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Security pro: Facebook is the new Big Brother and the "bad guys'" best friend

It's not just Google that is being criticized for its privacy policies. Now a top executive at security firm AVG says Facebook is this generation's version of Big Brother --- and potentially helping criminals engage in identity theft.

Facebook recently established a new set of privacy settings, and anyone who has tried to delve through them (including me) can tell you that they're close to incomprehensible. Facebook calls them "simplified," but they're anything but simpler. In fact, they're well-nigh incomprehensible. That that's where Siobhan MacDermott, AVG Senior Vice President of policy and investor relations faults Facebook.

MacDermott writes on her blog that

If Facebook were being totally transparent about what they are doing, then consumers could make an informed decision. As it stands, their screen shots are – at best – confusing to the average user...

Facebook users, she says in the blog, have no idea just how much information Facebook is making available about them, with potentially dire consequences. In fact, she warns that the consquences go beyond invasions of privacy, and could help criminals more easily engage in identity theft:

I'm pretty sure that nobody thinks through the implications of proliferating their personal information across the Internet when they are eager to get to their profile page so they can play Mafia Wars or see what their friends are up to. If I take it a step further, I’d ask myself why I would make it easy on the bad guys to get access to any of my personal information on my computer that I pay AV companies to protect.

She concludes:

The closer we get to "Big Brother"-like behavior on the Internet, the further we get away from what the Internet was designed to do, and what its initial ideals were. Looks like we are catering to and spoon-feeding the bad guys all of our information. That’s good news for the bad guys and bad news for everyone else.

Eventually, Google and Facebook may be forced to change their privacy policies. There's some evidence that the feds recognize the problem, and may take action at some point.