The Net and nothing but the Net

Facebook says it plans to simplify privacy controls at the popular social-networking service to appease critics.

“We’ve spent the last couple of weeks listening to users and consulting with experts in California; Washington, DC, and around the world,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said.

“The messages we’ve received are pretty clear. Users appreciate having precise and comprehensive controls, but want them to be simpler and easier to use.”

Facebook contended that members like new programs rolled out at the California-based Internet hotspot but want easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information with third-party applications or websites.

Read more…Facebook plans to make privacy easier | News.com.au

FACEBOOK shut down a politician’s page after receiving complaints it carried an “offensive attack” on indigenous locals.

Dave Tollner, who won the inner Darwin seat of Fong Lim for the Country
Liberal Party at the last election, caused outrage after he wrote on
his page that itinerants were “parasites terrorising innocent citizens”.

He said that he was “sick to death” of them and warned that “the fun will
be over for these parasites on the very day we get a Country Liberal
government in the Territory”.

Many people left angry messages on his page, one going so far as to accuse him of advocating
“genocide”. However, there were just as many messages of support.

Mr Tollner’s Facebook page was suspended for two weeks and has only recently come back online.

However, within minutes of the site functioning again  a left-wing political activist posted a cartoon of a Ku Klux Klansman.

Mr Tollner said that he did not expect such a strong reaction from his
comments, adding: ”Political correctness has never been my strong
point.”

He accused Labor activists of lobbying Facebook to shut down his profile page.

However, the man who posted the Klansman cartoon on the page is a Greens supporter.

Justin Tutty said the cartoon was Patrick Starfish from the Sponge Bob Square
Pants children’s television show drawn as a Klansman.

Read more about Dave Tollner’s Facebook woes at ntnews.com.au.

Read more…Dave Tollner suspended from Facebook over ‘offensive attack’ on Aborigines | Herald Sun

The third party application can covertly collect private data behind the scenes. According to Joe Jim, country lead for e-Corp. there are over 55k external applications on Facebook alone. According to the recently released Sophos Security Thread Report, approximately 57 percent of the folks using social networking sites have been spammed. This is a significant jump from the previous year as it has increased by 70.6 percent.

Read more…The dangers of social networking sites such as Facebook – TECH.BLORGE.com

SOCIAL network sites including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace could be scanned for depressed and “at risk” users under a bold new program to combat youth suicide.

The rise in popularity in social networking could allow authorities to spot users at risk and offer help, researchers believe.

Researches from New Zealand’s Victoria University say they have devised a program that scans posts to identify key words that people aged between 18 and 24 are using.

A high proportion of key words could mean that the blogger is at risk of depression, suicide, self-harm or harming others, the researches believe.

“Our technology picks up words or phrases such as ‘depressed’, or ‘I don’t want to live any more’ or ‘I want to kill somebody’,” Dr Tiong-Thye Goh said.

“We analyse the database of phrases and rank them according to frequency of use – if certain key words are used a lot it is likely that the particular person may be emotionally depressed.”

Read more…Suicide prevention for social networks | News | News.com.au

AN insurance worker lost her job after surfing popular social network site Facebook while off sick, her employer said.

The Swiss woman said she could not work in front of a computer as she needed to lie in the dark, but was then seen to be active on Facebook.

Her employer, insurer Nationale Suisse, said in a statement the action had destroyed its trust in the employee.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” it said.

The unnamed woman told the 20 Minuten daily she had been surfing Facebook in bed on her iPhone and accused her employer of spying on her and other employees by sending a mysterious friend request which allows access to personal online activity.

Nationale Suisse rejected the accusation of spying and said the employee’s Facebook activity had been stumbled across by a colleague in November, before use of the social network site was blocked in the company.
Read more…Sacked for Facebook surfing while sick | News | News.com.au