Facebook founder denies privacy faux pas

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 Dec 2009 at 09:03

Mark Zuckerberg has denied being caught out by Facebook's revamped privacy settings, after photos on his profile were left open to the public.

Facebook's overhauled privacy settings allow people to open their profile to friends, friends of friends, or everybody. The scheme led privacy groups to claim Facebook was trying to "trick" its users into sharing more personal information than they normally would.

Following the rollout of the changes, Zuckerberg's profile was opened up to friends of friends, granting thousands of people access to pictures of Zuckerberg at parties with his girlfriend, and lounging around with a teddy bear.

I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear

The nature of the pictures led many sites to speculate that Zuckerberg had fallen foul of his company's revamped privacy settings - however, the Facebook chief executive has refuted the suggestion with a posting on his wall.

"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it," writes Zuckerberg. "I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"

Curiously, the pictures of Zuckerberg and his teddy bear are now only available to his friends, not friends of friends, suggesting that the decision wasn't as cut and dry as he made it appear.