Privacy Lost: 13 Million Facebook Users Not Using Privacy Controls

13 Million Facebook Users Disregard Privacy Controls

Consumer Reports recently stated that 13 million Facebook users do not utilize the site's privacy controls or are not aware of their presence.

Knowing and unknowing victims

Facebook is attracting more and more users each day. Sadly, while the company continues to develop sophisticated privacy controls to ensure user privacy and security, the problem lies both on the “labyrinthian-like” privacy controls that it implements and the users themselves because as many as 13 million users in the USA alone were reportedly not using or unaware of these privacy controls, thereby exposing them to a wide variety of risks. The result came from the recent investigation carried out by Consumer Reports, which was based from a survey from January 16-31 of a sample of approximately 2,000 US households with Internet connection.

The report also revealed that approximately 4.8 million people are posting personal information on the social networking website that may actually be shared beyond their personal network of friends and can be used against them by identity thefts, college admission boards, potential employers and even the IRS.

Be careful with what you share

Although Facebook  makes it easier for people to connect with family, friends and colleagues, it does not come with its own risks. As with any other social networking sites, Facebook collects a wide variety of details – most of which are highly sensitive –  from its users. And in order to generate much of its revenue, it shares its users data with advertisers. Some users might even be surprised to know that Facebook also receives a report every time they visit a site that features a “Like” button, regardless if they click on such button, have an account on Facebook, or are even logged in. 

The report also mentioned that even those users who are vigilant about their online security are still at risk because their friends or extended network can transfer their data to other third party users by using some of the applications that are popular in the said platform. 

The issue isn't only with Facebook's system alone. In fact, there are also plenty of users who are lax when it comes to managing their own online privacy. The survey found that as many as 28% of Facebook users divulge most, if not all, of their wall posts to a public audience instead of limiting such details to their personal networks. 

Facebook response

In response to the privacy and safety issues, the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said they are doing privacy access checks billions of times on a daily basis.  The company also announced that in the coming weeks or months it will provide users access to portions of its security features which include date and time of Facebook log-ins, friend requests that a user made, IP address used for every session, names that were previously used, facial recognition data, and searches and views while logged in on Facebook. 

Stay Protected

Facebook may have various privacy controls in place, but most of them are difficult to understand. As such, Consumer Reports provided some tips on how users can protect themselves when using Facebook.

• Think before you type. Even if a user deletes his or her account, there some information that can stay in Facebook's system for up to 90 days. Hence, it pays to be more careful about what you put out in public.
• Check Facebook exposure regularly. Users should check how their page appears to others and when possible review their individual privacy settings regularly.
• Safeguard basic details. Profile items should be set accordingly and bear in mind that sharing information with “friend of friends” is a route to expose details to other people.
• Be on the know with what cannot be protected. Since a person's name and profile photo are public, a user can protect his or her identity by not using a photo or using one that does not show his or her face. 
• Avoid putting wall posts in public. Audience for previous wall posts should be set to just friends.
• Turn 'tag suggest' off. If a user do not want Facebook to automatically recognize his or her face in photos, he or she could disable tag feature in the privacy setting.
• Block apps and sites that might be collecting information. Friends and other extended network can share a user's information with apps. Hence, the user should block such app or utilize controls to limit the details that the app can see.
• Limit wall posts to specific friends. Users do not have to share all their wall posts to friends. It would be more preferable to keep certain people from seeing particular items in their profile.
• Deactivate. This can be a solution if a user wants his or her Facebook data temporarily inaccessible. Deleting an account, on the other, is the last resort if he or she wants to make everything inaccessible forever.

Facebook privacy settings - Timeline and Tagging

This post was written by Robert Kirk who works as an SEO Consultant for RFK Print Solutions an online company who mainly sell business cards online also flyers, brochures, leaflets posters and more.

Daily Mail maximising their brand with Google+

This is the most aggressive G+ company page I have seen so far, a not signed in search query for 'Daily Mail' displays their bio and brand logo along with 2 most recent G+ posts. These URLs go straight through the dailymail.co.uk - displaying a deep link opportunity for any organisation that is looking to regularly seed content out via G+.

Click to enlarge this Google SERP

Squash your bounce rate

In an attempt to pull website usability and website rankings closer together, the infamous Google Panda update included data on pages per visit and bounce rate making their algorithms more critical than ever.

The real lost traffic to websites in this area is where a visitor leaves within a nanosecond of reaching the page as opposed to an indexation issue at Google's end due to ambiguity/semantics of the typed search in question.

What is bounce rate?

Before launching into this, bloggers or company blogs are exempt from this article because blogs typically have an 80% plus bounce rate as it is different in its composition to a website.

The other part is a well known fact but when you build your online empire it is all too easy to lose track of. Countless studies prove that on average a visitor will make a decision to stay or leave a website within 3 seconds WITHOUT scrolling. It is true that 'below the fold' content is also equally important with the advent of quick finger tip browsing on tablet/smartphone, but if your above the fold content isn't clear and high relevant (see the remedies given below) then your below the fold will be ghostland.

A bounce is defined as a single page visit and is then expressed as a percentage of visits vs bounce visits. Technically, once your analytics script has been downloaded within the user's session and they leave without the script being downloaded again on any other page. This is important to understand because your analytics installation needs to be completed in line with the guidelines supplied to you - for example click here for the Google Analytics installation developer notes.

Why you need to get to grips with bounce rate

In the SEO world, farming traffic was popular; in 2011 it was killed by Panda. Now, SEO experts must be tuned into getting to grips with bounce rate because of the directional change of Google's algos. And there are some umcomfortable SEOs out there because of this.

There is always some type of cost of generating online traffic - at a minimum, this will be your time. If in excess of 50% of your visits are bouncing then you have a problem that you need to prioritise and some suggested measures are listed below.

Some decent remedies of bounce rate

- Check the site loading time using Google Webmasters. This gives you the facts that you need to take to your developer if it comes back in the red (see diagram below).
- Use of contrast and bold colours to make reading easy
- Employ decent line spacing so that any text is easier on the eye.
- Choose a simple, web safe font. Consider the variety of devices that will be accessing your website.
- Break up text and don't have long paragraphs. Eye scanning experiments have shown our eye movements go left to right, typically 3 times to make a '3' shape.
- Contextual links - link to other posts or pages within your site's text content to encourage website engagement. Just because you make a clear path that you desire doesn't mean that your visitor will follow it.
- Check your navigation against your competition and critically evaluate it. Is your navigation concise, helpful and a good breakdown of your content/business type?
- Test. A/B testing for lower page view websites and Multivariate testing for higher traffic ecommerce websites is an absolute no-brainer.

Google Webmasters site performance - to access go to 'Labs' & then 'Site Performance'

Search Engines for local business - Part Deux

In the last post regarding local search engine optimisation 'the was and now' I concluded with the salient points that any small business owner needs to prioritise - with or without any agency/consultant assistance. I named this section the future but this is only 'the future' to masses of small businesses (and indeed big brands) because social media & mobile phone (smartphone) technology have accelerated at such an astonishing rate.

So this post is for the local businesses have a polished online operation but want to be truly innovative. You are trying new things in digital, usable sites in desktop/mobile/tablet, gaining great traction in social media and have good control in your search engine marketing efforts. You know what citations are, have review generation processes in place and have great content within your Google Place.

A small business need to have a real grasp on mobile technology and how it interacts with the physical environment of their target audience. This means more than just ranking well for key search terms. This means bringing social media alive and having it truly integrated into your customer journey - with mobile at the centre of everything. This is unchartered territory to some degree but as with anything the opportunity then is to be truly innovative.

The next bit is quite simple. Be inspired by 3 videos that I have shown below. 1 is from Google's Global Marketing Director [Mobile] Rikard Steiber and is over 40 mins long - if you are short on time you will still find the first 12 minutes truly fascinating and inspirational. Startling stats, thought provoking research and a real insight into where you need to put your strategic thinking to make the most of the localised search boom that is happening right now.

The next two are from Coca Cola's content strategy team. I bet all you hear and read from 'experts' is 'content is king'. You understand this but how do you make it a genuine priority? Again, be inspired by a super brand's approach. Understand the definition of content and why it is a crucial part of your future digital strategy.

Search Engines for local business – the was and the now

The was

The world wide web. Get a website – you have to have a website. With an explosion of web design companies, bedroom web developers, free website providers, domain registrants you can get what you want – so get your website up there with your logo, about us type content and hey presto you’re up there.

Then…the reality of search presents itself when you login to your analytics package when you see zero visits. You then have a good, bad or indifferent experience with a search engine optimisation where they look to artificially influence the search engine results pages (SERPS) with techniques that use little of their time/resource and employ a suggestion of blackmail when generating page 1 / top 3 positions.

You become wise to bad SEO. By finding a more reputable, content led, quality links approach you continue to grow.

Your limitations? Updating content, increasing social media platforms, website development all go to the back of your queue due to cost and time constraints.

The now

97% of consumers search for local companies online. Your Google place is an integral part of traffic generation – that is of course if you have registered it, added content and attracted reviews. Core proactive opportunities being citation building and creating review generating processes.

1.5 billion high end smartphone sales by 2016 (sorry, no more mobile stats in the week of MWC) is completely relevant to the small business market.

What else? This week, Google Venice was a major part of the 40 algorithm change for Google. Simply put local websites are gaining more and more visibility under generic searches - ‘Digital Marketing’ or ‘SEO’ as opposed to ‘Digital Marketing Leeds’ or ‘Leeds SEO’. Local websites will be treated more like national websites by Google.

The future

I am a small business owner. I know how much pressure is on time. However, back in the day when you got ahead of your competitors by getting a website, you need to know what ‘ahead’ looks like and what the very top priorities are.

Citations. Still a massive part of local SEO, an ongoing discipline.

Content freshness. New content grabs high amounts of search visibility – and if what you give visitors is of genuine interest, people will link to it. The bit that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker neglects – but this could be the ticket to being top of the pops in your industry locally.

Your Google Place. Add great images and videos. Create coupons and follow the Google Places terms and conditions. Don’t try and be disingenuous or spammy in the content you provide – it won’t work!

Reviews. On your website and on your Google Place – hugely important. Generating your own reviews and ratings can lead to more advanced techniques with a benefit of showing this data within the SERPS. Get a strategy for this.

Mobile. OK, one last stat. 61% of smartphone users look for local products and services. Having

Localised social media. Check-in based apps such as Facebook and Foursquare offer consumers a chance to voyeuristically show their every move, including interacting with your physical location. Tipped by the best to be a big ranking signal.

My advice in summary – get an actionable local SEO plan based on these core areas in your calendar over the next 12-24 months. Break it down into bit sized chunks and be brutal about your own current weaknesses. None of this is hard when tackled gradually – and if done correctly should be relatively inexpensive.

G+ progress in the UK

The digital development talk is currently focused on G+ and Google Plus Search Your World. However, in the UK is this a commercial viable thing to focus lots of energy on?

In 2011, Google and Bing made it publicly known that social signals would influence / multiply search engine rankings. Simplistically, G+ like any other social media platform should be a consideration for comments / sharing. Last year, UK research showed that there was ambiguity in what Google+ was. This year, in US search circles Google Plus Search Your World is creating a lot of noise. Sure, technically it is awesome but again, as a UK Marketing Director or a small business Company Director what should you be doing about it?

As ever with the enfant like digital world, lots of questions. Tactically I believe that +1 sharing buttons should take up as much real estate as Facebook or Twitter. This answers part of the question in terms of how you want your website users to operate in terms of sharing your content.

G+ in the UK? According to Hitwise UK, G+ isn't in the top 10 social media sites but then they have 91% of the search engine market share. However LinkedIn's market share of 0.96% puts them 8th in the UK but due to the nature of their core application there is much business to be done through this B2B / recruitment channel. When you develop a Facebook page you then have brand, email marketing, community management and promotional activity to get any traction. I see G+ in a similar way but then Google can and will put their foot on the gas by pumping traffic through from their almost monopolistic search engine results pages. 

Yep, you should get a company page if you have a constant stream of decent content going into your website / other existing social channels. Keep a close eye on the US brands such as the NFL teams to see what tactics work in terms of circle development and experiment with 'hang outs'.

What will Google Plus Search Your World mean in the UK this year? Well, you have to remember that Google's pedigree in mass market social media is poor to say the least - wave / buzz - need I say more. The power of the tech might be wasted on people that merely want a central hub that everyone thinks of as 'cool'. However, don't under estimate the power of companies following suit. Today when playing around on Google Search Plus Your World I noticed that you get the National Lottery results on G+ (obviously easy to set up) - couple this with the high rankings and you have a formidable new proposition.

Is this time for a new search engine to clean up?

SEO link builders New Years Resolutions

After yesterday's post on Google's webspam antics, I think it is fair to say that the paid links fear factor for businesses, Digital Marketing Managers, SEOs and SEO agencies has been well refreshed. 

So what next? Abandon link building and concentrate on building your website so that it is so good that it will generate links naturally? Well, this is part of it that anyone who wants to excel in search has to seriously address - unless you're already doing it get some traction on usability, existing user behaviour and conversion analysis. Google sees all of this with the panda update and builds on it's quality assessment every 30 to 40 days.

However, Panda isn't new (Panda/Farmer update hit the UK in April 2011) and I am intrigued about how SEO agencies / consultants will now evolve. Personally, quality link building output is completely relative to the sector to any particular business is in - but the fact is that bad directories / article marketing has no long term value. Ranking increases can be gained with these techniques still - but Google's webspam team will not give up the fight against the black hatters.

So, what should a link builder's New Years resolutions be? Here's a nice concise list:

- Use email/influencers/blogger outreach to build real links (don't be scared - it does work)
- Steer away from link selling blog networks (you won't get too many more JC Penney type warnings)
- Definitely leave off poor quality directory submissions

- Definitely, definitely leave out the article marketing

OK, so this brings SEO back to Earth - marketing led, innovative thinking. So it's harder - but may be you will be able to sleep better night!