The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
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By SARAH PEREZ of ReadWriteWeb
Published: January 20, 2010
In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
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Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's "transition tool." The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for the recommended settings without really understanding what they were agreeing to. If you did so, you may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links. Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
Helen Baxter on 25 Apr 08I started putting together this list, and got a bit carried away. It ended up turning into a recommended list of free (mostly open-source) tools to do almost all of the essential tasks most people require of their computer. Almost all of the programs mentioned below are free open source software, though some are free versions of larger commercial products. Also note that this article is primarily aimed at Windows PC users, but almost all of these tools are also available on OSX and Linux.
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