Facebook, Aggregated – News, Updates and Privacy Issues

“Now, if everyone is done updating their Facebook status…”

Whew. As you have probably noticed, Facebook is in the news a lot. Daily, it seems. And every time you log in, there’s a new design (timeline) or a new privacy rule or a new format that you haven’t seen before. We’ve become exhausted trying to keep up with it all, so instead, we decided to aggregate just some of the latest news that other, greater news outlets have reported (as of 2/8/2012) right here so that you can get all the most recent updates in one place. So without further ado, on with the show…

From Huffington Post – Will Facebook’s IPO Change Social Media? Long story short: Facebook going public is a game-changer. While making money is always the goal, the company will have to focus more than ever on revenue generation. That could mean adding more advertising to the site (which would suck) or making the privacy policy way less private (which would suck even more). Remember, kids: If you’re using a service like Facebook, which charges nothing at all for its use, then you’re not the customer. You’re the product. Your eyeballs and info are being sold as much as possible to advertisers and marketers. A social network going public is a new frontier for business, and how Facebook proceeds (an evolves) could determine the path forward for other IPOs down the road.

From Mashable – Facebook Timeline Disliked by the Masses. Long story short: Most people hate the new timeline. I hate it. My friends hate it. This article says that 70% of people polled want to go back to the old format, while 20% think the timeline is fine (10% didn’t have Facebook accounts, those poor souls). Unfortunately, the timeline is becoming mandatory for everyone, so whether we like it or not is pretty inconsequential (recall what I said above about users not being customers, but being products). One complaint (aside from the more jarring layout) is that the timeline lets people easily go back years in a person’s profile, seeing photos and updates that were long buried by time. This is a privacy issue for some, and while many say that we should just go back into our own histories and be sure to remove any updates/photos we don’t want to share, the reality is that most people don’t have the time to sift through years of their own info. Maybe the people without Facebook accounts had it right all along…

From PopPhoto.com – Your Facebook Photos May Never Be Deleted, But There Might Be a New Way to View Them. Long story short: A few years ago, a glitch was discovered that showed that even when a user deleted his or her photo from Facebook, the photo itself could still exist on the servers and possibly still be visible/accessible via direct link. Today, that glitch doesn’t seem to be completely fixed, as reports of deleted photos turning up continue to surface. But Facebook swears up and down that the problems are with the older storage systems, and that more recent photos will definitely be wiped from the servers within 30 days of deletion (still a month of residual backups, but better than “potentially forever”). They also say that the problem persists in just a tiny percentage of photos. Whether you believe that or not is up to you. But in the meantime, Facebook has completely ripped off the photo viewer used on Google Plus (remember Google Plus?) with their new photo viewing design. They don’t seem to feel bad about it, and really, why should they; Google Plus is a ghost town, so at least now people can enjoy the new design.

From MarketWatch – Facebook Usage During Work Hours Triples. Long story short: People are spending more time on Facebook at work than ever, and in response, there’s a new tool called Transparent Billing that takes screenshots of users’ computers and tracks their usage to see how they’re spending their billable hours. It’s hailed as a management tool to help increase workplace efficiency and corporate profitability, but we wonder just how well received it’ll be in the real world. We all know (or should know) that our office computers are not ours, and that our online activities at work are subject to being watched, but it’ll be interesting to see whether major disputes over billing and contracts emerge over too much Facebooking.

That’s just a taste of the latest Facebook news… I hope it doesn’t make you TOO nervous about your online privacy.

Facebook Revamps Privacy – Again

Be careful not to share everything about yourself with everyone on this planet.

If you have a Facebook account and have logged in recently, you’ve probably seen the helpful little bubble pop up that offers to walk you through the new changes to Facebook privacy. If you didn’t click on the “yes, please give me a fun and informative tour of yet another privacy revamp” (or whatever the button actually says), here’s the gist in a nutshell: Facebook has made privacy something you can change for each action you take, instead of a blanket setting hidden on a privacy page. What does that mean for the user? From my perspective, that’s both good and bad.

Facebook wants us to share. They don’t want us to block what we have to say from certain people. They’re all about “community.” Which is, of course, a potential nightmare from a privacy standpoint. Luckily, some things jumped out at me that fall into the “positive” category of this new privacy settings change:

1. Your defaults should still be the same as they were before. If you had your wall posts set to “only friends” before the change, then your posts should still be visible only to your friends, provided you don’t make them more public yourself. You can check your default settings by going to your vastly-simplified privacy settings page (under the “account” tab in the upper right corner), where you’ll find a section called “Control your default privacy” that has only three options under it. The “Friends” option in the middle means that your posts, photos, etc. are visible only to friends unless you say otherwise.

2. You can see how public your friends’ posts are. Example: I have a friend who recently posted to his wall about a TV show. Under his post was a small gray globe – that meant that his post was public, not just “friends only.” Anyone who visits his profile can see that post, and of course, the comments on the post. This is handy to know, in case you don’t want to comment on posts that your friends make that are public to the entire world. It’s rather pointless to lock down your own profile for friends only, then go posting on public comments elsewhere… It defeats the purpose of trying to maintain privacy.

3. You can go back and limit who can see older posts that you made. Before, once a post was made public, it was public, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. Now, you can go back and retroactively set the privacy of older posts to “only friends” or whatever privacy setting you choose. You can do this individually, post-by-post, by going to the posts themselves and mousing over them until you see and click the little icon in the upper right corner of each post to reveal a privacy pulldown (the globe is public, while the shadow of people is “friends only,” and there’s a custom option for selective sharing). You can also change the privacy settings for ALL of your old posts at once by going to the privacy settings page and scrolling down until you see “Limit the Audience for Past Posts,” with a link to “Manage Past Post Visibility.” Just like that, you can make your previously-public posts visible only to friends, or to whomever you wish.

Of course, there’s a downside to the new Facebook privacy settings. Here’s the biggest issue I’ve got:

1. It’s now WAY easier to overshare. Facebook has put several tools right at your fingertips with every post now. You can make a wall post while simultaneously tagging the people you’re with AND checking yourself into Places. With one post, you can share your thoughts, your physical location and your companions. Obviously, this is very convenient, but it can also lead to people sharing more of themselves than they might want to. Ease of use means more people will be using Places and tagging their friends (something that Facebook wants to happen), but I’ve written before about how giving out your physical location (and the locations of your friends) can be a breach in privacy. You can set your privacy settings so that people can’t check you into Places, so that’s one line of defense you have against friends who want to tell everyone where you are, but in general, this new system makes the overshare a one-click process.

Facebook will probably continue to revamp its privacy settings in the future, and while it’s important to keep up with the changes they make, it’s also important to be smart in what you post. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: don’t put information out there about yourself that you wouldn’t want everyone to know. When something is online, it’s potentially public, no matter how carefully your privacy settings are adjusted. For the sake of your relationships, job, criminal record and educational opportunities, don’t put something out there that could sabotage you. That’s the number one tip for maintaining privacy on Facebook, no matter how the privacy settings evolve.

Do Anonymous Surfing Tools Actually Help Protect You Online?

Surfing Anonymously and Safely… Is It Possible?

We’ve heard a lot over the past few years about how our web surfing habits can come back to bite us. You can’t watch the news anymore without hearing about how the Feds found incriminating Google searches on a suspect’s computer during a crime investigation, or how someone’s identity was stolen while they were using an open, unsecured wireless connection like the ones at airports.

There’s also the less-public (but no less real) problems with web surfing, like cookies that store info about your online habits on your computer, or browser histories that broadcast all the sites you’ve visited to anyone who uses the same computer you use. As much as we all love using the Internet, most of us have no idea just how public our info and histories really are, or how prone we are to malicious attacks and snooping.

A Novice Educates Herself…

I’d heard a lot about anonymous surfing tools and proxies, but I didn’t know much about them. I’m not as tech-savvy as I wish I was, and from what I was able to figure out from Google searches, finding my own proxies and covering my own tracks online looked to be a frustrating, time-consuming experience. Seriously, are there people with nothing better to do? I have kids, a job, a life… And almost no free time to spend on this.

I started reading reviews of various anonymous surfing products and ran into complaints about many of them, everything from high prices to slow performance to tools that didn’t actually make the user’s surfing anonymous (yikes!).

Eventually, I found a product that was one of the simplest to use, ran quickly and actually did what it promised to do: TopSecretSurfer.

TopSecretSurfer is an anonymous surfing tool that lets you surf privately from anywhere that you have a connection. TSS uses private, secure proxy servers, 256-bit encryption and other security tools to ensure that no trace of your browsing history is left behind, on your network on any other.

One of the cool things about TopSecretSurfer is that you don’t need admin rights to use it, and you aren’t restricted to just one computer. You can download TSS and put it on a flash/thumb/USB drive and carry it with you, so that you can use it on any computer, anytime. You just plug the drive into the computer you want to use (it could be a computer at school, the library, work, home, etc.), launch TSS directly from the drive, and surf all you like without the computer having any record of where you’ve gone and what you’ve looked at. It’s plug-and-play easy.

TopSecretSurfer lets you send and receive sensitive files, do your online business, get around firewalls, and like a good camper in the woods, leave no trace. Your network doesn’t know where you’ve surfed, the site you visit don’t know where you’re coming from, and when you’re done, it’s like you were never there. Best of all, you don’t have to know anything about proxies or programming – that’s a big plus in my book! The customer service team at TSS is really helpful, too, if you need them.

TSS is usually a very affordable monthly subscription service (that you can cancel if you want to stop using it, of course), but right now, they’re giving out TSS for free as part of a renewed marketing push. Not enough people know about it, and they like the idea of happy customers helping to spread the word about this great service (customers like me, as a matter of fact). So just by filling out a form and downloading the software, you can use open wireless networks on the go without worrying about who can see what you’re doing (this is great for people who travel a lot, either for business or pleasure), you can visit sites from school or work that are usually blocked, and you can protect yourself and your surfing habits from anyone who might want to see what you’re up to. As much as I travel and use other computers for work, it’s totally worth it to me for the peace of mind I want in my surfing (and getting it for free means there’s nothing to lose).

So yes, anonymous surfing tools do work to protect your online identity and hide your browsing, but you have to do your homework to find the right tool for you. TopSecretSurfer is my pick – if you give it a try, let me know what you think of it so I can keep this post updated with the most accurate info.

Thanks!

Erica K.

Do Teens Prefer Phone Calls to Texts and the Web? That Would Be Surprising

"This texting is fun, but I sure wish Chelsea would just pick up the phone and CALL us!"

Recently, a study suggested that teenagers might be bigger fans of phone communication than most people think. A Georgia Health Sciences University research study contacted 188 kids ranging from ninth-graders to 11th-graders, all of whom lived in one of four rural Georgia counties, and asked the teens how they’d prefer to receive communications from the study. Almost 54 percent said they preferred to get a recorded voice message from a research assistant they knew (the message could come via land line or cell phone line). Another 24 percent wanted a call directly from the assistant, not a recording. Fifteen percent preferred text messages, and eight percent requested to be contacted via Facebook. (Source: Science Daily)

The researchers took this as a big deal. Martha S. Tingen, holder of the Charles W. Linder Endowed Chair in Pediatrics at GHSU, said, “In our high-tech world, what I am learning is people still like the personal touch.” The researchers were also pleasantly surprised with the results because they had evidently assumed that teens were flighty, hard-to-work-with types who would be unreliable at best when it came to research studies. They reveled in how the voice mail recording system made their communications with the kids more effective and streamlined, and they even made a point about how these findings might help research teams work with teens in the future.

But before everyone throws a party, I noticed a few telling points in the article that I thought bore mentioning.

For starters, 188 kids from rural Georgia is hardly a representative sample of the teen population of the entire country. Good researchers should at least ask questions about the demographics of this sample before extrapolating to teens as a whole. This study might be a very clear indicator of how teens in rural Georgia prefer to receive communication, but I can’t fathom that a scientist worth his salt would assume this same outcome applies to kids in Dallas, Seattle or New York.

Second, many rural areas still don’t have access to high-speed internet service, and in those areas, a phone communication might be preferable simply because it’s available. Did the study control for that? Did the kids in the study all have equal access to the internet? The article I read doesn’t say, but again, it’s a question that bears asking, especially given the geographical area of the study.

Third, I didn’t notice email or other digital options as choices for the communication from the researchers – was Facebook the only online option? That seems to leave out at least a few online methods of communication that some kids might have preferred, if perhaps they didn’t have Facebook accounts. Getting back to the need for control, did all of the kids in the study have Facebook accounts? If not, the results are skewed for that reason alone; kids without Facebook can’t be expected to select it as a communication method, no matter how much they might want to.

The same can be said for the text messaging option – If there were kids in the study who simply didn’t have cell phones, then they couldn’t choose texting as their preferred method. Most of the teens I know are fierce texters, so it would be important to the strength of this study’s conclusions to ensure that all of the kids had equal access to texting before noting how few of them chose it.

If the study actually controlled for the internet access, Facebook access, texting access and other online methods available, then I take back what I’ve said. But the article doesn’t mention any sort of controls for any of those factors, so I hesitate to jump on the “teens prefer phones to social media” bandwagon. While it makes a good headline to suggest that teens are “just like grown-ups” after all in how they like communicating, the reality is that young people embrace and adapt to new technology faster than almost any other age group. And that’s as it should be. That’s how technology springs forward.

I’m sure there are teenagers out there who do prefer phone calls to texts or emails, and I’m not one of those people who thinks that new technologies mean a decrease in the needed interpersonal skills our society is built on. But realistically, I know that the behavior of teens across America cannot be measured by such a small, narrow sample and so few controls. Give a few thousand more teens in a variety of geographical areas a choice about how they wish to communicate with a research assistant they’ve met in a study, and make sure all of them have the same options as far as texting, emailing and other online options go. Then we can start drawing a few conclusions, instead of excitedly jumping to them.

Are you a teen? What do you think of this study?

Facebook Friend Requests – Is “Not Now” a Safe, Polite Option or a Privacy Problem?

Friends don’t let friends accept friend requests from cats.

Facebook used to make the friend request process very simple: If someone sent you a request, you could either confirm them or ignore them. But last year, Facebook implemented a new process that’s slightly more complicated, and slightly less private, depending on how you use it. Now, when someone sends you a friend request, you can choose “Add” to confirm the relationship, or “Not Now.” “Not Now” sounds fairly nice; it’s not an outright rejection, simply a delay in decision-making.

But there’s a problem with “Not Now.”

You already know that any posts that you make “visible by anyone” are visible to any users who visit your profile page, whether they’re on your friend list or not (which is why our Privacy Mentor guide advises you to keep your posts to “friends only”). In the past, when you put off someone’s friend request by simply not acting on it (not clicking either “confirm” or “ignore”), then any public (“visible to everyone”) posts and updates you made started to appear in that person’s own news feed. In short, they could see your public posts without having to go to your profile page.

The reasoning for this was pretty simple. After all, the info they saw about you was info that you were making public anyway, and since you hadn’t chosen to “ignore” them, they MIGHT be confirmed as your friend at some point. So they were permitted to “follow” you, in a sense. But the friend request would still be sitting there, asking you to take action on this potential friend, and clicking “ignore” on their request meant that your public posts disappears from their news feed (although they could still see whatever you made public if they chose to go directly to your profile).

Now to the current Facebook friend method, which makes you choose between “Add” or “Not Now” for each friend request you get. With “Not Now,” Facebook is extending the rejection process of potential friends to multiple steps. When you click “Not Now,” the friend request becomes “Hidden,” but the person still gets your public updates in their news feed until you finally get back to confirming or deleting the friend request. “Not Now” is not the same as the old “Ignore” – It’s simply taking the friend request out of sight. This is troubling because most people will click the “Not Now” button and then never go back later to handle all their pending friend requests. Facebook is all about community and encouraging connections, and for them, anything that makes it harder for you to outright reject a potential friend is a plus (hence the removal of the one-click “Ignore” option).

At this moment, many of us have pending friends who can see all of our public posts in their own news feed, simply because we opted to say “Not Now” on their friend request. (Remember: these pending friends CANNOT see your friends-only posts and photos, since they’re not your friends yet. Your pending friends simply get easier access to any posts that you make visible to everyone.)

The solution to the “Not Now” problem (and the way to actually deny friend requests) is this: Go into your “Hidden” friend requests by selecting the “friend” icon at the top left of the page, choosing “See all friend requests,” and then choosing “See Hidden Requests” on the next page. When you see your list of “Not Now” friends, choose either “Confirm” or “Delete Request” for each of them.

Yes, it’s a slightly annoying process just to deny people that you don’t wish to be friends with, but it’s important to do it when you have pending friend requests.

If there are any users whom you wish to block so that they can no longer send friend requests to you, click “Delete Request,” and then look to where it says “Request Deleted.” The next sentence will be a link that says “Don’t Know [insert name]?” If you click that link, the user will be blocked from sending you further friend requests.

Of course, the main lesson with the “Not Now” feature (aside from not putting off action on potential friends) is a reminder to keep all posts, pictures, updates, etc. on “friends only” privacy settings. If you don’t make any of your updates public, then it’s less of a problem if pending friends see your public info in their news feed – a lack of public posts means they’d see nothing at all about you.

Seven Tips for Making LinkedIn Work for Your Job Search

Whether you’re actively looking for a job or just happy to have the job you’ve got, you need to be on LinkedIn. It’s a great site for networking and making connections in your career, or in the career you WANT to have. Jerome Young recently posted an article about ways to use LinkedIn to find a job; I’ll paraphrase some of his points here and add a few of my own…

1. Keep your profile professional. LinkedIn is not Facebook. This is not the place to post photos of yourself hanging out on the beach or make comments about what you had for dinner. Post a photo of you dressed professionally and keep your content work-related (no complaining, please – you don’t want to alienate all your potential connections).

2. Connect with people you’ve actually known and/or worked with. Find previous coworkers and employers (with whom you’re on good terms), as well as friends you trust. Become part of each other’s networks. Just like on Facebook, you should generally ignore connection requests from people you’ve never heard of, unless you have a connection in common and that connection is willing to vouch for this newcomer to your network.

3. Keep your profile updated and relevant. Post thorough descriptions of your previous job duties and job titles, and keep updating every so often to show that you’re not a stagnant worker. Your LinkedIn profile is like a living resume, always growing and evolving as you gain new skills and experience. Learned a new programming language, or managed a cross-functional team on a project? Add that to your LinkedIn profile!

4. If you’re actively searching for a job, post about it. Your connections could be more helpful than you think in your search. Just remember: don’t post with the air of desperation, or flood your connections with requests for help. Young suggests a post like this one: “I’m starting on my job search today. The years I spent at (name of previous company) have prepared me well to advance my career through this transition. I’m excited to see what’s available on the job market. If you know of anyone who’s looking for a (name your job title) with (name a couple of your top skills), let me know!”

Of course, if you want people to help you with YOUR job search, be sure to help them, as well. If you see someone in your connections who’s looking for work and you happen to know of a job that might suit them, let them know about it. Networking is a key component of the successful job search, and LinkedIn is ideal for that (and it never hurts to help someone out… you never know if you might need their help down the road).

5. Get some recommendations. LinkedIn lets users leave recommendations about each other, and those recommendations can help set you head and shoulders above your competitors when recruiters look at your profile. Choose a handful of your connections that you’ve worked with who can speak to your particular skills and professionalism, and ask them nicely to leave your a recommendation on your profile.

The polite thing to do is to leave them a recommendation in exchange, so don’t forget to do that. A few sentences explaining the person’s strong work ethic, great teamwork skills or extraordinary dedication to a project can be all you need to say. One note: If you genuinely don’t have anything nice to say about someone who asks you for a recommendation, just don’t leave one. Recommendations are for positive feedback, not griping about someone’s job performance.

6. Make the job search function work for you. LinkedIn’s job search has two purposes: one, you can actively look for jobs that might suit you; and two, you can look at what recruiters are looking for. If you see certain keywords coming up in the job descriptions you’re looking at, then you need to incorporate those keywords into your own LinkedIn profile (provided they actually apply to you, of course). This will help recruiters find you when they go searching for people who might fit the bill of a job they’re trying to fill. Maximizing the keywords you encounter can increase your SEO and make your profile more visible and valuable.

7. Connect with (and explore) your connections. If you’re applying for a job at a particular company, go through your connections and see whether anyone you’re connected to was ever connected to that company. They might have worked there previously or worked closely with someone who did. You can also cross-reference the company name with other terms like your previous companies, your college, or even your high school, then reach out to the people who share those common connections with you and who work or have worked at the company you’re pursuing.  They might know something that could help you stand out from the crowd of applicants, or they might even be able to put in a good word for you. At the very least, they might be able to tell you how they went about getting hired there, or what the company is really like on the inside.

Don’t forget to help others who might reach out to you in this way, too… LinkedIn’s biggest strength is people helping people to connect to the jobs and careers that suit them best, so be sure to be an active part of the community!

Want to conduct your job search without worrying about who’s watching? TopSecretSurfer lets you surf anonymously from any network, circumventing firewalls and leaving no trace of the sites you’ve visited.

Google+ Profile Myths: True or False?

There’s been a lot of news lately about Google+ and the removal of certain profiles from the network. Before the rumor mill gets out of hand, we wanted to confirm or dispel some of the myths we’ve heard, so you have the right knowledge handy for managing your own Google+ profile, if you have one…

Myth #1: Google+ is removing fake profiles (and also some not-so-fake ones)

Reality: TRUE.

Google+ made it clear early on that fake profiles wouldn’t be allowed to last. The policy of using real names (or at least the names people most often go by) has been in place since the network’s launch, and users were encouraged to set up their profiles under whatever name they most commonly use in order to “fight spam and prevent fake profiles” (from their User Content and Conduct Policy).

Sure enough, the powers that be started culling the Google+ population of anything that seemed fake as of a week or so ago. Some users found their accounts suspended, and unfortunately, not all of those users were using fake names. Mashable reports that Limor “Ladyada” Fried and lifestyle blogger A.V. Flox were among those who were deactivated, although they at least had the pull to get their profiles reinstated quickly. For some others who had distinctive names, though, the shutdown was a frustrating and unwarranted penalty.

Google has responded to the outcry over their heavy-handed  attempts to administer justice to fake profiles, and they promise to do better. For now, Google says that they’ll issue warnings to users that they suspect have fake profiles, giving the users a chance to fix the situation before a suspension is issued. And they claim that they’re working on better ways for the Google+ system to handle alternate names like maiden names and pseudonyms. It remains to be seen whether these changes make the network a bit less rigid in its profile policing.

For those who have already been suspended, there is slim hope. First, you can request a review during the sign-up process, and you can fill out the form with links to other websites that will prove you are who you say you are (or you can submit a photo ID). If this appeal works, your account will come back up within 24 hours. Don’t expect an email notice or anything like that – your account will simply be un-suspended when you go back to it.

If the first appeal doesn’t work, you’ll have to make a second appeal, which starts when you go to your Google+ profile page and click the appeal link. Use the form to tell Google everything you can that might help prove you are who you say you are. Keep in mind that, if this step doesn’t work, your profile might be shut down for good.

Next, you simply wait. There’s no 24-hour turnaround on this step of the process, so you must be patient and wait for Google to get back to you. Some people report waiting for days to get their accounts reinstated, and other people are STILL waiting. You can try to speed up the process by having friends on Google+ contact some Google+ Community Managers for you via their profile pages (there’s a list of them here at the g+ Insider’s Guide), or you can go into a forum like the Google+ Help Forum to post about your difficulties and receive help from others in the forum.

Again, you won’t receive any notification that your profile is active again… It’ll simply be un-suspended. You’ll have to check back with it to be sure.

Right now, the Google+ profile section of the help forum is flooded with people who are confused, angry and frustrated at their profile suspensions. Many of them are using nicknames or other “names they most commonly use in everyday life” but that don’t appear on a government-issued ID, and while Google states that it wants people to use their most common names for their profiles, they seem to REALLY want legal names, since they ask for proof of identity via ID as part of the appeals process. Many people have upstanding, long-term online identities by which they are commonly known, and some of those people are protesting what a “name” really is for the purposes of social media and community. It will be interesting to see whether Google can get its act together regarding what constitutes a name and an identity on their network.

Myth #2: If your Google+ profile is suspended, then you won’t be able to access your Gmail, Google Docs or other Google accounts, either.

Reality: FALSE, at least at the moment.

There have been some reports that a suspended Google+ profile means that any other Google accounts linked to that profile are also shut down. Fleep Tuque went through this problem and posted a description of what happened and how she got her accounts reopened (for her Gmail, she had to confirm her phone number to get access reinstated). It sounds like she’s not the only one dealing with this “shut down everything” phenomenon.

In response to the stories that were spreading like wildfire across the web, Google came out last week with a statement saying that a suspended Google+ account will NOT mean a suspension of the user’s other accounts in Google. Whether you wish to put your faith in Google on this or not, it does seem like they’re trying to minimize the hassle of a profile suspension and how it affects other aspects of Google. There might have been a link between the various accounts a few weeks ago (causing the havoc that some users experienced), but for now, Google insists that Gmail, Google Docs and other Google services won’t suffer because of a Google+ account suspension. If you have an experience that says otherwise, please post in the comments here and let us know. We’d definitely want to call Google out on this if it’s a persistent problem and not just some early glitches that have since been fixed.

One thing to note, though: From what we can tell, if someone under 13 tries to set up a Google+ account (and answers the age question honestly), they WILL suffer a suspension of all of their linked accounts, not just the Google+ profile. Google is setting up a hard line regarding children on social networks, and they won’t permit kids to use their service. We think it’s fine to keep kids off of social networks until they reach an appropriate age, but many kids also use Gmail and other Google services (my own kids email with their grandparents and out-of-state friends via Gmail accounts). The bottom line is this: Parents, do NOT let your kids set up Google+ accounts if they’re under 13, especially if they use other Google services that they wish to continue using. It’s for their own good AND for the good of complying with Google’s rules.

Myth: Google+ is requiring private profiles to go public.

Reality: TRUE.

Having a Google+ profile means having a Google profile, which many people already have (note: a Google profile isn’t a requirement for Gmail, the calendar, Google Docs or some of the other features). Some people have private Google profiles, meaning that the contents aren’t visible in a public search. But now, those people have been notified that they either need to go public or delete their accounts. Google set a deadline of July 31 for this, which has now passed; anyone with a private profile that’s still set to private will probably see it removed shortly.

Why force public access? We suppose that Google wants Google+ to be a social network of sharing, not secrets. And there’s also the fact that Google makes its money on selling space to advertisers (making “user eyeballs” the product being sold), and people who lock up their profiles and hide all their info are useless to Google. Most profiles on there are already public, and on the bright side, users can set their profiles to show nothing more than their names if they so choose, while still maintaining that public, searchable aspect (this means that their profile could be found if someone was looking, but that someone couldn’t see more than the user’s name).

If you have a private profile, you’ll get a choice: “display my full name publicly” or delete the profile. If you wish to keep your profile, choose the public display option but then go into your profile and remove the visibility of whatever you don’t want to share (except your name – no choice on that one). If you want to make sure that you’ve locked down your profile correctly, go to the top right of your Google+ profile page and click the box that says “see how your profile appears to others.” You can choose to view your own profile as any stranger on the web would view it, thereby ensuring that you’re not oversharing in your profile.

Google+ is clearly having some growing pains, but it will be interesting to watch how it evolves and adapts to handle the feedback that users are giving it. Whether it will challenge Facebook at all is still unknown, but at the very least, it’s a novelty that’s getting a lot of attention, good AND bad. We’ll keep your apprised as privacy issues arise!

Not Really Private: Technology You Might Want to Think Twice About Trusting

Keeping our private lives private can seem both tougher and easier today, thanks to technology. On the one hand, if you’re on a social networking site, you are voluntarily putting some info about yourself out there where any of your “friends” (and possibly the general public) can see it. But on the other hand, there are lots of tools available to us that appear to help us preserve as much privacy as we wish.

So what’s the downside? Some of those privacy options we take for granted are actually not as private as they might seem. Here are three things that most of us assume are doing a great job maintaining our privacy, but in reality, are more public than we might think…

BCC in email – When we use email, most of us think that “BCC” (for “blind carbon copy”) is a great way to send an email to recipients while also sharing that same email with other people that the recipients don’t realize are reading it. And for sending purposes, BCC does work that way. But the privacy breakdown comes when one of the recipients hits “reply all” in response to the email and discovers the secret email addresses among the non-secret ones.

I have personal experience with this phenomenon. Not long ago, I was coaching a sports team for one of my kids, and I was having difficulty with one of the parents on the team. I sent an email to all of the team parents at once in an effort to establish some ground rules, and I BCCed a close friend of mine who had been hearing me rant about the situation for a while (I thought he would like to see how I handled the parents, but since he wasn’t involved with the team at all and wasn’t known to anyone but me, I didn’t want to copy him in an obvious way). I was pretty proud of myself until one of the parents hit “reply all” to my email, which meant that my friend’s email address, formerly hidden behind the BCC, was now visible for that parent to see in their “to” field, along with all the other team email addresses. The other parents could see my friend’s email address now, as well, when they received the reply.

Thankfully, none of the parents ever asked me why I had secretly copied someone who wasn’t part of the team when I sent the email in the first place, but I hope my story makes it clear why the BCC can end up as a big-time backfire. It can create trust issues, awkward situations and tough questions that you might not want to answer. Of course, this goes double for workplace emails: If your coworker finds out that you’re secretly copying your boss on all the emails you send her, she might not trust you anymore; if your boss finds out that you’re BCCing other departments in your emails, he might not think you’re a good fit for his team after all. And all because the privacy of the BCC can be defeated by a simple “reply all.”

Private browsing – Most web browsers have a “private” or “secure” feature that can give users a false sense of security. Private browsing means everything I look at is secret, right? Not exactly. A Stanford University study last year found that the supposedly-secure browsing options in browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome were not as secure as they should have been.

From the article linked above:

To keep browsing private from other users of the same machine, browsers must discard (or avoid creating) any history entries, cached items, cookies, and so on. To prevent sites from being able to track visitors, the browsers must ensure that they don’t send any cookies or other identifiable information from non-private sessions when in private mode.

The researchers found that the browsers’ protections were imperfect. Browsers did not properly isolate their private sessions from non-private ones, with the result that suitably crafted sites could trace visitors between private and non-private sessions. Sites could also leave persistent indications that they had been visited, allowing visits to be detected by local users.

The article also notes that plugins such as Adobe Flash further compromised the private browsing since the plugins can have their own data-storing process set up.

Not many people actually use the “private browsing” mode of their browsers, the study learned; many users probably don’t even realize that mode is there. But if you’re one of those who use it, you should know that going into private browsing does not necessarily mean that the sites you visit are a secret to other users, or to the sites themselves.

Cloud Computing – To the cloud! Cloud computing means running several servers together on a single network, as if they were one computer. Lots of companies enjoy cloud computing for handling their data because clouds are flexible, powerful and scalable – if demand for data goes up, the cloud can redistribute resources to that demand, while a slowdown in processing can pull that unused processing power away and into other tasks. But an article from IntelliProtectBlog notes that cloud computing, for all its awesomeness, is not big on privacy, and that’s something that both companies and consumers need to consider.

The article notes the following observation made by tech-savvy site TechCrunch: Cloud computing gives your information to companies that don’t care about your privacy. Cloud computing is often made possible for companies via third-party cloud providers, and in many cases, there’s some doubt as to who really controls the data on the cloud or whether the cloud provider will hand over any sensitive data immediately if the government asks for it (the article’s author thinks that cloud resources will reliably give in to pressure from authorities even if their client companies don’t want them to). Also, individual companies don’t always have an effective recovery plan in place in the event that something bad happens to the cloud. How would they restore the data if it were all lost?

Of course, the companies that use cloud computing systems should be asking these questions (and getting solid answers) before buying into the cloud, but the article points out that even consumers should take an interest in how companies function with cloud resources. The author notes, “The company you have entrusted with your information is at the mercy of the cloud company which often uses off-shore resources for management, maintenance and disaster recovery,” saying that it behooves us as individuals to find out whether the companies we trust use cloud computing in their data management.

So the next time you do business with a company that collects your personal data, credit card data or other data, you might want to learn whether that company is shouting “to the cloud!” as they handle your sensitive info.

Reducing Spam – Six Tips for Cleaning Out Your Inbox

"We wouldn't be smiling so widely if our inbox was full of junk mail."

You have an email account. Possibly several of them. And if you’ve had them for longer than twenty minutes, you’ve gotten a pile of emails in your inbox that you don’t want.

I’m not talking about true spam mail, the kind that screams “BEST CHE@P V-1-A-G-R-A HERE!” in the subject line. Those emails get tossed directly into the spam folder of most email clients these days, so you can dump your spam without even looking at it by clicking “Empty folder” or “Trash bulk mail.” No, I’m talking about all the emails you get from well-meaning companies, organizations and products that you might have had an interest in once upon a time, but now you wish would simply stop emailing you. Their constant ads, updates and messages can waste your time and even become an invasion of privacy, especially if they share your email with others.

How can you deal with these emails (sometimes dozens a day) without closing your email account in frustration or losing all touch with the companies and brands you like? Here are a few tips to help you master that inbox clutter and still keep up with your favorite products.

1. Unsubscribe to EVERYTHING that isn’t vital. This is a time-consuming step, but it’s by far the most important one. To do this, open the email you just got from a company (say, Awesome Golf Clubs R Us) and find the “unsubscribe” link or instructions. For most reputable companies, the link will be easy enough to find, and when you click it, you’ll have just a few simple instructions to follow to remove yourself from the mailing list. That should mean no longer receiving emails about awesome golf clubs. Do this for all of the companies that you get emails from and wish you didn’t: food companies, gift basket companies, underpants companies, whatever. If you can’t find the easy unsubscribe link or instructions, contact the company directly (either by replying to the email or, in the case of a “do not reply” email address, by visiting their site and finding the “contact us” info) and request to be removed from the emailing list.

2. Make sure you ALWAYS uncheck that box that appears somewhere near the “submit” button during an online purchase, the one that says “Please send me email newsletters and specials and offers and a bunch of other messages I won’t read” (OK, it doesn’t actually say that, but you know what I’m talking about). That box is usually checked by default, so you’ll have to manually uncheck it. Of course, even if you uncheck that box, many companies will still take the chance of emailing you anyway, since you bought something from them and that justifies the contact (by the standards of the Do Not Call list, among others). But leaving the box checked means you’ll DEFINITELY get emails you don’t want or need, so be sure to uncheck it.

Detour into a personal story: Recently, I made a purchase online and unchecked the “please email me with offers” box. A few days later, I got an email from the company with – you guessed it – a special offer. I went into the email, clicked the “unsubscribe” link, and followed it to a page that had a single survey question, asking me why I was unsubscribing. Out of the choices they gave me, I chose “other,” filling the text area provided with the response “I am unsubscribing because I unchecked the ‘contact me’ box at checkout – I do NOT wish to be contacted.” So far, I have not received any further emails from the company.

3. Follow your favorite brands on Facebook and Twitter. This is how you keep up with the products and services you enjoy without letting them flood your email box (or worse, sell your email address to other companies). Most major brands, companies and products have a social media presence now, and “liking” them on Facebook or following their tweets will help you keep up with the latest news, updates and discount offers without having to wade through your emails. Even better, many companies offer unique specials and contests to their social media fans, so following your favorite products could mean getting access to great deals and opportunities not available elsewhere.

4. Use a temporary email account like Melt Mail if you must give an email address out. Melt Mail is a great, FREE service if you need an email address that will last for only a day or so. To use it, you enter your real email address and the length of time you want emails to forward to your real account (3, 6, 12 or 24 hours), and the service generates a temporary email address for you. You can then give out that address during the time span you specified, and any emails sent to it will forward to your real email, but when the time runs out, the temporary email address “melts” away, and the messages no longer forward to your account. It’s a convenient way to get any short-term communication you might need without actually giving out your real email address.

5. Cancel all notifications from social media sites. If you’re a social media butterfly, you probably spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter, but you might also get a lot of emails from Facebook and Twitter. Facebook’s default account settings mean receiving an email from Facebook every time someone comments on your photos, posts to your wall, or even comments on a post that someone else made (if you commented on it first). In short, it can feel like you get an email from Facebook every time someone on your friend list sneezes.

You can cancel any or all of these annoyingly helpful email notifications by going into the “Account” link in the upper right of your Facebook page, choosing “notifications” from the tabs available (third from the left, at least at the moment), and unchecking the boxes beside the things you don’t want to get notified about via email. If you wish, you can uncheck all of the choices in this very long list, so Facebook won’t email you about anything your friends are doing. But from a privacy standpoint, it’s usually best to keep the notifications for things like direct comments, messages and photo tags, so you can see who’s trying to reach you or what photos of you have been posted by others.

To make the same tweaks in Twitter, go into the “Settings” choice under the account pulldown in the upper right corner of your Twitter homepage, choose the “notifications” tab (fourth from the left), and uncheck any activity that you don’t wish to get emailed about.

6. Organize the emails you actually want to keep. Most email clients have folders available that you can use to sort emails into easily-accessed categories. You can create folders for emails about work, your kids/pets, medical statements, charitable contributions, purchase receipts, etc. Whatever categories you wish to specify, you can create. Then, as new emails come in, you can sort them into the right folders immediately and keep your inbox free of uncategorized messages.

A cleaner email inbox means more privacy and less hassle for you, so be sure to put these tips to use if you’re tired of spending a significant chunk of each day deleting message after message from your email account.

Video Chat: Facebook Versus Google+

When I was a kid, most of us wanted to leap into the Jetsons-like future that we all knew was coming. That future included flying cars, housekeeping robots and video phones, among other things. The evolution of technology promised us phones that would let us see each other while we talked, but the earliest versions of the video phone were less-than-practical, mostly because you couldn’t use it unless OTHER people had video phones, too (I recall a Dilbert cartoon in which Dilbert brings home a video phone and then sits and stares at it, waiting for someone to call).

“There’s Bob and Julie. Wonder if they’re wearing bunny slippers like we are.”

Today, we might not have the flying cars and cleaning robots that talk while they dust (although the robot vacuum cleaners we do have are pretty cool), but we do have video phone technology via our computers, tablets and smartphones. And now, our social networks are getting into the video chat arena, as well, creating a further point of competition between Google+ and Facebook.

Last week, Facebook launched video chatting thanks to a partnership with the video phone giant many of us already use, Skype. It’ll be unveiled to all of the hundreds of millions of Facebook users over the next couple of months. Google+, which is of course still in an invite-only mode (so most of us can’t use it yet), has its own video chat feature built from the get-go.

I could go into the pros and cons of each network’s version, but Edward Baig of USA Today wrote a pretty thorough article comparing and contrasting Facebook and Google+, so check there if you’d like the specifics. A few important things to know about each video chat option, though:

• Google+ has “hanging out,” which is a feature that tells all of your online friends that you’re available to video chat. That way, you can interact via video with several of your friends at once. It’s a spur-of-the-moment thing that, unfortunately, can cause some oversharing; Baig mentions in his article that he took a landline phone call during his “hanging out” time (forgetting that he was currently broadcasting himself via webcam), and one of his online friends watched and listened to Baig’s end of the entire phone call.
• Facebook’s video chat, at least for now, will be a one-on-one format, but still more casual than having to schedule a call via Skype.
• Both Facebook and Google+ have strengths, weaknesses and a few bugs here and there that remain to be worked out – for example, Facebook doesn’t have a mobile video option yet, and there’s no way to choose which of the friends on your friend list can call you (if two users are friends, they can call each other, though the call recipient can choose to ignore the call).

Social media video chat is evolving, and with both of the big players putting out their versions and tweaking them as quickly as possible, it will probably end up being a win for users who want the most features and best ease of use no matter which network they’re on. Just remember to use caution in what you share via video… Like text chat, photos and the other ways we interact on the web, video can help you put more of yourself out there than you might wish (never forget that those watching you can take screen captures of their video window if they want to preserve an image for posterity!).