In fact, the defaults for Facebook’s privacy settings completely expose your profile not only to everyone on Facebook, but to the entire public including non-Facebook users. Meaning your current and potential employers, people you like and have pissed off, your parents – everyone – can see your Facebook profile. For a visual representation of Facebook’s expanding public defaults, click here.

Those pictures of you drinking and smoking weed on the weekend? Those pictures of you in your slutty Halloween costume? The status updates about how you’re looking for a new job? All public, all the time unless you change your privacy settings.

Not only that, but Facebook’s new, and much maligned, “Open Graph” program, which is basically a 20x worse version of the failed Beacon, will invade your privacy in ways you never thought possible. Here I’m going to help you put an end (somewhat) to Facebook’s over-the-top campaign to make all of your data public and available to advertisers. The addition of “Connections,” which I opted out of, is also generating some harsh feedback from users.

1) Open up your privacy settings control panel by clicking Account > Privacy Settings. That will bring you to this screen:

2) Click Profile Information and be sure that everything is set to “Only friends”

3) Click Back to Privacy and then click Contact Information. Adjust accordingly according to your wishes.

4) Click Back to Privacy and then click Applications and Websites. This is one of the most critical sections of the site for protecting your privacy and data from websites/companies that you don’t want to allow access to! First, click the Edit Settings button beside What your friends can share about you. The default settings allow your friends to unknowingly share everything about you – fix this!

5) Click Save Changes at the bottom, then click Applications and websites at the top to go back to the previous page. Edit the setting for Activity on applications and games dashboards to your desired setting (mine is Only friends), and then click Edit setting beside Instant Personalization. Unclick “Allow,” then hit “Confirm” on the box that comes up.

6) Click Applications and websites at the top again, then click Back to privacy to bring you back to the main control panel. Now click Search. This is another really important tool because the default settings let people find your Facebook profile using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Change your settings to what you’re comfortable with for Facebook search results and uncheck the box beside Public search results.

7) Click Back to privacy, and you’re done! Not that it was easy by any means.

Facebook suffers from a very poor user experience when it comes to managing your privacy, and my opinion is that it’s on purpose. They make money by giving advertisers access to your data they deem public; a ridiculous list that includes your interests (books, movies, music, etc.), list of your friends, etc. How Facebook can deem that type of information public is beyond me, but that’s their policy.

There are actually two other things you can do.

1. Don’t “Like” news stories and blog posts using Facebook’s “Like” button with the thumbs-up on it.
2. If you normally click the “Keep me logged in” checkbox on the login screen so that you don’t have to login every time you head to the site, discontinue this. Facebook can’t automatically share your information with other sites if you’re not logged into Facebook when you’re visiting Open Graph partners.

If you’re curious to see what information Facebook makes public about you before you get started, try using this tool.

Alternatively you could simply delete your account – which quite a few people have done including some engineers at Google – and use other social networking and sharing sites more heavily.

Your data is yours. Start treating it that way! As they say in the financial services world, CYA… cover your ass.

Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program [...] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

[...]

Now, he added, “we’re looking in a way that I don’t think anyone has looked at — at the way children learn, pacing them at their own pace, all of it tied to the mastery of content and skill and achievement.”

[...]

Once the students arrive at school, they receive their individual playlists identifying the lessons they have to complete for the day, which could involve virtual tutoring online, computer worksheets or small-group lessons with a classroom teacher.

This is exactly the type of thing I think we should be moving toward! If done right, School of One should ensure that all students get the education they need, via the best learning style for them, and by the end of the year all of the students should have had the chance to complete all of the core curriculum along with, hopefully, some bonus activities based on their interests. One child that participated in this program actually said that the educational games he played making solving mathematical equations fun! Imagine that!

Skype in the Classroom - Better

If you pair up my vision of the future textbook with School of One, with a little additional effort and funding I think you have a solid base for the future of education. In the article, an HR professional for the New York City school where this took place said that running schools this way should cost about the same as running a school the way it’s done now. Many detractors of moving to more technology-focused schools claim that costs would be much higher — that may not hold up after all!

In fact, many of the things that schools traditionally pay a lot of money for are available for free, as pointed out by The Innovative Educator. Chief among them – Microsoft Live@edu and Google Apps for Education. Both are completely free (as in puppies). A school using Google Apps can provide word processing, spreadsheet, website building and presentation software along with e-mail completely free to students and teachers! Just make sure the Internet connection is up and running (or install Google Gears for offline access).

I guess the chief reason for this post is to point out that things are happening despite the naysayers. School of One is exactly what I hope my son will experience when he begins school. With some luck, funding and pressure from parents, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for those of us who believe that the continuous evolution of major systems is the only way forward.

What prompted me to write this is the allegations that the Afghan government has signed a new law that allows Shi’ite Muslims the ability to rape their wives. Or rather, the wife is not allowed to refuse sex nor would she be allowed to leave the house without their husband’s permission. According to a female parliamentarian quoted in the Reuters article, it would also legalize marriage for girls as young as 9 years old, and also require a woman to wear make-up if her husband demanded it.

Now if the allegations aren’t true, though I suspect they are, then some of what I’m about to say is moot. However most of it is not and speaks to the issue of special laws for “special” people and the damage they have on society as a whole.

Speaking particularly to this latest issue, it’s a travesty if it’s true. Especially when you consider the countries, Canada included, that have committed thousands of troops and billions of dollars to help Afghanistan in so many ways – this new law is a slap in our collective faces. To put in place a law that provides a minority civic law that lines up with their religious law is ridiculous and screams of a theocracy that isn’t truly interested in becoming a democratic nation unlike when it was under Taliban rule.

If this law truly has been passed and is published in the official gazette, then Canada and the US should pull their troops out immediately. There is no possible reason for us to support a nation that dupes us into helping them only to revert to practices that required us to assist in the first place. Pass a law, and enforce it, that doesn’t allow a woman to refuse sex?! Sorry, no more help for you. It’s that simple.

And in reality, this speaks to a much larger issue that has been getting a lot more coverage from us secularists over the past few years. Special laws for “special” people. You are allowed to attack my personality, my politics, my views on how the world should work, my interests… but heaven forbid you should knock my faith! Oh no! Once you start expressing your opinion on how stupid [insert religion here] is, people think they have the right to become violent towards you! And worse yet, very few people say that that shouldn’t be the case!

Why shouldn’t that be allowed to happen? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to engage in public discourse over the merits of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism et al? I’m allowed to put down your political views, your likes/dislikes, your choice of significant other; why are your religious views any different? We sacrifice the ability to engage in a critical, public discourse over the merits of something that the majority of the world has (that is, a religion/faith) meanwhile far more people have political views that are just as destructive. We allow religion to dictate the way we behave with others, to dictate how we behave at home, to dictate how we raise our children instead of thinking for ourselves how such things should be done.

And for what? The promise that I’ll get to spend eternity in some invisible paradise that you have no proof actually exists? Sorry, I’ll pass. The day I allow any book to teach me how to live, without thinking critically of the suggestions/recommendations/rules and the effect they will have on my life is the day I die. The ability to think critically for ourselves and to choose what we feel is right purely for us is part of what makes us human. So is the ablity to argue and disagree about something without resorting to violence. It’s not instinct, it’s critical and analytical thought.

There’s also a problem with the infighting in almost every religion out there. If you can’t get your beliefs straight with one another and what other people should be doing when following your religion, then stop bothering the rest of us with it! We shouldn’t have to deal with Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Christian Reform, Calvinists, Baptists, etc. You all need to get together, settle on one stream of belief and then you may feel more free to attempt to preach it. If you can’t, please don’t bother because the various messages are simply disillusioning.

Forgive me for going on a tangent, but I could talk about religion and it’s negative effects on society all day… probably for 2 or 3 days straight.

The point is, when you allow special protection for groups of people that do not have the greater good of society (let alone the people who are a part of the group) in mind, you degrade the rest of the society around it. Allowing Shi’ite Mulism men in Afghanistan to rape their wives, to force their wives to wear make-up and marry 9 year old girls is bad for all of Afghanistan and, indeed, all Shi’ite Muslims. The reputation of that entire division of Islam is affected negatively, plain and simple. If you think people have a bad impression of Afghanistan now, this will only make it worse.