Open Letter to Facebook: Make Facebook more Secure and private

There was always a lot of buzz regarding the Privacy issues regarding Facebook Profiles. Sophos, a web security company, has sent an open letter to Facebook officials regarding information safety and confidentiality of one of the most popular social network.

They came up with this, as they receive reports of crime and fraud on Facebook everyday, and victims are desperate for advice on how to clean up their profiles and undo the consequences!

Facebook could apply three changes in that direction and they are mentionned in the letter:

Prioritizing confidentiality options: This means that nobody should have access to personal data / wall / photos in the default mode and users can choose who can see that information. At this stage, default options are rather permissive. (its should be more of the opt-in type)

Apps provided by developers should pass through a filter prior to posting – in this manner, the amount of SPAM apps could be drastically reduced.

HTTPS Protocols should be automatically activated and that would increase the safety level on Facebook.

Facebook has recently received many complains regarding its privacy rules. We should understand that after your membership base exceeds 600 million users, it is rather hard to keep an eye on the privacy levels. However, watching over basic security shouldn’t be that hard, and Facebook tries to use all basic web protection measures in order to compete.

Also, you are protected against Facebook’s “too friendly” users, people who usually send around friend request to everybody, so that they could have enough social media power.

It’s good to notice that Facebook’s “taking care” of its users, as constant improvements are being observed.

It seems to be something that was build out of pure pleasure and desire, leaving aside all financial benefits (even though its receiving huge funding these days)

Facebook will look much different after 10 years from now, possibly capturing more than 1.5 worldwide billion users. Lets wait-and-watch what future has in stake for this Social giant..