Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

I don’t know if this is a new bug at Facebook or if it’s spam, but lately I’ve had a lot of email notifications that my photo’s been tagged. And the members in all these notifications are total strangers to me. In the beginning I did a search on the name that was in the notification, but after a couple of times I realized that it was a dead end. When you get more than 200,000 hits on a person you don’t know, it can be any of them…IF the notifications actually were real.

There’s a lack of information in these emails that Facebook is sending out when someone is tagging a photo. And the security on my Facebook account is set as high as it can be, so you can’t really tag any of my photo’s unless you are in one of the lists of friends I’ve got who can SEE my photo’s.
But anyway…this is what these email looks like:

Melissa requested to tag one of your photos. As the owner of the photo, you need to approve this request.

To approve this request, follow the link below: “link to approve”

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

And below those lines there’s a couple of lines from Facebook who the notification was meant for and their own address in Palo Alto. And that’s it. No link to the photo in question, no link to Melissa (Kirk) or anything. And it would be nice to know who she is, how she got access to my photo’s to begin with and what photo she wants to tag. But then again, as I said earlier, it might just be a scam…but a darn good one if it is. There’s nothing in the details of the email that suggests that it was sent from any other place than Facebooks own servers.

If that is the case, Facebook really need to look into their security – again. Or at least give a bit more information in the notes they send out. I never put up anything on Facebook that I feel uncomfortable sharing, but I still like a certain privacy when it comes to people I don’t know.

Here’s a way you can easily check how safe your information really is on Facebook if you’re worried. I’ve done this scan myself and it will tell you what’s visible to whom and what you might want to adjust and how.

Just follow the instructions and you’ll see what I mean.

ReclaimPrivacy.org

And they do have their own private policy, so don’t worry. They won’t see your information during the scan.

You know…Facebook is a privately owned business, providing a service for free to those of us who wants to stay in touch with friends and relatives. And yet, they are probably the most criticized place on the web today. We are just never happy, are we?

Whenever there’s changes happening on Facebook, we scream. Even when the changes are for the better, there’s nothing that generates more articles, discussions and analysis among those of us who been around both their community and the rest of the web for a while. We automatically assume that because we are a part of building their community, we also have the right to be a part of their decisions. And yes, in a way we do. From a business point of view, it’s not really any of our concern what they do with their assets. We are all free to leave them behind for something else if we wanted to, so no one is forced to stick around and hate the changes they do.

That said, the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a horror on Facebook. From personal experience I know and I’m very aware that making any changes to a big community is technically demanding and takes time. It will also mean that nothing works the way it should.
I’m also pretty sure that there are legal reasons why they can’t take the entire place down for a short amount of time while making their changes. I mean other than 400 million members that would be furious :p

And every time they make changes in the layout to make it more user-friendly, we all hate it. Well, almost everyone anyway. Change the way things work and force your members to learn a new “pattern”  to find things is a 100% secure way to end up in the 10 Most Hated Places Ever. And most likely in the top 3.
Personally I don’t really have a problem to learn a new layout and maybe that’s a professional injury more than a positive thing. But it’s a lot more pleasant to explore a new layout when everything is functional. There’s something annoying about dead links in a community with 400 million members and 6 years of presence on the web. Even the same day they switch to a new layout it should work.

It also annoy me a little that they keep pointing out that the new layout should be “easier” to use. At least in theory it should be easier to find things. What I would want is a more dynamic place where I can put my own bookmarks, links, notifications, inbox, friends, news feeds, updates that are important to me where I want them. They do have a certain flexibility in their layout where you can change the sort order in the menu and so on, but I would want to build my own layout. Decide what I want to see on my Home page.

Now, I’m not saying that I want another MySpace…heaven forbid that. What I like about Facebook is that there is no possibility to clutter it with blinking background images, animations, sound and the entire wardrobe from Little Shop of Horrors. That is something I’m very happy without.
But it would still be nice to be able to place existing modules wherever I want them to be.
And maybe next time they realize that the best way to make it easier for all of us to find what we need is to allow us to plug it in where we want it. Not where they think it should be.

End of rant :)