Facebook profiles get less private

When IU freshman Laurence Cormier logged onto Facebook.com, she was greeted with notices asking her to confirm friends, join groups and attend events. \nShe was also confronted with a notice from the Facebook staff informing her that her profile would now be public. \nCormier, a Facebook user for two years, quickly changed her privacy settings after reading the notice, fearing that Facebook might sell her information to search engines.\n“I’m just going to make sure that (my profile) stays private and I have the security settings the highest they can go,” Cormier said. \nThis new public availability means that when a person is searching for someone through a search engine like Yahoo or Google, the results could include Facebook profiles. This makes profiles, which were once private, accessible to the public. The searcher is able to see the person’s name and photo, add them as a friend or send them a message. \nIn a statement, Facebook, Inc., said “indexing public search listing results for people on Facebook in external search engines allows more people to connect with those they are looking for.”\nOnly users over the age of 18 who have selected to allow everyone to view their profile will appear in search results. But even these users can elect not to allow profiles to be searched by external search engines. Still, Cormier thinks the change could present problems for users.\n“I guess you can set your settings yourself,” Cormier said. “But people can get in trouble if they don’t set their safety settings.” \nOn sites such as Facebook, the terms of agreement could appear confusing for users. \n“There’s no in-between, and there’s little opportunity to negotiate how you’d like your personal information to be handled,” said Ted Striphas, assistant professor of Media and Culture Studies. \n“We users are at a significant disadvantage right now, consequently, because we largely cannot stipulate the terms by which social networking sites, search engines and so forth should handle personal information,” he said. \nThough Facebook profiles will appear on search result pages through engines like Google and Yahoo, these search engines have no contract with Facebook, nor do they have control over what appears on the result pages. \n“If someone sees something in the search results that they don’t like, we have no control over that,” said Katie Watson, a Google spokesperson. “We are just a reflection of what is on the Web.” \nThe more people are online and using technology to communicate, the more visible one’s digital trail becomes, Striphas said. He said he thinks this will only worsen as the popularity of social networking sites increases. \n“As people spend more and more of their time online, especially on sites dedicated to commerce, gaming, blogging, social networking and the like, we’re depositing increasing amounts of what was once considered to be private information into the digital realm,” he said.