With Google announcing their highly controversial shift in privacy changes, and Facebook forcing their Timeline format on all of its users, the EU has taken steps to ensure the safety and privacy of European Union Internet users. Companies will be given about 2 years to comply to the new law.
The Right To Be Forgotten law:
will mean that social networks such as Facebook or Twitter will have to comply with users’ requests to delete everything they have ever published about themselves online. It will also mean that consumers will be able to force companies that hold data about them, such as for Tesco’s Clubcard, to remove it.
What do the Google and Facebook privacy policies mean for you
All of your information will now be stored in one location. Although this isn’t new for Google, check out the Google Dashboard to see what information the website has tracked for you.
According to the Washington Post FAQ on the new privacy policy:
What is Google doing?: In a nutshell, Google is taking information from almost all of your Google services — including Gmail, Picasa, YouTube and search — and integrating the data so that they can learn more about you. Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome will retain their own additional policies, partly for legal reasons, but Google could still integrate data from these services.
The Facebook Timeline will now allow your past histories to be easily found with a simple click of the button. In short, once Timeline is implemented, you will have 7 days to go post by post and remove each potentially offensive item.
What can you do
Delete your Google account(s). The Washington Post’s article on how to delete your Google Account is currently the number 1 most read article on the website.
Or you can sign-out of Google before commencing any searches.
Or you can simply stop logging private and detailed information on Internet websites and really keep your information private by not letting it get uploaded in the first place.
Regarding Facebook:
PROTECTING YOUR PROFILE FROM PRYING EYES – WHAT TO DO IN THE SEVEN DAYS FACEBOOK ALLOWS YOU
Once timeline is activated on your profile, you have seven days to ‘clean up’ – and you will probably want to.
Things from your past that may have been previously hidden deep within your photos or timeline can be much more visible.
If there is anything particularly you don’t want shown, such as your relationship status from five years ago – which will be public by default – you’re best to click on the right hand side to the year it occurred, such as 2006, find the post and choose to either delete or hide it.
It all has to be done manually.
You can now choose directly from the right-hand side of nearly every section on profile who sees what for individual sections (such as photos, posts, likes etc). When you click on the item, you can choose whether it is seen publicly, by friends or by a customised list.
If you enable any timeline apps, be sure to read their privacy policies thoroughly – many will not ask again before posting information to your profile. Spotify, for instance, will default to filling your timeline with what you listen to, unless you tell it not to.
Facebook now has the ‘View profile as’ feature on the main page, rather than in privacy settings. This lets you check how different people can see your profile so you can then customize it as you wish.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2091735/Facebook-Timeline-mandatory-users–just-7-days-clean-up.html#ixzz1kaa3KbUG
Posted by librarianlls 
