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It is wonderful to share with friends and family. Sharing our special moments, thoughts and opinions is exciting especially if we get many LIKES, SHARES and COMMENTS. It makes you feel accepted, loved and cared for. But can this pose a thread to your privacy or the privacy of those you love?

 

 Facebook Users | Are you one of them?

Face book is a social network of more that more than one billion users enjoy worldwide and it is free. Saying this though it is worth mentioning that millions of people are on Facebook without having an account and without even knowing it. Pictures shared, liked and tagged include people that never opened an account on Face book and do not even know that their picture is published on the internet. This of course poses privacy issues that one should acknowledge and take into consideration.

 Facebook  Privacy Issues

Sharing pictures and tagging them is extremely easy on Facebook. What is often overlooked though is the potential impact on those people presented on the pictures shared without having their permission. People in the picture you published ( even people included in the background) may ( for many different reasons) not want to be shown there. Are you also aware that publishing photos taken from your mobile devices and modern cameras contain all sorts of embedded data ( geotags ( i.e exactly where the photo was taken). Though Facebook removes this kind of data from the pictures uploaded the question remain of how they use it or where they store it after they remove it.

Facebook Terms of Use

You may still feel comfortable sharing your family and friend photos on Facebook…. You may even feel comfortable to share your professional work ( artistic photos e.t.c). But did you know that in the terms of service you signed when you joined Facebook you signed and accepted that any material ( photos, videos, picture) you upload on Face book ca be reused by Facebook. Their terms of service state … “You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any Intellectual Property content that you post on or in connection with Facebook”.

 What to have in mind!

When posting on Face book it is good to have in mind that your post may be seen by a complete stranger by sharing or tagging. Being aware of this makes you more careful of the content of your posts. For example you may want your friend to know that you are having vacation abroad and enjoying yourself but a friends friend could see that as an opportunity to pay a visit to your house to steal that wonderful Stereo system you have been talking about in your previous posts.

Facebook  Targeted Advertisements

Facebook receives information about you based on keywords from your posts, your likes, shares and other Facebook activities.Needless to say it also receives information about you from your profile. It uses all these information to create targeted ( based on your interests and profile ) advertisements to your Timeline or the Add area of the Facebook page.

Use with caution

Am I suggesting you loose on the excitement of communicating with friends and family or why miss out from this wonderful viral marketing tool for your company?Definetely not , but for the sake of your privacy and that of others please use it with caution.

 Facebook Privacy Settings

By the way if you want to have more control on you privacy setting look further into the the padlock icon at the top right of any Facebook page. Then click on ‘See More Settings’ to define who can see your stuff, who can contact you, stop someone from bothering you and other privacy settings.