FaceBook and Privacy

FaceBook's privacy policies have been major news during the past several weeks. Bloggers have posted their top 10 reasons to quit FaceBook. Some have started to quit FaceBook, including engineers at Google and noted tech journalist Leo Laporte. The "quit FaceBook" movement has even inspired a "Quit FaceBook Day", which is scheduled for May 31.

With this in mind, here are several websites that showcase the development of FaceBook's privacy policies over time, and also some sites to help make sure that your FaceBook account does indeed stay private.

• FaceBook Privacy: A Bewilding Tangle of Options
  This excellent graph from the New York Times shows a flow chart detailing the more than 170 options to manage your privacy on FaceBook. It also shows the development of FaceBook's privacy policy, which now at 5,830 words is longer than the United States Constitution.


• Evolution of Privacy on FaceBook
  Matt McKeon has an interesting interactive chart that shows how the default settings that manage sharing of information on FaceBook have changed over time.


• Reclaim Privacy
  This excellent bookmarklet will scan your FaceBook account settings and let you now how private your account settings are.


• 7 Things to Stop Doing on FaceBook
  From the June 2010 issue of Consumer Reports comes this list of information to stay safer on FaceBook.

Where do you stand on the issue of FaceBook and privacy? Are you going to quit FaceBook on May 31? Or, like popular librarian blogger David Lee King, do your see reasons to stay with Facebook? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.