Are people starting to wake up to what’s going on with Facebook when it comes to the creeping erosion of users’ privacy? I hope so. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is certainly on the case.

Take a look at <a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/" target="_blank">their article here</a> which documents the changing wording of the Facebook privacy policy since the service first began in 2005 up till last week’s continuing changes. It’s quite illuminating. I’ll leave the detail to you but here’s a shortcut…

In 2005…
<blockquote>No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.</blockquote>
In 2010…
<blockquote>When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator#connections">connections</a>, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.</blockquote>
Anyone out there understand the latter? Me neither. Many thanks to my agent Carole Blake for spotting this one.