I'm annoyed with Facebook. It changed my privacy settings, without asking me first. My trust and confidence in the company has been shaken.

To be fair, it did tell me what it had done, sort of. At least, it might have. I'm not really sure.

Here's what happened.

When I logged in a couple of weeks ago, I got a notification that Facebook had a new privacy settings interface that would "offer me more control" over what friends and strangers could learn about me through the site. I didn't have time to negotiate the complicated new interface just then, but I assumed that it was just an upgrade, and that all my old privacy settings would remain in place, along with default values for any new settings options that had been added.

But it wasn't like that. I'm not sure if all or merely some of my old privacy preference settings were dumped, in favor of looser defaults. But I do know that my account no longer works as I had requested. And, I know I won't be using Facebook anymore, until I have time to wade through the new privacy settings interface.

I should have taken the time to read the fine print. I got bitten. And to judge by the press Facebook has been getting over the last couple of days, I'm by no means alone.

Here's my own little tale of Facebook betrayal.

About a year ago, my girlfriend left me, and I changed my "relationship status" setting from "In a relationship" to "single." Before I did so, I went into my privacy settings and requested that relationship status changes not be shared on my "recent activity" list, or broadcast to my Facebook "friends" via newsfeeds. I'm too private a person to enjoy that kind of attention.

Unfortunately, after that, I was harried mercilessly by tawdry ads for Internet dating services. I am not interested in online dating, so finally, a couple of days ago, I decided to change my relationship status to "blank," in hopes the annoying ads would go away.

So, can you guess what Facebook did, then? It did not remember my earlier instructions not to broadcast my relationship status changes. Until I removed it, my "recent activity" list on my wall included the juicy tidbit that '[Name withheld] is no longer listed as "single."' I'm not sure whether or not it was broadcast via friend newsfeeds, but I suspect it was, as several friends remarked upon the change.

Even if I hadn't explicitly requested that relationship status changes be kept private, when a user changes their status to "blank," shouldn't it be fairly obvious they wouldn't want the information to be shared?

It's a little thing, to be sure. But when a company bobbles your privacy preferences, it does not inspire confidence. It's a breach of trust that I'll find difficult to overcome, whenever I use the site (if at all) in the future.

SPJ agreed to publish this letter to the editor anonymously.