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Facebook have made several changes to their “privacy policy” over the years, and are now bordering on evil – although they’ve probably been “evil” for ages, depending on your views. Without getting in to a lengthy discussion about all the “what” and “why”s behind it, take a look at The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook – in short, they’re basically making all of your data publicly available.

Now if you’re smart, like me, you’ll head over to your privacy settings and make sure your account’s locked tight – good for you, but have you considered what information your friends are sharing about you? That’s right… I’m talking about “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites” – wait, what… your friends can share your information, with a 3rd party site you have never even visited? Why the HELL is that okay? Sure, it means when you do eventually decide to visit said site that it already knows who you and all of your friends are. In Russia you don’t enter your information into websites, they enter you. When last did you willingly give a website a list of all of your friends, anyway?

As if that isn’t enough, not long ago there was something called “Facebook Beacon” which basically allowed ebay to tell Facebook when you purchased stuff and what it was. Yes, that’s right, now Facebook knows your shopping habbits too. Luckily a lawsuit shut it down – but do you really think they deleted all the data they’d collected? Did you even know this kind of data was being collected about you (without your permission)?

The problem is simple… Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) doesn’t believe in “privacy”, so he’s going to keep pushing towards an “open” web, whether you like it or not. So what’s the answer? Well “if you don’t like it, leave” – which is what I’m going to do. I may not “deactivate” or “delete” my account, but I’m certainly not going to leave a shred of personal information about me in it – they can’t be trusted.

Oh, and then there’s this list of  Privacy Concerns, oh and that “bug” a little while ago that let other people read your chats and see your pending invites.

TL;DR version: not only do Facebook store and share all of your information with 3rd parties, they also used to collect information on you from 3rd parties (such as ebay), and they’re constantly moving towards making more of your information “public”.