Whether or not you agree with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the age of privacy is over, you can likely agree on one thing – Facebook privacy settings are not easily deciphered.
If you’re not sure whether you’ve sufficiently protected what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you’d like.
The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.
The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on GitHub. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will “never see your Facebook data” and will “never share your personal information”. The scanner operates entirely on the client side in the user’s browser, it says.
To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:
- Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
- Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
- You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google’s App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.
