Blog Archives
3 Things I Liked in Social Media, Week ending June 3.
1. Add Pins directly from House Beautiful Magazine – The June issue invites readers to pin directly from its “Kitchen of the Month” article. Images in the article feature a specific watermark and when scanned with House Beautiful’s phone app, are able to Pin the image in real-time onto their Pinterest boards! I look forward to more magazines offering this function!
2. Make your voice heard. Vote on Facebook’s proposed changes – The deadline to vote is this Friday, June 8! Facebook is giving users the opportunity to cast a vote on its revised Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
3. (RED)’s Rush to Zero Campaign – Your FourSquare check-ins at Starbucks just got meaningful with purpose. From June 1 – 10, 2012, Starbucks will donate $1 to the Global Fund, for every FourSquare check-in at any U.S. and Canada locations. If you don’t have an affinity for Starbucks coffee, why not check-in and pick-up hot tea, bottle of water or snack? Little actions can produce big change. #REDRUSH
Facebook Acquires Instagram. How You Can Protect Your Info.
Have you heard? Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in cash. A silly question, right? If you’ve been frequenting the Internet today, of course you already know! It’s the hot topic of conversation regarding privacy concerns.
With the many articles posted today, where does one begin to understand what the next steps are to protect information? Lets break this out.
Three Options to Consider to Combat Privacy Concerns
A fantastic amenity of being an Instagram user was that we weren’t bombarded with advertisers. It was a photo sharing avenue with a simple and fun user interface. No ads and no sponsored stories. Just great photos with a great community. The acquisition of Instagram means the user interface is now Facebook, hence ads, sponsors stories and the opportunity for Facebook to share our information.
According to Facebook Developers, in order to use an app on Facebook it needs to collect some information, such as name, profile picture, gender etc in an effort to make it personalized. Nevertheless, you can block how your friends SHARE your personal info when they use the Instagram app and other apps.
Option 1 – Take steps to protect your information from being shared by your friends’ app use.
Check your Instagram app settings on Facebook. Follow the steps below.
1. Click on your “Privacy Settings” on Facebook
2. Click “Edit Settings” next to Apps and Websites
3. Click “Edit Settings” next to How People Bring Your Info to Apps They Use
4. Deselect the information you don’t want your friends to share when they use apps. Click “Saves Changes.”
Option 2 – Make your Instagram photos “Private.”
1. Open the Instagram app on your mobile device and click on your “Profile” tab
2. Toggle the “Photos are Private” switch to ON
Option 3 – Discontinue using Instagram and go for an alternative. If you select this path, here are opportunities to save your current Instagram photos.
Google’s Privacy Policy. What You Can Do.
It’s the topic du jour, Google is updating it’s Privacy Policy and need I forget to mention Google is NOT allowing users to opt-out. That’s right. All Google users must opt-in to the new Policy. That fact alone doesn’t sit well with me! It’s not so much the changes taking place (although those changes are important and concerning), but the fact that Google is “forcing” it’s users to opt-in and accept…no questions asked.
You may recall in Part One of Be Smart, Secure and Safe. A Guide to Managing Your Online Privacy, I advised of the functionality to opt-out of targeted ads if you have a Gmail account. You’ll now want to consider clearing our web history. This post will be an extension of Part One and represent Part Five as you’ll gain an understanding of how to clear your web history in Google.
Nutshell explanation of Google’s Privacy Policy Update*
If you’re a Google product user: Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Google+ etc. Prior to March 1, 2012 Google would keep your personal information separate from each product. Each product had it’s own standalone Privacy Policy. For example, your behavior and information on YouTube wasn’t stored in the same way as your behavior and information on Google+.
Moving forward Google will combine your personal information and your behavior in each of it’s products into a “global profile” (sounds weird, right? “global profile”) so that it can roll-out more targeted advertising and more relevant search results. Google doesn’t state this, but many believe it’s in an effort to boost advertising dollars by presenting advertisers with more robust database of personal data. Gross.
One of the ways Google is tracking your behavior is through your web history. Challenge Google on this and clear your web history as frequently as you can.
Here is a helpful video I found on CNET.
* Click here for a broader explanation of Google’s Privacy Policy update.
