After the recent announcement about the enhanced connection between Facebook and Bing in search results one of the key concerns by many was privacy. Facebook has recently had a few flaps about privacy as they have introduced new features and so it is a legitimate concern.
Here is a video that explains the integration between the two and afterwards I will share some info about the privacy concerns from the product managers:
In the posting Bing Gets More Social with Facebook, Bing Search Program Manager Paul Yiu and Todd Schwartz the Director of Product Management help to alleviate those privacy concerns:
Remember, You’re in Control
One of the top things that privacy experts emphasized, and customers told us about all the Facebook features, was that privacy and control were very important to enabling Facebook information within Bing. So, we took that feedback very seriously and put user privacy at the core to all these features in Bing. Bing’s “Liked Results”, for example, will surface content that is designated as “public” and linked to a person’s Facebook friends. This is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside “traditional” Bing search results.
· You will be notified that we will be enhancing your Bing experience before we actually do it, with an opportunity to say “disable” or to go and learn more before you decide if you want to take advantage of the feature.
· People will only see Facebook Profile Search results for people in their Facebook network when signed into Facebook. Users will only see “like” information from their Facebook friends. In both cases, only information that is intended to be shared broadly across the internet is shared.
· Facebook requires users to be 13 or older to access its services, and Bing’s Facebook Profile Search feature will only surface results for users who are 18 or older based upon their Facebook profile.
My favorite part of their plans is to offer the user an Opt Out/Opt In experience before they implement these new features. I wish all companies would do that to start with instead of expecting the customer to go in and Opt Out.
