facebook privacy

An Australian newspaper reports that a 17-year-old was helping her grandma count her savings when she decided to snap a photo of some wads of cash and post it to Facebook. Not long after, a pair of robbers arrived at her family's home.

This Friday, Facebook will go public in one of the most anticipated IPOs in history. With more than 900 million users, Mark Zuckerberg's expanding social media empire has become a seemingly irreplaceable part of the online experience. Unfortunately, a byproduct of its success is that millions of...

We all heard that employers are checking out the Facebook pages of prospective hires. High schoolers and their parents need to know that the folks who hand out scholarships are checking social media sites too.

In an attempt to crack down on spam, Facebook has shut down a number of third-party software applications in the past week. The move could signal that the world's most popular social network plans maintain righter control over the apps that run on its site.

Forecasting which technologies will succeed is always hazardous, but it proved especially difficult in 2010, a year full of surprises -- and also several disappointments. Facebook blew away even the most optimistic expectations for the year. Google Buzz? Not so much.

Facebook launched its Places geo-location service just Wednesday night. But the Center for Digital Democracy already plans to raise privacy issues about the service with Federal Trade Commission officials this week.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook has "made a bunch of mistakes" and vows to make the site easier to understand. But Zuckerberg's remarks fell short of an apology or addressing the core issue of trust, which some users say they are losing in the social networking site.

In recent days, Facebook has suffered a backlash unlike any in its history over its frequently changed and increasingly controversial privacy policies. DailyFinance's senior writers Sam Gustin and Dan Burrows discuss how this will impact Facebook's business. (video)

Despite what you've heard, the Facebook privacy settings aren't that confusing, though they do take time to adjust.

DailyFinance's Sam Gustin just deactivated his Facebook account. Find out why he did -- and why he believes he won't miss it.