Updates To Facebook Data Use Policy & SRR

Facebook today announced some proposed updates to their Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).

A new document on their Facebook Site Governance Page announces the proposed change and also gives us links to the new documents.

Excerpt from the document:

Today we are proposing some updates to two documents which govern our site: our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing the use of our services. These updates provide more detailed information about our practices, reflect changes to our products, and improve how we conduct our site governance process.

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• Ask the Chief Privacy Officer. We’ll be launching a new feature on our Facebook and Privacy Page to let you submit questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy, Erin Egan.

• Facebook Live Events. Erin Egan will host webcasts on a regular basis to address your comments and questions about privacy, safety and security.

As you can see from the document they are adding a new feature to address questions about the changes. The document highlights the following changes:

• New tools for managing your Facebook Messages – replacing the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
• Changes to how we refer to certain products, like instant personalization.
• Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in search results.
• Tips on managing your timeline. For example, you can use tools on your timeline or activity log to delete your own posts, or you can ask someone else to delete a post in which you’re tagged.

However to know what all has changed wrt Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), we have to read the new documents.

Use the following links to see the proposed changes. You can leave your comments on those pages. 

• Proposed Statement of Rights and Responsibilities 
• Proposed SRR Redline(PDF)
• Proposed Data Use Policy
• Proposed Data Use Policy Redline(PDF)

Click here to comment. Remember that these documents are open for comment till 9:00 AM PST on November 28, 2012. Make sure you read and understand new documents.

Happy and safe Facebooking!

How To Disable Facebook's Tag Suggestions

Yesterday Facebook rolled out a new feature called Tag Suggestions.

According to a blog post on The Facebook Blog, this is what the feature is all about:

"When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software—similar to that found in many photo editing tools—to match your new photos to other photos you're tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos."

Not surprisingly, this Face Recognition feature is enabled by default! This may be useful for some people who upload photos in bulk and tag everybody in every picture.

For others, if you don't want Facebook to automatically detect your face and suggest tag to friends, here's how you can disable this feature. It's very simple! (takes only 7 clicks!)

1. Click on Account 
2. Click on Privacy Settings
   
   

   

   Privacy Settings page

3. Click on Customize settings
   
   
   
4. Scroll down to "Things others share" section. Click on the Edit Settings next to
   Suggest photos of me to friends
   When photos look like me, suggest my name
   
   
   
5. Click on Enabled and change it to Disabled
6. Click on Okay to save that setting.
7. Congratulations! Now you can continue with your Facebooking, or whatever else you were doing before coming here :-)