Privacy: Social Media: “Your Hidden Facebook Photos Aren’t So Hidden Anymore”

Here’s an introduction to a new extension for Chrome that might be of interest to some of you.
If it’s NOT of interest we still encourage you to review the article. Why?
It’s yet another reminder that what you share privately on social media sites like Facebook might not be as private as you think.
The article does offer a few tips on how to make what you share on Facebook, specifically images, as private as possible vs. not posting them at all.
We will be watching to see if, how, and when Facebook reacts to this new extension. If it the extension is taken offline (and the loophole in the API closed) the reminder about being careful about what you share on social media, even if it’s marked private, is one that needs to be repeated and shared often.
Btw, we continue to believe that educating the public about online/digital privacy issues and solutions is a useful and important need that the library/librarian community needs to take a much more active role in to become a “go to” source for this type of information.
From The Daily Dot:

PictureBook launched as a Chrome extension on Monday. It’s the work of Steven Goh, the developer behind the Javelin Browser for Android. The extension promises to “unblock and search for hidden pictures of anyone in Facebook.” Users don’t have to be friends for PictureBook to work; you just install it and click when you’re looking at someone’s profile.
Goh claims that the extension works thanks to a blind spot in Facebook’s current privacy settings. “Basically when you set your privacy, you are setting privacy for your own assets,” he explained. “However, if other people tagged you in pictures that are public, those can be found.
“Currently, Facebook removes all UI approach to prevent you from searching that. That means you can’t search public tagged photos of anyone via their website.” PictureBook works around the limitations to find photos that aren’t actually protected—just hidden from the standard search tool.

Read the Complete Article (471 Words)
See Also: From June 2014
Two Items in Single Post:
“A Real World Example of Hacking For Supposedly Private Info and/or a Useful Search Technique for Researchers”
&
Research Paper: “SocialSpy: Browsing (Supposedly) Hidden Information in Online Social Networks”

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