking site, according to court documents.

The couple is suing Facebook in an effort to force the company to turn over the image, identify who may have downloaded the photograph and prevent the image from being further disseminated, according to the couple’s attorney Ravi Batra.

But the social networking site could be protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

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Facebook booting ‘20,000’ underage users per day

According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly half of all 12-year-olds in the U.S. are using social network sites, despite not meeting the minimum age requirements for sites like Facebook.

Facebook has set up a Facebook Public Policy and Online Safety team that looks to identify false information by users’ false, but verifying a minor’s age seems  close to impossible. A member of the team tells the News Observer that parent participation is really the key to the problem of underage users on the site.But what if the parents aren’t opposed to their children being on Facebook? Talking about safe Internet practices with kids might be the next best responsible thing to do, along with monitoring your children’s online activity.

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Best Guide To Facebook Privacy Settings

Privacy on Facebook has been a headache for years. At times, Facebook appeared far more intent on separating you from your privacy than protecting it. Among the biggest issues was the fact that the site had an “opt-out” policy when it came to sharing your information, which meant your data was automatically shared unless you went through the more than 170 privacy control options on Facebook to protect it.

Click here to follow the step-by-step privacy recommendations

Facebook Privacy: Four valuable yet hard-to-find settings

According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released this week, 70 percent of Facebook members are “somewhat” or “very concerned” about their privacy. Take into account the site’s past privacy flubs and it’s easy to see why: a privacy breach, prevalent “scammy” apps and constant change keep Facebook users on their toes.

The last reason, in particular, makes it difficult for Facebook users to keep tabs on the always-evolving privacy environment—settings are split into two main categories: account settings (which include some privacy settings) and the main privacy settings page

Hunting for specific privacy settings can be tedious, so we’ve done the work for you. Here’s a list of four of the most important Facebook privacy settings, where to find them, and how to change them.

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How to be invisible on Facebook

Some of the privacy issues have been just too much for users, resulting in cancelled accounts. But more and more organizations are joining the Facebook Connect network and incorporating the site’s development tools into their own. It’s getting to the point where you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t have a Facebook account; you can use it to log in with the same username and password on more than two million sites — it’s not just for checking in on your cousin’s newest baby pictures. So, here’s the trick: You can go nearly invisible on Facebook — nobody will be able to view your photographs, see your activity or where you’ve checked in except for existing friends — but still have an account to use around the web.

If you’re ready to move into Facebook stealth mode, follow these simple steps:

• Visit Facebook.com, log in to your profile and click ‘Account’ in the top-right corner. From there, choose ‘Privacy Settings.’

• From the ‘Privacy Settings’ page, click on ‘View Settings’ to see who can search for you, send messages to your account, see your education and work settings and more. Change all of these drop-down menus to ‘Friends Only.’

• Return to the ‘Privacy Settings’ page and choose ‘Customize Settings’ near the bottom of the page. This new page will load a number of different privacy options, but you’ll want to click through each one and change the setting to ‘Only Me’ so that nobody else can see your Facebook activity.

• Stay on the ‘Customize Settings’ page and scroll down to ‘Things Others Share.’ Here, you’ll want to edit and disable settings so that your friends are unable to write on your wall, comment on posts and check you in to places.

• Return to the ‘Privacy Settings’ page and, under ‘Apps and Websites’ in the bottom-left corner, select ‘Edit Your Settings.’ This page shows all of the third-party websites and applications that you have given access to some of your Facebook information. If you see anything on this list that you want to remove, just click to remove it from the list.

• Stay on the ‘Apps and Websites’ page, scroll down to ‘Instant Personalization’ and select ‘Edit Settings.’ Uncheck the box at the bottom of this page to block other websites from accessing your Facebook interests. Select ‘Confirm’ when a pop-up asks you if you’re sure you want to disable this option.

• Return to the ‘Apps and Websites’ page, scroll down to ‘Public Search’ and select ‘Edit Settings.’ To keep search engines from finding your Facebook profile, uncheck the box on this new screen.

 

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Facebook Helpful Links

Facebook Safety: http://www.facebook.com/help/?safety
Privacy Explained: http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php
Facebook Top Questions, (including reporting underage user): http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=937

Facebook rolls out new security tools, talks safety

Facebook users will be able to log off the site from their cell phone and get a temporary password to use on public computers under new security changes.

The updates, announced Tuesday on Facebook’s official blog, come as the social networking juggernaut observes National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

“From our standpoint, safety and security is a core part of Facebook and a core part of the user experience,” Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer, told CNN in a telephone interview. “It’s a core part of the ways we innovate as a company.”

The “one-time passwords” will be available to users when they’re on computers at libraries, hotels or other public places where they feel their regular password might be compromised.

Users can now text “otp” to 32665 on their mobile phones. They’ll immediately get a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes.

The feature is being rolled out gradually and should be available to all Facebook members in the next few weeks, according to the blog.

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