Even if you have done it in the past, it's time to change your privacy settings again. Facebook recently announced it is teaming up with numerous sites to sell them your personal information. Every time you "Like" something now, Facebook hopes to sell this information to third party vendors.

To protect your information, click on "Privacy Settings" under the account tab. Change each section to say "Only Friends." The most important thing to do is under "Applications and Websites." Click on this and then navigate to the "Instant Personalization Pilot Program." Once there, deselect the box and Facebook will no longer be able to sell your info to third party vendors.

To find out what else you need to do, see the full article here.

Many Internet users share and want to reveal their data for targeted ads they may want to see, but many others are worried about advertisers having too much personal info. A survey of the Future of Privacy Forum found that consumers are hostile to behavior targeting. To contrast this situation, a research study by the Annenberg School said that the consumers are not well-informed about privacy. There has been suggestion about changing the online audience perceptions by educating them on the value of targeting and the importance (to them) of getting to see efficient advertising campaigns. If they keep the perception of online ad targeting as a threat they won't notice the benefits it has and therefore will keep (or start) rejecting and misunderstanding its purpose. This issue should be very important to online advertisers and marketers because online advertising is expected to keep increasing in large percentages.

If you want to read more, click HERE

Facebook is refuting it illegally breached the privacy of its users in a proposed $9.5 million dollar settlement.According to this class action filed against facebook, the program that monitors and publishes what users do on the social networking site is accused of sharing what users were buying and renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other vendors.Facebook's 'Beacon' program is accused of breaching the federal wiretap and video rental laws. Facebook is trying to tone down bad publicity by establishing a "Digital Trust Fund" that would issue more than 6 million dollars in grants to organizations that are studying privacy issues. This act by facebook is raising many concerns since they will be on the 3 member board and would decide on allocation of funds. To read more of this article click here.

It is no surprise to many that there are certain risks of presenting information of yourself online.  However, this article has information on a survey that they did that is quite alarming.  In fact, maybe alarming enough that companies will consider backing out of online marketing.
58% of users last year on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have reported been spammed through the sites. This is an increase of 70% from last year.
Companies are concerned that their employees use online is a security risk for the company itself.  After surveying over 500 companies, it was discovered that 72%, almost 3/4ths of them feel that social networking sites are dangerous for companies.  Facebook is the largest threat, not only because it is the biggest social media site, but also because of their new privacy laws.

This could result in a change in social security on the internet, but I doubt it will remove a company's presence online.  Read the article here, where you can search for more results of the survey that was conducted.

Even hackers are able to come up with a business model for twitter. According to Kaspersky Lab, hackers are now selling stolen account information for users with a large following. These accounts are then used to send malicious code to attack more accounts, and in turn gain access to a larger amount of personal information. For more information on this go here.