I just visited Baxters FB page from the addy at the bottom of his sig.
I was able to view all his photos and profile page, etc. without asking to join as a Friend. Is that what giving out the addy does? Bypasses the Add as Friend step?

I'm not a wuss that requires people to be a friend to view my page like most people

It depends on how each person has his privacy settings set, I think.

And, FB has just simplified privacy settings. I'm set for Friends Only and Friends of Friends. Still, some basic info remains "public."

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Could not resist.

Edit: So, I'm cruising LeTubes and run across this: Facebook Privacy Policy Switch Makes Users Feel Hoodwinked I don't use FB, probably never will, so I have not idea how valid this stuff is. Still, it would make me uneasy, for sure.

What they did was to simplify the privacy settings...

Before yesterday, you had to go to several tabs, and make one of about 4 privacy choices on a couple-three dozen different items. That added up to quite a lot of diligence that needed to be paid.

Now it's down to what, maybe 8 items?

The problem I have with it is that the new, reset Default choices are wide-open, free-for-all "Let's let everybody see everything."

I selected "old settings" for everything, since I had already made the choices I wanted.

But how many people will just blow right through the new dialogues without even thinking about them?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8405334.stm

Facebook faces criticism on privacy change
Critics say people could accidentally share too much information

Digital rights groups and bloggers have heaped criticism on Facebook's changed privacy policy.

Critics said the changes were unwelcome and "nudged" people towards sharing updates with the wider web and made them findable via search engines.

The changes were introduced on 9 December via a pop-up that asked users to update privacy settings.

Facebook said the changes help members manage updates they wanted to share, not trick them into revealing too much.

"Facebook is nudging the settings toward the 'disclose everything' position," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the US Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic). "That's not fair from the privacy perspective."

After the initial one time page they are putting up, if you go to your settings there's still a dozen options with all sorts of options for those, and a Customize to get to more.

Yeah, most people will just say okay instead of using old settings. I've just always been wide open though like Sarge, so I don't really know if anything is different now on the Settings page.

Much ado about nothing it seems.

I didn't read it that way. Seems they have made it easier to conceal what you wish. Are these people who can't read, decide, and then click the appropriate button? If so, they should not be allowed anywhere near a computer.

That's fine, Reboot, if that's the way you want it.

But I don't like the fact that they made wholesale changes to EVERYBODY'S settings. Even for somebody who always reads everything, looks at EVERY possible choice, and configures stuff through well-considered reasoning, there was quite a lot to pay attention to with the previous style of preferences panels, and they were kind of confusing. But the point is: Many of us DID go to the trouble to wade through the prefs settings.

The smart thing would have been to throw an alert, with as simple an explanation about how things are changing as they could muster, BUT to keep users’ settings the way they were.

Seriously, Dude...have you not been paying attention to much of the world's user base over the past decade? I say with no hint of irony or disingenuousness that there are FAR more people who treat their time on the internet with as little attention to detail as if they were watching a living room Kodak Carousel slide show. It's THOSE idiots (present company excluded, of course!) who must be protected and treated like children.

But I'm lonely and don't have many friends so I let everyone in.

My question is, since I am not familiar with the old settings scheme, are the new setting options that different or watered down from the old. Not that one time page that pops up, but if you go to your Settings page?

They should direct new users to the Privacy settings as part of the registration process - registration does not complete until Privacy settings are set.

Facebook is a chore …a dirty dirty chore

And, so is 'Twitter'. It's all a bunch of BS!

Not to mention scary scary

I get more information out of twitter than I ever will from facebook. It's a news stream to me, not a social thing.

Well sorta kinda in a way yeah maybe - still more of a social thing . There been way to many people whose lives were ruined by posting shiit on these sites . If it is not private then it is social , H3ll even emails are not private for that matter .

Anyway the scary parts is when employers start asking for your - FaceBook , Twitter , MySpace addresses when you apply for a job .

If a prospective employer asked me for any of my personal non-work social contact info, I'd reply by asking them for their home address and all their facebook etc. details. If they're not happy to hand that out to me, then I'm not happy to hand mine out to them.

Reminds me of the Seinfeld telemarketing sketch where someone keeps phoning him to sell him stuff, so he says: sorry, I can't talk right now, but if you give me your home number I'll call you as soon as I have a moment.

Yeah

These were government jobs , I guess they don't want employees Tweeting secrets or something

i hate the new privacy settings. it used to be that my wall was my status updates and whatever else i put on it and also anything someone else posted to it. i had much control over my public wall. if i went off and commented on an old college buddy's wall (e.g., something political or something silly) then none of my friends who weren't friends with my buddy would see it. while it was not private, per se, it was private enough that i was comfortable with the system. i had my public life that was largely mundane (read: bubble pop) and i'd head off to a buddies' page for fun. now, every comment i make is showing up on my wall and i can no longer turn it off. i can delete individual comment notifications from my wall, but sometimes they don't appear for 20 minutes or so and by then i am away. it's a crummy "new" privacy system.