Also, if you request someone to be your friend but they do not accept your request, you can see in your news feed every time that person who is not your friend acquires a new friend even though you cannot see their list of friends directly. The information is not being protected in any remotely thorough way just because you click on the pencil.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2254935/facebook-backs-privacy-spat

Anyone already tested it?

F

BTW, despite the update noted at the end of the post, your social graph is STILL public and STILL available to applications.

The cynic in me wonders how much of it is commercially motivated, or whether there’s an element of legally making more information available to government without any due process getting in the way. Call me paranoid, but also ask a Facebook officer a direct question about that and see if you get a definitive public statement one way or the other.

It is and always was possible for anyone to see people’s friends lists via applications, so anyone who wanted to find who your friends were could do so without much effort (of course most people don’t know how, but it’s possible to find out with 2 minutes on Google).

Facebook were going to make it clear to people that this information was public, and show it to everyone rather than only the people that knew how to find it. In backing down, all they’ve done is made things less clear again, and lots of people are happy with that because they believe that the information is private when it isn’t, and wasn’t before.

“Previously, even if you opted into sharing data with applications, you could uncheck all of the boxes on the page and the only information you would still be sharing was your name, your networks and your list of friends. Now, even if you uncheck all the boxes, an application one of your friends runs will be able to access your name, your profile picture, your gender, your current city, your networks, your friend list and the pages you are a fan of.”