Facebook Needs to Allow Cover Photo to Be Edited
With all the talk about security and privacy online these days, there is one overlooked feature in Facebook. Of course, many do not think that the friends list can be vulnerability unless they have been the victim of stalking, for example. Until then, the friends list is seen as an asset since it allows other people to connect to you if you are connected to one of their friends. Although Facebook sets the friends list viewable to everyone by default, users have the choice of setting it to private in privacy settings. Your cover photo, on the other hand, does not have this feature to be private. This creates the same security issue that Facebook tried to prevent when they allowed users to set the friends list to private.
Every time a cover photo is changed, friends have the option to like the photo as they do with the rest of your photos. When a friend likes or comments on the cover photo, his name automatically shows on the cover photo for public view. If someone wanted to stalk by proxy and the person who liked or commented on the cover photo is not security savvy and friends the stalker, then there is a breach in the victim’s security not just on Facebook but it will affect the victim in real life as well. Of course, everyone should be somewhat security savvy online, but that assumption is in an ideal world. Most people would not add the privacy of their friends list and the public cover photo together to think about vulnerability. But then again, users can only control the privacy they are given control over, right?
Facebook needs to allow users to adjust privacy settings for cover photos. The second solution is to prevent a user’s cover photo from being liked or commented on if the friends list is not set to public view. If Facebook insists on not allowing users to have control over the privacy of their cover photo, then they should just let the cover photo settings synch with the friends list settings.
It’s not as easy as telling someone to just give up Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook, and Facebook likes that everyone is on Facebook. So it is in everyone’s best interest to be mindful of online privacy and for Facebook to give users the option to keep things hidden.
