Priveazy.com tracks these sites’ privacy settings and offers instructions for taking advantage of them.
Search results for mentions of a relatively old website called Priveazy.com are surprisingly low, and it’s such an appealing resource for patrons interested in maintaining all the privacy they can, so I thought I’d mention it here. Priveazy.com offers step by step instructions for adjusting the settings of the most popular social networking sites and email providers, mostly so that the least amount of your information is public, and to minimize your exposure to advertisers.
I’ve made it part of my computer classes, since I’d say half of those who show up already have Facebook and email accounts. The minutiae of instructions have been kept up to date so far (I’ve used the instructions for a handful of sites). The FAQ says they research new developments in the sites everyday (although the only member of “The Priveazy Team” is it’s founder and CEO). You’re not asked to create a free account for any of the instructions, which are jargon-free as far as I can tell, and instructional pictures seem well placed.
They also have an extension for the Google Chrome browser that’s supposed to make getting to and changing each site’s privacy settings a one-button affair. I don’t use Chrome, but the FAQ reads there are plans to support other browsers in the future.
So check it out and tell your patrons, especially the teens and parents who keep a close eye on their children’s online activity.
And while we’re a
t it, here’s news from lifehacker about opting out of Facebook’s “newest attempts to track everything you do, even offline” by cross referencing the email address and other info. Facebook collects with the info. on your rewards cards. So info. about the offline spending you do with rewards cards is tracked by one company, Datalogix, which has made a deal to share that info. with Facebook, which uses the data to help advertisers. The article has a link to the company’s site, which makes opting out pretty easy.
Library Ohs! 