Consumer Reports, the well-known and highly-regarded advocacy group, recently issued a statement about the way in which the world's most popular social network allows its users to control their data.
About 13 million of Facebook's 150 million users in the U.S. haven't touched their data privacy controls, potentially indicating that they simply don't know how to do so, or possibly aren't even aware of them, according to
Consumer Reports. Further, 4.8 million people have posted where they plan to go on certain days, which some warn could serve as a tip-off to thieves.
More concerning, though, is that another 4.7 million have "Liked" the pages of medical conditions they may have or treatments they may have received, volunteering sensitive information about themselves that can be viewed by insurers or others, the report said.
Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer of
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly about the privacy concerns consumers face when entering their personal sensitive data on social networking sites, and how they can increase their control over that information.
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