At the D8 conference this evening, Steve Jobs told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg his view on privacy, as Facebook has come under intense scrutiny over the past month. Steve Jobs offered his opinion on how to approach privacy which was refreshingly clear, something the audience agreed as they applauded his comments.

Jobs stated, “Privacy means people know what they are signing up for in plain English. Some people want to share more data. Ask them. Ask them every time. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data.” While it wasn’t directed at Facebook specifically, the comment contrasts Facebook’s position with their “Instant Personalization” which doesn’t alert users ahead of time what’s taking place with their data.

As we’ve reiterated over the past month, most users may not care about what information is being shared but that doesn’t mean it’s justified and it’s setting a precedent which could impact other decisions made within and outside Facebook in the future. In other words, Facebook needs to fix their instant personalization program to be opt-in. As Steve Jobs acknowledges, it’s not the job of technology companies to force users to be more open, instead you can ask them. It’s as simple as that.

St. Steve is so pious! “plain English”? Read the terms and conditions on iTunes…

Perhaps it’s because I follow Lifehacker daily and use what they recommend, but I use and recommend almost every one of these tools. Follow the ‘via’ link and download them all from the Lifehacker pack!

Today is a day of reckoning for potentially millions of Facebook users — it’s Quit Facebook Day. The formal Facebook revolt was announced about two weeks ago amidst the growing debate over how Facebook uses and protects its users’ private information.

So far, just over 27,000 users have “committed to quit” Facebook, a figure that is statistically insignificant when compared with Facebook’s more than 400 million users. In response to the growing outcry over privacy concerns, Facebook made extensive updates to user privacy controls last week. But is this enough for the Howard Beales of the world?

When we last asked Mashable () readers about their reasons for planning to quit Facebook, there was almost an equal split between users who claimed that they didn’t trust Facebook with their personal information and with users who said they had no intention of leaving the social network.

Not me, although I am paying much better attention to my privacy settings…

Are you using Dropbox? It’s one of the best tools ever for people with multiple computers, regardless of platform. I use it to keep 3Gb of data always syncronized between a desktop and two notebooks — one of which is an Ubuntu device. Dropbox rocks…

Which one is right for you?