“Friends” is a term that has already been bastardized by social networking services such as Facebook. Before, the people we call friends usually consisted of a small group of persons with whom we have shared meaningful experiences with. Now, however, our friend lists are saturated with the names of people we don’t even talk to…

A few months ago, a group calling themselves “Europe v. Facebook” emerged. This group consisted mostly of Europeans who were sick and tired of how Facebook allegedly violates a person’s privacy and keeps more data about the user than was originally intended. The group, headed by law student Max Schrems, filed 22 complaints with Ireland’s…

If you want all traces of your Facebook activities deleted, all you need to do is to go to your account settings and deactivate your account. Of course, it’s not really deleted. As we have covered in the past, your data is still sitting on a Facebook server somewhere. In fact, you can easily summon…

Andrew Noyes, a Facebook representative, told Mashable the following: “We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue.” There has been much speculation on who originated and orchestrated the recent pornographic spam attack. Some went so far as to claim Anonymous had hacked Facebook and was the culprit.…

Privacy and security issues in social media are obviously a huge concern to many of the people who use these types of sites. Most of the people who actually show their personal information don’t understand the consequences they could face, and the others probably don’t care. It is more important now than ever before to…

Facebook is often an outlet for some people – a place where their innermost thoughts can be shared with friends. The wisdom of using it for such, however, is highly questionable. Many people have lost their jobs or gotten suspended from school because they had a case of “TMI” on their Facebook wall. In fact,…

Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are said to be on the verge of reaching a settlement over the company’s privacy practices – a settlement that would fly in the face of how Facebook has implemented new features in the past. The changes would definitely go a long way in helping users obtain the…

These days, it’s pretty difficult to tell whether the person you’re talking to online is really who he says he is. Some people have gone so far as to think up some very elaborate stories so that they can pretend to be someone else or simply steal someone else’s identity. In fact, just recently, a…

Deep in the bowels of Facebook’s Terms of Use is this short but very important clause: You will not share your password, let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account. It’s something that all of us agreed to the moment we signed up for the…

Here’s a new development that could potentially affect your privacy: Google can now index AJAX and JavaScript content. Before, Googlebot could not access content that was posted using a third party commenting system, such as what you use on Facebook. But with this new development, everything that you post in a public page or forum…