Several new applications have launched this week that are designed to easily reset a Facebook member's privacy settings, following new changes from the company that make a sizable chunk of profile content public by default when it was once kept under lock and key.
A firewall and spam filter company called Untangle has launched a tool called SaveFace, which takes the form of a browser bookmark utility and sets as many Facebook profile elements as it can–contact information, friend lists and connections, wall posts–to “friends only.”
“We wanted to help our customers get back to Facebook of 2005,” Untangle CEO Bob Walters said in a release from the company, in which he referred to Facebook's current privacy controls as
“insane” and difficult to handle.
Additionally, an independent developer has created a similar tool called ReclaimPrivacy.org, which scans a Facebook member's privacy settings, flags profile elements that may be unexpectedly public, and like SaveFace can reset them. Both applications are open-source.
It's unclear as to what Facebook thinks of these apps, but considering the social network very vocally banned an app that “unfriended” people, citing a privacy violation, it may also take issue with services that modify privacy settings. Granted, ReclaimPrivacy and SaveFace are not built on the Facebook developer platform, so the rules that govern them may be different.
On the other hand, Facebook might want to keep these services around because, in a sense, they may put members at ease and let Facebook off the hook in the process–whether it should be or not.
