While Facebook has released a couple statements detailing the what’s and why’s of this change, and frantically insisting that your privacy still supercedes all, I just don’t buy it. Looking back to a previous post I had written, Facebook and the Government, we are reminded of the possible government tie-ins that Facebook has. Plus, since this change was made without any notification whatsoever, what’s to keep them from changing it again with even more restrictive or invasive language? Granted, after this last change I’m sure people will be on the Facebook TOS like hawks. At least until they get complacent.

This also serves as a good reminder to all of us to be careful about what we put online. Do we really need a Facebook account? Isn’t an email or a phone call still sufficient? I’ll admit for a while I’ve let my privacy-paranoia mindset take a back seat. I’ve gotten lazy. I’ve said “It’s just so convenient having a Facebook page, or a Linkedin page, etc.” Now I’m reevaluating all of my online presence offerings.

Whether or not you were pleased with the 2008 elections, you have to agree that regardless of the party in office, government wants information, and more specifically your information. They can deny it all they want, but information and knowledge is power and Facebook is a gold mine of both. 1984 here we come.

There is no immediate cause for concern as there won’t be a huge amount of information available. However, for me personally, I don’t want any part of my Facebook profile indexed. So to ensure that your profile does not become available to the major search engines you can disable that feature by going to the Search Privacy page in your Facebook profile.

For more detailed instructions check out this blog posting from Of Zen and Computing.