On Monday, Facebook is set to do a live streaming Q&A to discuss changes to its Data Use Policy, which the company has announced today on its privacy blog.

At 12PM ET / 9AM PT on the 14th, you’ll be able to ask questions and listen to what the company has to say about the policy changes, which include new features that Facebook has introduced since its last update. The page for this is: http://on.fb.me/fbdctalks

Here’s what Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan had to say about the Data Use Policy today:

Today, we’re proposing improvements that respond to this feedback. We’re adding more examples and detailed explanations to help you understand our policies. For example, we include additional tips, marked with a light bulb so you can find them easily. We’ve added new links to our Help Center. We created a new section explaining how we use “cookies” and similar technologies and updated the corresponding explanations about cookies in our Help Center. We also provide more information about how we use data to operate Facebook, to advertise, and to promote safety and security for Facebook users. These examples and explanations are designed to help you understand what the Data Use Policy means in practice.

You can view the “Statements of Rights and Responsibilities Update” here.

Facebook has definitely adopted a unique and transparent way of sharing these types of policies, especially since its run-in with the FTC which sparked Egan’s post as Chief Privacy Officer in the first place.

By airing out all of these changes before they come official, Facebook is doing a great service to its community. Also, when people end up complaining or questioning the company later, it’s easy to point them to the site governance process process it has set up for just this purpose.

Freedom of expression is a massive topic of discussion, especially on the Internet. At what point can a company that provides communication tools step in and remove or censor something? It’s a fine line and earlier this year Twitter discussed that very topic when it was being accused of censoring its users.

It turns out that Twitter wasn’t doing anything other than abiding to local laws, since the service is available worldwide. The company went out of its way to state that it supports free expression, but won’t break the law. That seems to be where the fine line is; legality.

Google has stepped forward today with its thoughts on free expression and censorship, stating the following:

At Google, we have a bias in favor of free expression—not just because it’s a key tenet of free societies, but also because more information generally means more choice, more power, more economic opportunity and more freedom for people.

However, that “free expression” is only valid up to a certain point, again based on whether something is legal or not. In the same way that Twitter handles cease and desist letters, Google posts these requests on the site Chilling Effects, in an effort to be completely transparent with its practices.

Calling transparency a core value of Google, as most companies are starting to do, it does appear that the search giant is walking the talk, as its “Transparency Report” is a service that lets you know how many requests the company gets from various governmental and law-related agencies. If you’ve never taken a look at the site, I highly suggest that you do as it’s quite fascinating.

What’s a stretch of free expression according to Google? Here are some examples the company gave of things that it will not stand for:

For example, no hate speech, no copyright-infringing content, no death threats, no incitement to violence. And when we’re notified about content that either violates those guidelines or breaks the law—for example, we receive a court order—we will remove it, or restrict it in the country where it’s illegal. Earlier this year, for example, we removed a number of specific webpages from Google properties in India after a court ruled that they violated Indian law.

Why did the company choose to remind us about its practices today? It has to do with the fact that “World Day Against Cyber-Censorship” takes place on the 12th and rather than be reactionary about the things that Google does to comply with the law and promote free expression at the same time, it decided to be proactive.

It’s always nice to hear what a company has to say about our rights to free expression, so as long as we’re not breaking any laws, we’re free to move about the Internet.

For the first part of 2012, privacy has been a big topic and massive source of pain for companies like Google and Path. Most of us use the Internet and assume that we’re protected from our personal information being shared with others. That’s not always the case as we’ve found, especially when it comes to companies tracking our activity to share with advertisers.

There’s not really a “Better Business Bureau” service aimed directly at how companies handle our privacy so a company called PrivacyChoice decided to build its own called “Privacyscore”. Privacyscore rates websites based on how well they handle your data, giving the site a score from 0 to 100, with the latter being the best possible score.

The service is currently tracking 1,508 websites on how they share personal data, delete data when a user asks it to, accessible legal disclosures, opt-out capabilities, and how long it retains user data.

We need a watchdog

While we have organizations the like Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reporting every false moves to the FTC, we don’t really have a service guiding us as we surf the web.

Privacyscore is a site where you can enter a website that you’re concerned about and see the score it has been given. Here’s how the site describes the scoring process:

A privacyscore estimates the privacy risk of using a website based on how they handle your personal and tracking data.

In the example below, the site gives Yahoo.com a score of 72 based on the fact that it has quite a few tracking services built into its pages and the lack of notice to the users when data is requested:

In contrast, Google has been given a rating of 85 based on the new unified privacy policy the company will be launching on March 1st.

In addition to using the website when you’re concerned about the practices of a company, you can install a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox that will show the score of the site as soon as you visit it. When you click on a site’s score you are shown a few details with a link to Privacyscore’s full report:

In addition to being a watchdog for individual sites, Privacyscore displays an eye-opening top ten list of sites that have the most number of trackers installed on its pages. This means that these sites are using advertisements that are tracking your surfing habits. Twitpic led the pack with TVGuide not far behind:

While it’s ultimately up to you when it comes to trusting your personal information with a company on the Internet, a guide like Privacyscore can help you make decisions about what you share and how frequently you share it. The site just launched, so we’ll definitely check back in a few weeks to see how many sites it has started scoring.

➤ Privacyscore

Google’s announcement of new privacy policies yesterday made headlines, with the company introducing a new simplified policy covering the majority of its services. The new policy means users’ privacy will be handled the same across Google’s many products instead of separately for each. Brad McCarty took a generally favorable look at the changes, but not everyone was happy with the way it allows Google to use information from your activities on one service to customize the results or advertising on another.

One important group the new changes could affect: the government. Google offers its suite of clouds services to the government with Google Apps for Government, a program launched in 2010 specifically designed to meet government needs. But Jeff Gould and Karen Evans of SafeGov.org say the new policy, which takes effect on March 1, raises privacy concerns, “warrants further review by the public sector,” and should not apply to Google Apps for Government users. Updated with a statement from Google below.

Gould and Evans lay out their opposition quite clearly:

We recommend that Google immediately suspend the application of its new privacy policy to GAFG users. The default setting for GAFG and all similar services from other vendors should not allow information sharing at all between services. Furthermore, Google should clarify where its consumer product line ends and its enterprise products begin. Government users want to be assured that the cloud services they use are tailored to the unique security and privacy requirements of the public sector. Google could address this concern by issuing Terms of Service for all Google online products and guaranteeing public sector users their data will not be cross-referenced, data mined or otherwise used for purposes not originally collected in support of their public sector missions.

They don’t want this only from Google, however, saying all cloud vendors dealing with the government should “adopt privacy and security policies supporting government information statutes, policies and procedures in the cloud.”

When Google first announced Google Apps for Government, The Next Web wondered why the rest of the us wouldn’t get the same extra security. The same question applies here: if these policies aren’t good enough for the government, should they be good enough for companies and individuals that make use of the same tools? Obviously, the government has unique needs, but so do many companies that entrust large amounts of sensitive and important data to Google.

While the criticism isn’t good for Google, if there’s one party that must be happy, it’s Microsoft. The two companies have been competing for the government’s lucrative use of their suites, with Google peddling its Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

This news comes just one day after Norwegian data protection authorities banned the use of Google Apps in the public sector, citing incompatibility with Norwegian privacy laws due to a lack of transparency around the location of data.

Update: In a statement, Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh says that the main privacy policy does not affect customers like the government, whose use of Google Apps is governed by individual contracts:

Enterprise customers using Google Apps for Government, Business or Education have individual contracts that define how we handle and store their data. As always, Google will maintain our enterprise customers’ data in compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to their domain. The new Privacy Policy does not change our contractual agreements, which have always superseded Google’s Privacy Policy for enterprise customers.

Earlier today, we reported on the launch of Google’s new consumer outreach program around guarding your privacy online, called “Good to Know“.

The program is both web-based and will reach out to people in every major corner of the country in newspapers, magazines, as well as New York and Washington DC subway stations. According to USAToday, one of the publications the ads are running in, the campaign is costing Google a pretty penny.

How much? When asked, Google would only share the dollar amount as “tens of millions”. With some calling this nothing more than a PR maneuver to make good with the FTC, Google disagrees. When asked about how genuine the Good to Know campaign is, Google’s director of privacy Alma Whitten had this to say:

We all have family and friends that ask us for advice on privacy and security all the time. Those recurring questions made Google realize it should do something to give everyone a better grasp on the fundamentals of online privacy.

If any company knows the pitfalls of poor communication about privacy, it’s Google. During 2010 the company had back-to-back missteps with privacy issues over its Buzz and Street View products.

Executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, Jeff Chester, isn’t buying the “kindness” Google is putting out there with its ad dollars though:

This campaign should be nominated for some kind of award for fiction. If grades were given out for privacy protection, Google would get a D plus.

Maybe after consumers see the ads in the wild and visit the Good to Know site, that grade can be upped to a solid C. Social networking giant Facebook seems to discuss privacy in a more cost effective way, on its blog.

Online privacy is one of those topics that come up on a case by case basis. If you’re really afraid about privacy on the Internet, you’re probably not using the Internet. Facebook got into some hot water last year over privacy concerns, not because it was doing anything harmful to us, but because they weren’t exactly transparent with what they were doing.

How important is your privacy, really? After thinking about Facebook’s Timeline, I wondered how many people would take the time to go back and add life events that seem super personal. Things like when they bought their first house, or past surgeries they had, left me wondering if Facebook was asking us for too much.

Since Timeline became live for everyone on the platform, I’m shocked at how much information my friends are adding to the social network. That tells me that they’re not too worried about privacy when it comes to Facebook. Otherwise, they wouldn’t share in the first place. For my friends, the risk is worth the reward.

The only troubling part of that mindset is this question; “What is the reward, exactly?”

Last year, political and Internet activist Eli Pariser spoke at TED about what Facebook and Google are hiding from us when it comes to what information they use and how they use it. Watch the clip below, starting at the point where Pariser discusses the “57 signals” that sites like Google uses to tailor your experience with its services:

In that clip, Pariser explains that Google uses data it collects on what we click and when we click it to make the service work better for us. I might be crazy, but that doesn’t sound like an invasion of privacy to me, it sounds like a great feature to make my digital life easier.

Similarly, Facebook is looking at what types of things you “like” on external sites and what links you click on within your Newsfeed in order to give you a better experience as well. Right now, whether you know it or not, you’re not seeing a true firehose of data coming through on your Facebook Newsfeed. In its previous iteration, you could toggle that feature. The company noticed that those who were viewing a live feed didn’t interact with content as much, so it moved towards taking a smarter approach at what it shows you.

Again, this sounds like a great thing to me. Since you aren’t required to use Google or Facebook, your interaction is completely optional. However, the more you interact, the more Google and Facebook learn about you. That freaks some people out until they’re reminded that you’re merely a blip on a map of billions of interactions a day. No one person is looking at your email, search results, or clicks. You’re merely a subset of data being churned through an algorithm that streamlines your experience on both sites.

In the video above, Pariser shows search results on “Egypt” being different among his friends. I think that’s cool because it would be a pain to have to mine through search results that simply rank higher than others. I want Google to take all of my time spent on surfing the web and turn it into action, and that’s what they’re doing.

While I do believe that Facebook can do a better job at teaching you how to use its privacy controls, and the FTC agrees, I don’t believe that the site is using us anymore than we’re using it. Facebook costs money to run, and so does Google, so advertisements are to be expected. Are these companies using the data and interactions we give them to make money for themselves? Yes, and they should. That’s how business works.

Remember, the best way to guard your privacy online, is to not share anything at all. There are no laws requiring you to add your first pet to your Timeline, but Facebook should absolutely be able to market pet products and services to you if they know you like dogs. You can’t have it both ways online, and while being aware of what companies do with your data is a good thing, don’t assume that it’s all bad.

Will you be more aware of your privacy in 2011, or are you OK with the rewards you get in return for your information? Tell us in the comments.

We have some great readers here at The Next Web. One reader, Koen, alerted us to something that had us completely baffled. With today’s launch of Timeline for your Facebook profile, the fact that any of your friends can now change the location on your photos went missing.

Is that a feature or a bug? I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’d want to let anyone tag my photo with a location. Furthermore, this is just asking to be misused, and it took me a half hour to find the privacy setting that shuts it off. For a while, I thought it was the “check-in” feature that allows your friends to check you into certain places with them.

Nope.

Worst feature ever

While playing around with this “feature”, I became enraged to watch our own Brad McCarty change the location on two of my profile pictures.

Check it out:

I don’t ever remember allowing this feature to be turned on, nor can I understand why I’d want this feature at all. Brad wasn’t tagged in this photo, nor did he comment on it or like it. He just waltzed in and changed the location for all to see.

I figured I’d take this fun prank for a spin and change Matthew Panzarino’s profile picture location:

Want to turn it off? Change this mislabeled setting:

One thing with this setting though, it doesn’t allow your friends to tag your photos at all, even though it promises to give you a tag review notification. Where’s the granularity, Facebook? I don’t mind if someone tags themselves in a photo of mine, but location isn’t something I’m willing to trust anyone with.

You’d think that after all of the privacy hoopla Facebook has gone through with the FTC, they’d have these kinds of things sorted out, especially when rolling out a network-wide feature like Timeline.

Seems like a mistake on Facebook’s part to me, but maybe I missed something. If this catches on, it’ll take one hour for a drunk friend of mine to change the location on all of my pictures, and even more time to change them all back.

Thanks, Facebook. I think.

Today, Facebook has settled a court case with the FTC over privacy issues.

Mark Zuckerberg responded to the settlement with a long blog post, and here are some of the key sections from it:

Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information.

That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.

I also understand that many people are just naturally skeptical of what it means for hundreds of millions of people to share so much personal information online, especially using any one service. Even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected. It’s important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.

Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.

But we can also always do better. I’m committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy.

Facebook will be taking further steps to strengthen its privacy and communication around its controls, and Zuckerberg noted that the FTC suggested that Facebook work on its internal processes.

In response to those suggestions, Zuckerberg has named two new corporate roles to handle its privacy and security. Erin Egan is now Chief Privacy Officer for policy, and Michael Richter will hold a similar role for products.

Even further, effective today I am creating two new corporate officer roles to make sure our commitments will be reflected in what we do internally — in the development of our products and the security of our systems — and externally — in the way we work collaboratively with regulators, government agencies and privacy groups from around the world:

- Erin Egan will become Chief Privacy Officer, Policy. Erin recently joined Facebook after serving as a partner and co-chair of the global privacy and data security practice of Covington & Burling, the respected international law firm. Throughout her career, Erin has been deeply involved in legislative and regulatory efforts to address privacy, data security, spam, spyware and other consumer protection issues. Erin will lead our engagement in the global public discourse and debate about online privacy and ensure that feedback from regulators, legislators, experts and academics from around the world is incorporated into Facebook’s practices and policies.

- Michael Richter will become Chief Privacy Officer, Products. Michael is currently Facebook’s Chief Privacy Counsel on our legal team. In his new role, Michael will join our product organization to expand, improve and formalize our existing program of internal privacy review. He and his team will work to ensure that our principles of user control, privacy by design and transparency are integrated consistently into both Facebook’s product development process and our products themselves.

One has to wonder why it took so long for such a formal position to take care of its users privacy, or at least talk about it publicly like this. These moves most certainly were in response to the FTC claims that Facebook wasn’t exactly forthcoming with what was private on Facebook and what wasn’t.

In Facebook’s defense, the company has made handling personal privacy easier, as outlined by Zuckerberg in his post:

In the last 18 months alone, we’ve announced more than 20 new tools and resources designed to give you more control over your Facebook experience. Some of the things these include are:

• An easier way to select your audience when making a new post
• Inline privacy controls on all your existing posts
• The ability to review tags made by others before they appear on your profile
• Friend lists that are easier to create and that maintain themselves automatically
• A new groups product for sharing with smaller sets of people
• A tool to view your profile as someone else would see it
• Tools to ensure your information stays secure like double login approval
• Mobile versions of your privacy controls
• An easy way to download all your Facebook data
• A new apps dashboard to control what your apps can access
• A new app permission dialog that gives you clear control over what an app can do anytime you add one
• Many more privacy education resources

As creepy as Facebook appears to be sometimes, nobody makes us use it after all. But with 20 years of audits ahead of it, thanks to this new settlement, it appears that Facebook won’t even have the option to pull a fast one on its users. I bet that quite a bit of FTC brain power was put on this thing to try and close every loophole it could think of. Those Facebook chaps are smart.

So, can we stop complaining about privacy on Facebook now?

Today, Google announced a new initiative from its ad team called “Why these ads”. The reason behind the feature, the company says, is to bring transparency to ad targeting. The feature is available now for ads shown within search results, and will be rolling out for ads in Gmail soon.

Advertising is at a crossroads online. With content flowing, companies are trying to find new ways to make ads relevant and attractive to consumers. Google wants to show you a little bit of what’s in its secret sauce.

Here’s what Google had to say about consumers interacting with Google ads:

Our advertising system is designed to show the right ad to the right person at the right time. Because ads should be just as useful as any other information on the web, we try to make them as relevant as possible for you. Over the coming weeks, we’re making improvements to provide greater transparency and choice regarding the ads you see on Google search and Gmail. Soon, you’ll be able to learn more about these ads by clicking the “Why these ads” link next to ads on Google search results and Gmail.

Here’s a video about the two new transparency features from Google:

Along with “Why these ads”, Google now offers an Ads preference manager.

Why these ads

If you wonder why you’re targeted with certain ads, Google will now do its best to tell you why. Of course it has to do with what you search and click on, but showing the “why” is a smart move by Google. If consumers trust the ads, they will be more apt to click and act upon them.

This is what Google had to say specifically about “Why these ads”

“Why these ads” gives you transparency
The perfect search ad answers your query and gets you what you’re looking for quickly. When you click the “Why these ads” link, you’ll find information about why you’re seeing a particular ad and how it’s personalized for you. If you’re searching for a local restaurant while you’re on vacation in Hawaii, you would see ads for restaurants that are nearby, rather than restaurants in your hometown. Or if you’re researching flat-panel televisions, and performing a series of similar searches in quick succession, you could see ads based on the query that you just entered, or based on a few recent and related queries within a single browser session. By considering the language you’re using, your geographic location and various other indications, we’re able to show you the best ads possible. We’ve been showing ads in this way for years as a way to help you quickly find what you’re looking for.

Ads preference manager

Along with showing you why you’re seeing certain ads, you will now have access to an “Ads preferences manager“. The preferences manager lets you decide which ad providers are blocked, and gives you the opportunity to opt-out of personalized advertising altogether. Clearly that’s not something that Google wants, but surfacing it as an option certainly is putting it in the hands of its users.

This type of interaction with advertisements that you see online is the only way that big companies like Google and Facebook can get you interested in them again. Of course Google lets you “+1″ an ad that you find interesting, but it’s unlikely that ads alone are worth sharing. The reasoning behind why you saw a specific ad? Now that’s something to talk about.

Facebook has taken its fair share of hits in the press about privacy and security, while managing over 800 million users on its platform. Today, Facebook has announced a series of features focused on strengthening the security for Facebook users, as well as making people more comfortable with giving their data to the company.

In a blog post, Facebook discussed its dedication to personal security and support of October’s “National Cyber Security Awareness Month”. The company had this to say:

Security and safety are at the core of Facebook. We have entire teams dedicating their time to building tools that give people even more control over their account and specifically the way they access their information. In fact, many of our most talented engineers are working exclusively on creating a secure environment on Facebook. This October, as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we are working with others in the community to help educate those online about techniques and tools for securing your devices and networks. Additionally, we thought this would be a great opportunity to tell you about some of the systems working behind the scenes to keep you and your data safe.

Today, we wanted to provide all of you with an update on some new features we will be testing in the coming weeks – Trusted Friends and App Passwords – and remind you of the many user tools we offer to help keep you secure on Facebook.

The features, which are slated to be available in “the coming weeks”, are aimed at personal account security, and are quite creative and advanced.

Trusted Friends

If you’ve ever forgotten your password or locked yourself out of your account, you know how frustrating this can be. In the event that you can’t get into your email address, Facebook will soon let you designate three to five “trusted friends” who can help you once again gain access to your account. This will happen through a series of codes sent to your friends, who will then give them to you, which will help confirm your identity to Facebook.

Facebook had this to say about “Trusted Friends”

We’re excited to begin testing this new tool to help you in case you ever get locked out of your account. Similar to other features that help you prove your identity through your friends, you can now select three to five trusted friends who can help you if you ever have issues accessing your account. It’s sort of similar to giving a house key to your friends when you go on vacation–pick the friends you most trust in case you need their help in the future.

If you forgot your password and need to login but can’t access your email account, you can rely on your friends to help you get back in. We will send codes to the friends you have selected for them to pass along to you.

App passwords

Up until now, you’ve had to log into Facebook apps with the same credentials you use for your Facebook account. If you’re an avid Facebook app user, you’ve probably given your credentials to hundreds of developers and apps. Facebook will soon let you generate a new password just for apps, and you’ll be able to access it through your privacy settings. This is a good move for Facebook, and can help users feel more comfortable with using third-party applications without worrying about having their account hacked.

Facebook shared this about app passwords today:

There are tons of applications you can use by logging in with your Facebook credentials. However in some cases you may want to have a unique password for that application. This is especially helpful if you have opted into Login Approvals, for which security codes don’t always work when using 3rd party applications.

We’re rolling out a feature that allows you to use app passwords for logging into 3rd party applications. Simply go to your Account Settings, then the Security tab, and the “App Passwords” section. You can generate a password that you won’t need to remember, just enter it along with your email when logging into an application.

Understanding Facebook Privacy and Security

Along with these two changes, Facebook has realized that all of its privacy and security features might be a little too difficult for the majority of users to figure out. The company provided us and its users an infographic demonstrating all of the work Facebook has put into keeping you and your data private and secure.

Facebook explains:

Over the past few years we have introduced a number of new security tools – Login Approvals, Login Notifications, and One Time Passwords to name a few – and developed several back-end systems to help keep you and your data secure. To better illustrate the full range of these features and show how they all work together to keep you safe while on Facebook we are releasing this infographic. Check it out yourself so you can find out more about our security infrastructure and an overview of the tools available to all our users to increase their level of account security.

Facebook Security Infographic

Future dedication to Security

Even though there are groups that call Facebook unsafe or point out their privacy concerns, the site continues to grow. You can call me naive, but I truly believe that a company that employs as many people as Facebook simply has to focus on keeping data safe and secure. It would be silly to think otherwise. I remember when Gmail was launched in private beta and many yelled about how creepy it was that Google was looking at their email. Of course Google doesn’t “read” emails, it just processes the data.

On its security post today, Facebook had this to say about the future of security at Facebook:

Our considerable work has undoubtedly made Facebook a safer environment – less than half a percent of users experience spam on any given day and only a fraction of fraction of a percent of our users ever experience any security-related issues. But we know there’s plenty of more work to be done, so we will keep striving to make sure that every time you log in to Facebook, you have a safe and social experience. We are adapting and responding to new threats everyday and will continue to bring the people that use our site new ways to protect themselves. Be on the lookout for more announcements throughout the rest of this year, and remember to stay vigilant while online and remind others to do the same.

Again, these new features will be available in “the coming weeks”, and perhaps these changes are in preparation to launch “Timeline” sitewide. There have been privacy concerns about new information popping up in the Timeline feature, thus causing users to scramble and learn how to change their privacy settings.