Is Your Facebook Profile As Private As You Think?: Via NPR.

Much has been made in recent years of the so-called Facebook generation, which supposedly consists of 20-somethings who like to go online and spill their guts without regard for privacy. The reality is more complex.

Yes, social network users post a lot of personal information. But they're sharing it within a circle of online "friends." And they fiercely resist outsiders' attempts to get a peek.

Last summer, city administrators in Bozeman, Mont., began requiring job applicants to provide usernames and passwords to their social networking accounts, as part of the background check. The new requirement caused such an uproar, the city manager held a press conference to apologize.

Social network users assume a degree of privacy within their circle of friends — but it's not a safe assumption to make.

A social network account can be seen by the company that runs the service, of course, but there's also the possibility of third-party snooping.

Chris Conley of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is particularly concerned about the quizzes that circulate on Facebook.

"These quizzes are very common," Conley says. "If you go on Facebook you see all your friends have taken a quiz or several quizzes, depending on how much time they spend online."

What people often don't realize, Conley says, is that these quizzes are applications. Just like games and other entertainment, they're programs that run in a user's Web browser.

"You think that all you're doing is answering a few innocent questions," Conley says. "But in fact, you're opening up your entire profile and almost all your personal information to whoever wrote the quiz."

To demonstrate, Conley wrote his own Facebook quiz. When you run it, it gathers your information, then shows you, the user, what it got.

That means your photos, political views, even sexual preferences can be sent back to the stranger who wrote the quiz application.

Read Original Article:(Via NPR.)