Thanks everyone for the feedback on web based profiles! We are listening to everyone's concerns and will adapt our privacy settings accordingly. We are been following JIRAs, forum threads and blog posts. Meanwhile, let me try to clarify some of the privacy concerns people are having:
The ability to associate your profile with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is opt-in and will remain so. We don't expose or store any sensitive data when the verification is done apart from the associated profile links. This feature isn't in any way linked to the "Share This" widget.
The ability to Like and Tweet profiles is a feature many users have been reacting to. This feature isn't new and is already available already on the old profile pages, i.e http://world.secondlife.com/resident/8f014fb1-a47b-4cec-be9e-064268cc9b1a. We're investigating whether to make this opt-out or not. Sharing a web page on Facebook and Twitter is something we can never block,
Some people have been reporting that groups they've listed as private still show up on their profile. The proper way to do this is to uncheck the "Show in my profile" option of a group. A group that has the global option "Show in search" unchecked will override the "Show in my profile" setting and hide it from all group members' profile. Settings can take a few minutes to propagate to the web based profiles, so don't panic if you attempt to hide a group from your in the Viewer and you still see it on your profile.
Please keep in mind that this is a public beta, which means that features are subject to change before the final Viewer 2.5 release. Keep the feedback coming and try to keep it constructive so we can do our best to build an awesome product Second Life residents enjoy!