FACEBOOK ALERT

For those who, like me, use the social networking website Facebook, a heads-up. The NYTimes reports that FB has insidiously reset the privacy settings of many users to allow access to personal information by anyone -- repeat, anyone. Apparently there was a cleverly-worded announcement made prior to the reset, employing the term "default settings", which sounds harmless enough, but which should in fact have been labeled "revised open access settings."

Thankfully, there are two recent Times articles which spell out clear and easy steps which one can take to increase the security of one's FB settings. Here is a link to the first article, and here is a link to the second article. Five minutes of your time will save you much grief down the road.

It is sad that one must be constantly alert to corporate shenanigans. A friend mentioned to me that she has had intrusive messages from Google, indicating that Google has been mining her computer for usage data. I've not yet had that issue with Google. In fact, I'm a huge fan of their many free services, like the 2D Google Maps, and the virtual 3D Google Earth, not to mention the incredible search engine itself. But perhaps my virus and security software has prevented such intrusions. If you don't currently use Trend Micro PC-Cillin, I recommend it highly, as do a number of electronics consumer ratings sites.