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This Privacy Settings Scanner for Facebook is Great
If you use a PC you may already be familiar with Microsoft's free "Baseline Security Analyzer" tool. It checks your PC for missing security patches, critical updates, weak passwords and so on.
If you like the concept of such a tool, and you use Facebook, and you're worried about allowing strangers to find out information about you online, you need Reclaim Privacy. It's a great new piece of freeware which checks your Facebook settings and gives you advice about whether they are secure or not. For example, here's what it said about my own Facebook account:
Reclaim Privacy is written in Javascript. It's free and open source, so anyone who has concerns over its motives can easily check to see that it isn't doing anything that it shouldn't.
To use it, go to www.reclaimprivacy.org and add the utility to your browser favourites. Then log into Facebook and go to your security settings page (there's a link on the reclaimprivacy site to help you). Then run the Reclaim Privacy script by selecting it from your bookmarked favourites, and the analysis of your security exposure will be ready in just a second or 2.
My thanks to "keithr386" for this tip-off. If there's a web site or freeware product that you think deserves to qualify as a Hot Find, please let me know and I'll write about it. Just fill in some brief details via the form at http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/submit-product-review.htm.
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Comments
Great find. I've been looking for something like this for a while!
Sounds great - didn't work for me. Shows problems in a couple areas, says to click on button to fix. I click on the buttons, it says it is fixing, reports it is fixed. When I rescan all is as it began. So far as I can tell it did nothing.
Doesn't strike me as an application that lives up to what I have come to expect as Gizmo's standards.
Maybe you are using it the wrong way? I used it, and it worked fine for me, although most of my settings were fine. Just one setting showed up as insecure. You can always note which settings are insecure, and change them manually. It does not take much time.
sometimes you need to manualy change them lol.
basicly it just scans to see if your broadcasting anything to anyone but your friends.
Great tool. Esay to use, and most important, a great way to find the settings pages where configurations should be changed.
For those interested in Untangle's free browser plugin to auto-set all FB to "friends only":
http://www3.untangle.com/saveface
Thank you, Thank you. This product is great, quick and now how I actually want my profile on Facebook
doesnt work for me...like other user says... it reports as unsafe when all my settings are set to friends only AND when you click to FIX it rescans and says its still same - even after manually changing anything and re-scanning it still says the same...
by default settings are FRIENDS ONLY unless you change them
sorry, Ive retried it and you have to manually change settings yourself, however even with EVERYTHING on 'Friends Only' it still reports this as 'caution' on some of the checks... still a good tool as it links' you direct to the pages
you probably still have options like instant personalization enabled and what friends can see about you.
i still have 1 caution only beacuse i allow anyone to friend request me
Great find, but it returns results which say that some information is exposed to the entire internet when all my settings are marked as Friends Only.
I'm emailing this one to all my children. They are young adults who use Facebook a lot and need to know about this.
Yes, the Reclaim Privacy scanner script is excellent. And so here's another one which helps you actually do something about whatever it finds in just one click...
UNTANGLE, INC., a San Mateo, California software company came-up with the idea of writing a little script which accomplished, in a single click, the arduous task of rolling all of one's Facebook privacy settings back to approximately the way they were in 2005... before Facebook started playing fast and loose with its users' privacy.
What happened was that one of Untangle's executives did it manually in his own Facebook account, and it came out to over a hundred clicks; and he thought to himself, "Hmm... why don't I just write a script which does all that in a matter of seconds, in just one click," and so he did. And then Untangle decided to release it to the world for free.
The script is called SaveFace, and it doesn't do anything which the user couldn't do himself/herself, manually; but, as just mentioned, so doing is arduous and takes about a hundred clicks. Ugh.
Once the script is executed, if it then turns out that any of the Facebook user's privacy settings are maybe a little TOO strict (as could quickly be determined by using the Reclaim Privacy script), then all said user has to do is make maybe a half dozen clicks (or less) to manually loosen-up just the few areas which s/he wants to be less strict. Or s/he can just leave it and return (go back in time), in effect, to the way Facebook's privacy was in around 2005.
Click here to see a TV news story about it.
Or, read UNTANGLE's press release about it here.
Or see & install the script here.
Some related good news...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quoted today in the Wallstreet Journal as having said: "We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We ho...pe you’ll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we’ll be eager to get your feedback."
SEE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR201005...
____________________________
Gregg DesElms
Napa, California USA
Just what I have been looking for - excellent.
Quick, easy, accurate. This is terrific.
This is an excellent find considering that many people today use Facebook, including me :D. Privacy settings in Facebook are a little difficult to set for users who are not very comfortable with computers. Many of them open their accounts on Facebook, but do not take a look at their settings, which is the utmost important thing to do. I just tested the scanner, and it works great.
Definitely a hot find.
anupam...you were lucky tell me the big secret ???
Secret about?
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