Tag Archives: facebook

Beefing Up Facebook Security: How To Set Up Two-Step Verification

By Posted in How-Tos - Other Tagged , 2 Comments

FacebookOne way to make it harder for bad guys to access your online accounts is to require more than a username and password to access an account.

Google uses a two-step verification process tied to account credentials and your mobile phone. So does Facebook.

And as Alex Howard points out, security has always been important but events are conspiring to suggest just how important.

Learn how to set up two-step verification on your Facebook account. Important for anyone, the higher your public profile, the more important.

This means journalists, professors engaged in public scholarship (especially when controversial), celebrities (authors, musicians, actors, directors, models, athletes ….), politicians (of all stripes, elected or candidate), political appointees, judges and high profile lawyers … anyone who manages a Facebook page for someone else …  the list goes on.
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Complicated Privacy Policy Bites Former Facebook Marketing Director Zuckerberg

By Posted in Mobile, Social Networks Tagged , 2 Comments

In an exchange captured by Buzzfeed, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister and former marketing director Randi Zuckerberg posted a candid family photo on Facebook about “the family’s reaction to the site’s new ‘Poke’ app.”

Vox Media’s Callie Schweitzer saw the photo in her Facebook newsfeed and tweeted it. Zuckerberg objected.

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Fighting Fire With Fire: Dad Shoots Laptop, Posts Video

By Posted in Social Networks Tagged , 1 Comment

A North Carolina dad, Tommy Jordan, reached his wits end on Wednesday after his 15-year daughter posted a rant on her Facebook page, a video “disrespectful” to her parents. He pulled out a pistol and shot her laptop dead. And he videoed it, then shared that video with the world.

That is your laptop. This is my .45.

His monologue — where he reads what he says his daughter wrote on her Facebook page — includes some profanity and what I think of as a litany of teen-age whininess (based on my listening to adult friends and relatives as well as nieces). Titled Facebook Parenting: For the Troubled Teen, the video  has 3.7 million views as of this writing (125,486 likes, 9,392 dislikes):

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Facebook Adds eMail Addresses To “Download Your Info” But In The “Off” Position

By Posted in Social Networks Tagged 2 Comments

Facebook has quietly implemented a new feature as part of its “download your information” tool.

The company, which is notorious for introducing new features that force its customers to “turn off” default settings, has set up the “let my friends have my email” option … in the “off” mode. Yep, it is a nod to personal privacy. But it’s really a nod to Facebook’s attempt to have a stranglehold on all that personal data.

Before this announcement, it was possible to export your Facebook friends — at least a subset of them — using the import contacts feature at Yahoo mail and Hotmail. When I did this earlier this summer (post GooglePlus launch), the two sets were not identical (N was different). Clunky, though.

This new “opt in” feature seems to apply only to Facebook’s “download your info” tool. In other words, it is still possible to import Facebook contacts into Yahoo mail (I did not try Hotmail) … and this import/export process still doesn’t capture everyone. No, I don’t know why!

[Follow the jump for "how to" instructions and screen shots.]

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Google+, Facebook and Online Identity: The Problem With “Real Names” (And Why It Matters To You)

By Posted in Social Networks, Web/Tech Tagged , , , , 5 Comments

google plus logoA long time ago, Lawrence Lessig wrote the book Code (1999). He argued, persuasively, that “code is law.” And “code”? It’s written, in the main, by profit-maximizing organizations.

In 2003, Mark Zuckerburg launched the site that would become Facebook. You had to use a real email address and your real name. The site was, for all intents and purposes, a limited edition Match.com (which requires real names – “accurate” profile information). Content was not accessible via the public web; it was only accessible to those who had access (harvard.edu email addresses) to the site. Reams have been written about privacy and the poorly enforced “real names” policy as Facebook pushed its users from from the protections of a very closed garden to the public web — a push mandated by the profit-maximization needs of a corporation.

Flash forward to June 2011. Google launched Google+ and technology early adopters scrambled to secure a field trial invitation. As danah boyd writes: Continue reading →