Facebook update - it is worse than I thought, I found after additional testing - what to do?

ALL! VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE!!!

Have emailed it to a few friends already but I just decided to post it here as well... It is just a good way of reaching people, even if my blog is tiny.

Facebook is leaking like mad at the moment, be very very careful - and please go in and check your settings, and tell friends and family to do the same. I have tested and tested different variants and this is really bad. It doesn't matter if your choice was to stay with old settings. Many things you can no longer control and other things were changed regardless. Much information is now considered to be "public information" which means it is leaking to programmers and to in some cases other users.




You will not be able to stop it completely, but you can at least do your best to lock down, if you are on Facebook. I assume it is a case of bugs together with Facebook wanting us to share more information, so that they can sell advertising space etc...

Here are some tips on how to change your settings: 

You need to change in several areas; First go in under Settings -> Privacy Settings (Top menu, to the right) and make sure that everything under each and every point except possibly "Add as a friend" and "Send message" is set to Friends only, or possibly in some cases to "Only Me" - that is what I have done.


Then go in under "Applications" on the bottom left, open the menu, and chose "Edit Applications". Make sure that each and every application is set to "Friends Only" (you click on the "Edit Settings"). And last but not least, go in under Photos and set every album to "Friends Only". Especially Profile Picture might be open for Everybody.You don't want that...

And be aware that there is a chance that even if you have put everything to Friends Only your postings may still show up in the news feed of others, depending on how the receive has set up his/her account. I am pretty sure it is a bug, but a very serious bug.
At the moment I have locked down my account pretty much completely, but comments that I made on a friends photo STILL showed up in the news feed of a colleague. A colleague who doesn't know my friends at all... Facebook is simply not safe at the moment. Assume that everything you do is vieweable by EVERYBODY even if you lock down, simply because it is so buggy at the moment, so think about what you post..

(OH! And under Settings -> Privacy -> Application and Websites, make sure you unmark everything under "What your friends can share about you")

These settings will still not make Facebook safe for the moment, but it will make it a little bit less unsafe. But just a bit...

And again; Here is the link to the article about the complaint officially filed to the US authorities., posted in PC World, a PC magazine - I am sure you can find it elsewhere too..
Do go in and have a look that the complaint itself, it is 29pages long... From EPIC, the Privacy organisation in US.

UPDATE!
No, not even the founder of Facebook is very impressed, bu the looks of it - read this interesting article from NBC Bay Area... That's worrying! But at least they may do something about it then...

Update 2: Make sure EVENTS are also blocked for others than your friends, they were made available to all when settings changed. Do you REALLY want people you don't know to know when you are at home and when not?