Yet More Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account: Your Friends Can Hurt Your Privacy

Well, I'm still glad I deleted my Facebook account years ago. Your privacy seems only as good as the amount of trust you have in your "friends."

In other words, you can restrict your own likes to your friends, but if those friends use apps in an open way and decide to share more information than you would want them to, tough luck.

The short reality is that you cannot actually control your privacy on Facebook. No matter how many lines Facebook adds to its privacy statements or how many granular controls it adds to your account settings – the whole system of you being in control of what people see about you falls over completely because anything any of your friends does can make you public.

So if they like your picture even in you are in the "walled garden" you are suddenly out in the clear. Your privacy depends on how many times your "friends" have clicked like on your content. So if your friends are clueless newbies and like-everything you are in the open. Facebook can use your content for whatever purpose simply because your friend liked it.

This part is equally insidious.

Additionally, I might like the Starbucks page just to enter a prize draw, then my name and picture will appear in adverts for my friends to see, showing me endorsing Starbucks. Great. Way to go Facebook.

So in other words you become an unpaid endorser of Starbucks as soon as you click that Like Button. Your unpaid endorser friends also appear on your own Timeline if they click that Like Button as well. Yeah that sounds like something worth getting into.