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So, I used one of those "search" "engines", and it seems like someone set up a Facebook group explaining how. Strangely enough, there are lots of people posting on that group reporting success.

Summarized instructions: you fill out the form here here, and then the big secret is that you don't touch facebook at all for 14 days.

No one has actually confirmed that the data isn't still in FB's servers, of course.

So, I used one of those "search" "engines", and it seems like someone set up a Facebook group explaining how. Strangely enough, there are lots of people posting on that group reporting success.

Summarized instructions: you fill out the form here here, and then the big secret is that you don't touch facebook at all for 14 days.

No one has actually confirmed that the data isn't still in FB's servers, of course.

There is a form that tells them to really delete it. They don't draw attention to it, and it's separate from the "deactivate account" option, but a search in the help centre does bring it up.

Here: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Yes, yes you can.

Here: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Firebug says different. I hit http://www.facebook.com/ and see a post only to "https://" for the actual login.

Delete My Account

If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added. If you would like your account deleted, then click "Submit."

Facebook requires HTTPS to access account settings. Nothing else to say.

Plenty more to say. As long as users go to 'facebook.com', and as long as the browser interprets that as "oh you mean http://facebook.com/" then all bets are off. Facebook may force the URL to account settings to https, but if there is a 'man in the middle', they connect to facebook via https for you, but rewrite all the url's you get sent as http, and most users won't notice.

You have to use https _everywhere_ or else you've given a MitM a chance to proxy your connection, and DNS spoofing is all that's required to do this.

Given how Facebook's infamously buried 'delete my account' feature works, hacking individual accounts won't in general be sufficient to delete them. Well, with access to the account they could change the password to a random one to prevent the legitimate owner from logging in and preventing the deletion, but the account simply appears deactivated to others until that happens. Facebook cookies on the owner's computer could also conceivably cause any efforts at account deletion to be frustrated. If they "deactivate" peoples' accounts the legitimate owner still gets Facebook spam and invitations from friends so unless every account in the victim's network is also similarly compromised that only causes Facebook's power as an organizing tool to diminish only slightly. The article has almost no detail on what 'deleting Facebook accounts' means, so it's hard to say exactly what this entails.

If Algeria can really make people's accounts disappear from Facebook completely, then either Facebook is helping them do so or they've hacked into Facebook. Hacking individual accounts won't cut it.

Iris Cafe (Facebook): First, the good news! Fall has brought everyone back to the neighborhood and the cafe is bustling with customers old and new! Sadly, this means we are no longer able to offer wifi/computer use at tables. We understand that means some of you will have to go elsewhere, but we hope you'll come by for a coffee or a meal when possible!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Join-if-you-have-ever-felt-personally-victimized-by-Natalie-Munroe/192028104150265?v=wall

http://www.facebook.com/login.php, yahoo (and Steve Ballmer said that if they had bought Yahoo, Microsoft would have been the biggest user of php on the net), http://photobucket.com/index.php, digg, etc. Even the white house's site http://whitehouse.gov/ runs php.

Not too many large sites use Java. Mostly corporate e-payment systems.

One of the Free State project members (at least, I think he's an FSPer) just posted an RSS feed from the State's data, and pulled it into this Facebook.

is there any real production use for NoSQL?

Facebook uses Cassandra which is a NoSQL product.

SSL only protects you from the man in the middle(and, at that, only if none of the certificate authorities your browser trusts can be leaned on...)

If you are talking to https://www.facebook.com/ ; but facebook is talking to the feds, SSL isn't going to save you from much more than getting your password sniffed at the coffee shop. In a hypothetical repressive scenario, 'cooperation' on the part of large enterprises, whether coerced, purchased, or voluntary, is to be expected.

Worse, your SSL security depends on those certificate authorities you choose to trust(or very carefully vetting the details of a site's certificate every time you visit, to look for suspicious changes). Again, in a hypothetical repressive scenario, it is only reasonable to assume that one or more commonly-trusted certificate authorities would be "invited" to kindly generate cryptographically valid certificates for domains of interest to be used for man in the middle attacks.

It possibly depends on whether they had to accept it to view the profiles or not. I can view this guy's name, photo, some fiends and 'likes' without having to explicitly agree to any ToS.

That's a bit different, though. You haven't agreed to the TOS, and as such Facebook hasn't agreed to provide you a license to copy the photo. I would think its either a copyright violation if they never agreed to the TOS, or a contract violation if they did.

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but why exactly is this unethical? The data is publicly available and TFA's screenshot (the real site is apparently /.'d) only says "[Lovely Faces] lists real people, sincerely positing their real data and picture" which is not a lie (modulo marketing exaggeration that everyone seems to be happy glossing over) as these people posted their data to Facebook. Suppose for a moment there was no implication whatsoever that the people listed on Lovely Faces intentionally signed up. In that case, what's wrong with collecting publicly available data and putting it into one site? Is the issue entirely that people expect dating site profiles to have been created by that person, and Lovely Faces doesn't smash that expectation?

Scraping data violates Facebook's Automated Data Collection Terms, though in what way are those binding? I don't have to explicitly agree to anything to view some information, like certain profile's pictures.

I agree it is unethical to take someone's picture, point at it, and say "this person endorses this site" when they actually don't. It doesn't seem unethical to take someone's picture and put it on "the online database of pictures of people". Most people seem to be saying the scraping itself was unethical, while I disagree. I think it's just the implied endorsement.

It possibly depends on whether they had to accept it to view the profiles or not. I can view this guy's name, photo, some fiends and 'likes' without having to explicitly agree to any ToS.

I was always under the impression that Big Brother was a repressive Government.. and didn't have anything to do with corporations anyway.. and I believe the US Government has already embraced social media.

Check out Hearsay's Facebook page, where they discuss exactly those three things: http://www.facebook.com/hearsaysocial

EUGENE A. CONTI JR. secretary of the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Appointed by Gov. Bev. Perdue in January 2009.

Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gene-Conti-Secretary-of-NC-Department-of-Transportation/96402146984

Contact information for Benihana in case you want to call and complain:

http://www.benihana.com/about/franchise/contact

Phone: (305) 593-0770

Corporate Youtube account:
http://www.youtube.com/benihana

Corporate Facebook account
http://www.facebook.com/Benihana.Official.Page

Corporate Twitter account
http://twitter.com/Benihana__

Website contact page
http://www.benihana.com/contact-us

> you leaving Google != people leaving Google

Here is a search for you on your favorite search site: site:www.google.com google instant
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.google.com+google+instant
Top five results:
1 Google Instant : Google search basics - Web Search Help
2 google instant sucks get rid of it NOW! - Web Search Help
3 Chrome Instant - Google Chrome Help
4 How do I turn off Google instant preview? - Web Search Help
5 HATE Google Instant. Should not be FORCED. Should be Opt-IN and ...

Or better:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.google.com+google+instant+hate

http://www.facebook.com/nogoogleinstant

Yep, no-one is complaining.

> If the reason you don't use something is an option that is easily disabled; please don't tell people about it. You are not a good a good judge of quality.

If by "easy", you mean disabling it with every visit, you are confused. If you are referring to other persistent options, you making assumptions about browser security preferences.

And again, the relevant ToS - I wonder what they teach the kids these days, but it sure ain't reading. One day, I'll print out those rules and conditions, roll it up (twenty-odd pages of fine print) and use it as a cluestick. Ahem:

You will resolve any claim, cause of action or dispute ("claim") you have with us arising out of or relating to this Statement or Facebook exclusively in a state or federal court located in Santa Clara County. The laws of the State of California will govern this Statement, as well as any claim that might arise between you and us, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of the courts located in Santa Clara County, California for the purpose of litigating all such claims.

They don't apply automatically. This guy and FB have agreed that their disputes will be etcetera, see the quoted block. Enjoy baseless ranting much?

(I'm not even going to dissect the obvious troll of "you must be at least this rich to use the court")

Facebook says there are 75 000 people that have them and regularly upload content with them.

While $500,000 is ridiculous for compensation from a free service, I do feel he has one valid point: if Facebook has disabled his account for any reason, they should provide it to him and give him some avenue to correct the situation. Even though it's a free service, with over 500 million active users, it's a pretty ubiquitous and universal service. It might not be wise to come to depend on it, but it's certainly understandable how someone would. If Google seemingly arbitrarily disabled your Gmail account (insert free but depended on email service here) would you be as dismissive?

It didn't happen in my case, but my attorney posted on her own Facebook about using Facebook in a divorce case. I don't recall the details, but I think the ex-wife needed to prove that her ex-husband was not deserving of joint custody with the kids. His Facebook posts went a long ways towards helping her case -- they were full of rants about "that bitch", and pictures of him and his new girlfriend in non-family-friendly situations. The judge was not pleased with the ex-husband -- and getting dressed up and talking purty in court doesn't mean a lot when you're known to be a thug IRL.

Obviously, the dangers of hacking a FB to make someone look bad are real, and judges probably don't know a lot about IP address tracing (even if it is something FB does, which I don't know). But for most of the family law cases out there, where it often boils down to he said vs. she said, Facebook is a dream for the good guy's (or gal's) lawyer. Not so much for the other side.

The Rassd Facebook page you linked to seems to be Arabic-only now. Here's an English page of theirs: http://www.facebook.com/RNN.World

Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.

There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.

First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.

The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.

Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:

- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years.
- Yemen: Saleh - 32 years.
- Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years.
- Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.

Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.

Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.

All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.

All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.

Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.

What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.

However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".

The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.

The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.

The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was impriso

Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.

There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.

First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.

The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.

Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:

- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years.
- Yemen: Saleh - 32 years.
- Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years.
- Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.

Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.

Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.

All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.

All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.

Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.

What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.

However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".

The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.

The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.

The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was impriso

Crawl back into your cubicle, or back on to your couch, and let the adults handle improving their lives through democratic action. The genesis for protest in Egypt actually was circulated on Facebook, with the page dedicated to a young man beaten to death for expressing his opinion, called "We are all Khaled Saed." Here's a blog with a good summary, and the very graphic picture that helped spark the protests.

If you're not going to lend a hand, the least you can do is shut the fuck up.

Go democracy! Support free speech. Oh, and you, shut up, we don't need your kind of talk.

The Facebook page in question is here with about 450,000 supporters in a country that is well known for torturing dissidents to death on a regular basis. In a country where most people live on $2 a day, that's a lot of support, even if only half are Egyptian.

If you have better ideas on how people should organize for social movements, let's hear it. Otherwise you're just pissing in Cheerios, and pretending that it means something.

Yeah, heaven knows raising awareness does absolutely nothing for social movements. MLK didn't use any symbolic gestures or public demonstrations of civil disobedience to force the people denying his rights and the rights of millions of people to deal with him publicly instead of pretending that everything was just fine. Of course, that's total nonsense. The Civil Rights movement, the abolition movement, the suffrage movement, and all other successful social movements used symbols and acts of solidarity to raise awareness. It's one of the most essential components to true progress.

Crawl back into your cubicle, or back on to your couch, and let the adults handle improving their lives through democratic action. The genesis for protest in Egypt actually was circulated on Facebook, with the page dedicated to a young man beaten to death for expressing his opinion, called "We are all Khaled Saed." Here's a blog with a good summary, and the very graphic picture that helped spark the protests.

If you're not going to lend a hand, the least you can do is shut the fuck up. There's probably more meaning and emotion in this rough around the edges YouTube slideshow than you'll experience in the sum total of all your waking moments.

While I am skeptical that anyone needs Facebook chat, given that it provides an XMPP interface, couldn't she use Facebook over HTTPS and chat over XMPP?

The message is signed with "#hackercup2011"

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=486790652130&ref=mf

hardly. Most iof not all f these services offer JSONp calls that allow you to check more than just if someone on this browser is lgged in, but who they are.:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api XSS magic supplied by FB

hardly. Most iof not all f these services offer JSONp calls that allow you to check more than just if someone on this browser is lgged in, but who they are.:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api XSS magic supplied by FB

Can I please have a version of Slashdot similar to http://m.facebook.com/ that utilizes all the horizontal width of my screen (not more and not less) for the essential stuff, e.g. the comments, in any font size?
Pretty please?

Sounds to me like you need to play some CowClicker. No, seriously! This is not (quite) a joke.

Not to jump on anyone's nerd rage too early in the process, but according to Facebook's terms and conditions (easily found via a Google search, but here's a direct link: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php [facebook.com]) you do explicitly allow them to use your profile picture in advertising by using their service. Read point 10 - it directly states that you give that permission.

Well, yes. The curious thing is why anybody would agree to this in the first place.

It's not even new - I saw friends pictures appearing in "friend finder" ads long ago, and figured out how to opt out. All that's changing is they're going to sell that service to 3rd parties now.

You saw this happening and continued to use the service?

www.facebook.com/terms.php

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

If Facebook or Starbucks cannot show me either a model release with my signature on it, or a place where I specifically authorized the use of my image in advertising, then if my picture appears in a Starbucks ad somebody will be looking at a pretty significant lawsuit.

Facebook TOS:
"1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

You 'own it', but they can 'use it'.

Not to jump on anyone's nerd rage too early in the process, but according to Facebook's terms and conditions (easily found via a Google search, but here's a direct link: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) you do explicitly allow them to use your profile picture in advertising by using their service. Read point 10 - it directly states that you give that permission.

Note that it also says that you can opt out. So regardless of what this fear-mongering ITWorld article says, I would fully expect to retain that capacity. It's not even new - I saw friends pictures appearing in "friend finder" ads long ago, and figured out how to opt out. All that's changing is they're going to sell that service to 3rd parties now.

It's in the Facebook terms of service that you agreed to by using Facebook

2. Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

I've yet to determine if "any IP content that you post on or in conjunction with Facebook" applies to IP posted to my own website on pages that include a Facebook "like" button...

Also, the "IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it." Seeing as it's not enough for you to delete anything it must also be deleted by everyone you shared the info with too, and even after deleting, you agree that it's not deleted, just in a recycle bin -- It's effectively impossible to remove your images and/or other IP.

I don't see any other alternative than only having https login pages.

Exactly. And the user should be required to enter that https himself, or else he will forget to check that it's there.

Note, when you go to facebook.com (i.e. www.facebook.com, i.e. http://www.facebook.com/ you are presented with a login page with user and password text entry. There is no redirection to an https login page involved.)

Sorry, my mistake, my language was a little bit sloppy. Facebook doesn't actually use a redirection to https, but instead just uses a https URL as the form action. Same reasoning still applies: as the form itself is served via http, it is trivial for an interloper to change that https in the form action into an interceptable http.

Other providers, such as yahoo, do use a redirection to https. This has the advantage that the observant user can see at a glance that the connection is not being tampered with (whereas with Facebook, the user would need to view source to make the same assessment)

Facebook doesn't delete your account, it 'deactivates' it.

You can request to be "permanently deleted with no option for recovery". I had a FB acct but requested a perma-delete in 2009 (inspired by a Slashdot story, but before "dumb fucks"-gate). Two weeks later I got a mail saying that it was re-activated, but I think that was just the staff (or their scripts) logging in to make it final: the emails (school and non-school) I used are "not associated" with an acct as of today, and I couldn't find me in a search by name (a partial list 'cause I wasn't logged in).

Still, Facebook being a big website, and Facebook being Facebook, their staff probably have an old backup anyway. :)

And nothing stops you from using https://facebook.com/ [facebook.com] does it?

The EFF plugin for firefox Https-Everywhere uses https on many website whenever available. A must-have.

Okay, so Facebook sets up the http login page to redirect to https. When you go to login, the MITM proxy connects to the https login page... but doesn't redirect the client.

So how does HTTPS help? Without even getting into the issue of malicious CAs, HTTPS only protects people who connect to HTTPS directly (i.e., they type in https://www.facebook.com/). If you're relying on an HTTP redirector, you're fucked.