Slashdot Mirror

I am by no means an expert, but I looked at the traffic being sent during the login process using http://www.facebook.com./ It appears that a secure session is made to transfer the login information. Like you said, it doesn't protect information after login, but at least the login seems to be secure.

"Of course, we're concerned about our users' privacy, and so the only user-specific data available on public canvas pages will be first name and profile picture (and then only if the user's profile picture is already publicly searchable). But you, the application developer, need not worry; FBML tags will automatically handle privacy rules for you. "

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=57

There seem to be a number of sites (ala Google) that show Beacon can (at least, right now) be blocked by adding " http://facebook.com/beacon/* " to your anti-adware/blocker plugins.

Privacy settings
http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php?view=unconfirmed_actions

if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Need to cut the problem at the source: the advertisers themselves. This wasn't easy to find in google, but here's a list of sites that have privacy-violating Beacon code embedded in them.

Boycott the following sites:

eBay
Fandango
College Humor
Busted Tees
iWon
Citysearch
Pronto.com
echomusic
Travelocity
Allposters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Sports
Dotspotter
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva
Kongregate
LiveJournal
Live Nation
Mercantila
The NBA
The New York Times
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
Seamless Web
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
TheKnot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
Typepad
viagogo
Vox
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos

Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=9166 (found from a blog)

During the mini-feeds debacle, Mark ended up conceding with a comment very similar to this. (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130) If they were really interested in privacy concerns, they would have learned from the first time. To me, it seems like a way to see how far they can push the line before people will complain.

The problem is that Facebook is lying about it, and doing so repeatedly.

1. Zuckerberg led the press and advertisers to believe that Beacon would be opt-in (it would publish only with the user's consent) but launched Beacon as an opt-out feature (it published without the user's consent).
2. Both the original design and the current design of Beacon announce to the user that a story is being sent to their profile. They do not present themselves as a choice; they do not ask for consent; they present themselves as a notification that something is already occurring.
3. Even though the new design is "opt-in", the notification has only one clearly emphasized button: "Okay". A design that offered a true choice would offer two equally clear buttons (e.g. "Publish" and "Cancel"). Again, the design is crafted to give users the impression that they have no choice.
4. Facebook collects information about its users' activities on other sites through Beacon despite public statements to the opposite. According to Stefan Berteau, Facebook does this even when you are logged out and even when no notification is displayed.
5. Facebook did not give its users reasonable advance notification that it would start publishing information about their activities on other sites. It just went ahead and did it. And Facebook is still not being upfront about the fact that it is collecting this information.
6. Facebook continues to refuse to let users just turn off Beacon. Instead users have to individually refuse Beacon for each partner site, and they cannot do this in advance; they can only do it at the moment a partner site is about to publish a story on Facebook. Again, they are clearly trying to maintain as many obstacles as possible for users who simply don't want this information shared.
7. Facebook's official response is disingenuous and insulting. The problem is not that Beacon "can be kind of confusing"; it is obviously designed to mislead. Facebook's Paul Janzer wrote:

   While we know "global opt-out" seems like the easiest solution, we believe that if we provide you with full control over your information, you and your friends can get the full benefit of sharing information and connecting on Facebook.

   Of course, if they really wanted to provide users "full control over [their] information" they would let users turn Beacon off.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7578845355/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7534656429/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6290193865/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6188991025/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7578845355/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7534656429/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6290193865/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6188991025/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7578845355/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7534656429/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6290193865/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6188991025/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7578845355/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7534656429/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6290193865/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6188991025/

From the T&Cs: "By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content." http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

It was at this point that I began to suspect that the pages Facebook is presenting me are not, in fact, always generated by Facebook's servers, but instead can be cobbled together from any number of sites and servers located anywhere, and that these sites all exchange data transparently with Facebook.

Or try
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php (Or, click the link at the bottom of every facebook page that says "Privacy")

True, Facebook users do whine about a lot of things. Like the ability to keep information private that we don't want others to see while still being able to share information with our friends. I would applaud the average person's desire to keep information private.

Secondly, Facebook users DO harness their energy and invoke real social change. There are THOUSANDS of groups and "Causes" devoted to organizations like FreeRice.com, Red, AIDS / HIV Research, ASPCA, Breast Cancer Research, Domestic Abuse, and so on. Don't believe? Have a look yourself. Facebook Causes or Socially Conscious Networking - Facebook. Next time do a little research before stereotyping 55 million people. Facebook Factsheet

Facebook users complain about a lot of bad things that are happening, but the media only listens to "controversial" topics that they can make money off of.

True, Facebook users do whine about a lot of things. Like the ability to keep information private that we don't want others to see while still being able to share information with our friends. I would applaud the average person's desire to keep information private.

Secondly, Facebook users DO harness their energy and invoke real social change. There are THOUSANDS of groups and "Causes" devoted to organizations like FreeRice.com, Red, AIDS / HIV Research, ASPCA, Breast Cancer Research, Domestic Abuse, and so on. Don't believe? Have a look yourself. Facebook Causes or Socially Conscious Networking - Facebook. Next time do a little research before stereotyping 55 million people. Facebook Factsheet

Facebook users complain about a lot of bad things that are happening, but the media only listens to "controversial" topics that they can make money off of.

Except that doesn't quite work. Here's what I see on that page:

Privacy Settings for External Websites
Back to Privacy Overview without saving changes.
Show your friends what you like and what you're up to outside of Facebook. When you take actions on the sites listed below, you can choose to have those actions sent to your profile.

Please note that these settings only affect notifications on Facebook. You will still be notified on affiliate websites when they send stories to Facebook. You will be able to decline individual stories at that time.

No sites have tried sending stories to your profile

There is no option to actually turn this off. Perhaps external sites need to have already "sent stories" before I can go back and turn them off? Can anyone who's already triggered this behavior confirm that you can turn off stories en masse, or do you have to do it on a case-by-case basis forever?

If you look at it more closely you can't opt out of the service generally. Every time a new site tries sending stuff to your news feed you have to go back to the Facebook privacy page and opt out of that particular site.

Aside from AdBlock, you can do the following to effectively de-activate this service:
1. Get Firefox
2. Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox.
3. After restarting Firefox select 'Add-ons' from the Tools menu.
4. Click the 'Options' button on the BlockSite extension
5. Click the 'Add' button
6. Enter http://facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box
7. Click 'OK'
8. Click 'OK' again and you are good to go.

If you look at it more closely you can't opt out of the service generally. Every time a new site tries sending stuff to your news feed you have to go back to the Facebook privacy page and opt out of that particular site.

Aside from AdBlock, you can do the following to effectively de-activate this service:
1. Get Firefox
2. Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox.
3. After restarting Firefox select 'Add-ons' from the Tools menu.
4. Click the 'Options' button on the BlockSite extension
5. Click the 'Add' button
6. Enter http://facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box
7. Click 'OK'
8. Click 'OK' again and you are good to go.

I forgot to say that blocking the same URL with Adblock achieves the same results. The feature works by letting websites post updates to the URL http://www.facebook.com/beacon/beacon.js.php. So if you block this URL with Adblock (or another extension), websites won't be able to update your profile.

"How do Fandango and Overstock know that the buyer has an account on Facebook? How do the two get linked up? Cookies?"

Any site that is part of the Beacon affiliate network has a script that can read your Facebook cookies. The code is here, for any interested. http://www.facebook.com/beacon/beacon.js.php

You buy a product on Overstock. It gets some information on your Facebook account, then asks if you wish to 'publish this story' to your Facebook account. You can click:
1) Learn more.
2) This isn't you. No publish.
3) No thanks. No publish.
4) Close. Publish later.
5) Ignore. Publish later.

4 is the problem; you can ignore or close the box, and it will, instead of thinking that means a No Publish, ask you AGAIN when you log in to Facebook. If you ignore that one, too, or do anything but specifically click No (the X in this case), it *will* publish. It's unintuitive.

Whether this is user-error or intentional design, users are also reporting that they have to opt-out of these affiliates site by site to stop publishing, because opting out of Beacon itself is insufficient or not possible. That's why people are irritated -- they never downloaded an app or asked for Beacon, didn't realize they had to specifically tell it 'no', and can't figure out how to turn it off.

( off-topic, but w(hy)tf does one need to log in to see that url ( http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php ) ? Is facebook that much of an elitist "you're with us or you're against us / a loser"-clique that even such documents are behind a 'members only' login? geezus )

Anyway... what you describe is third party websites sending stories to your profile. As I understand it, the whole hubbub is about advertisers using data -from- your profile and all of the data relating to it (such as purchases). For example: "blowdart [your picture here] rated Miss Congeniality 4.5/5 - buy now and save $2.50!"

Yeah, but in the meantime, you might not know that a site added this Facebook Beacon. If you have a popup blocker, you'll never see the warning. If you do nothing, it assumes you want to add it your Facebook. And you can't disable it until a site tries (or adds) a story. You can only disable it on a site by site basis, not entirely. The easy way to block it is to get the BlockSite Firefox plugin (or some other anti-scripting plugin) to block http://.facebook.com/beacon/* As a Facebook user, I'm really upset about it. If they keep up with this privacy invasive stuff, I'm going to delete my account. Yes, I know that Facebook can do this stuff under their TOS, but I don't have to use the service.

The neatest part is that you can opt out- if you click a box that disappears after 20 seconds... wait to long, and they assume you are totally fine with it.

Not true; the FaceBook provides a secondary method of opting out, just like you can control lots of privacy tweaks already. There's a nice new option for "External Websites: You can edit your privacy settings for external websites sending stories to your profile." (this is not to say there aren't privacy problems with Facebook in general)

I guess actually looking before writing a news article would have been just too hard.

It depends where you live. In large portions of the US, we use this new-fangled thing called hydro-electric power, and we supplement it with wind power. So, our basic cost is less than 7 cents per KWh. Other areas of the US use different energy supplies - Vermont is mostly Hydro with nuclear (used to own Green Mountain Power), and much of the Northeast uses imported hydro power with nuclear and some coal.

Some places generate and sell their own power from home or farm based wind turbines and solar cells - especially in the West.

So the cost of the energy ranges from $3 a gallon (cheap in the West) for gas to $0.30 gallon equivalent for electricity in coal states to $0.04 gallon equivalent for electricity in the Northwest.

At that point, the cost of retrofitting - which is less than $5000 if done by Honda or Toyota (which sell plug-in hybrids in Japan even if not in the US yet) or Lexus, or $15,000 if you use say one of the three conversion businesses in my county alone (King County in Washington state) - is price compatible if you commute to work nearby.

Of course, you could do what Willie Nelson is doing and go plug-in bio-diesel with your truck, or even convert a classic Cadillac to get more than 80 mpg using an efficient bio-diesel engine with plug-in hybrid electric power tuned to the make and model.

Some people talk.

Other people do.

P.S.: If you're on facebook and use the I Am Green app, there's a We Are Green Seattle group you can join now. Let's beat out Vancouver BC and San Francisco CA!

And where on that page does it describe what actually happens?

In particular, where in either the page you cited or the privacy policy does it indicate that by signing up to the service (which you haven't yet seen, other than via those pages of dense legal CYA-speak) you will be inviting and give your permission for Facebook to collect vast amounts of personal data about you but not supplied by you? (Note that having such permission is a legal requirement in some places, though possibly not in the US, which is one way sites like this can start to get into hot water.)

It's fascinating that the privacy policy I linked to these days claims Facebook follows two core principles, of which the first is "You should have control over your personal information." They demonstrably do not really mean this, because they collected vast amounts of personal information without my consent and against my will, and they provide no mechanism for me to make them delete it.

They're better than most such sites, I agree. But nevertheless, the stinky thing about this one is that if you recieve an advert like this, it looks like I sent you this advert (not the third party such as blockbuster). That is, of course, a complete and utter lie.

(Oh sure if you read the fine print, it might say that blockbuster sent the advert and that so-and-so liked this product. Look at the linked example - doesn't it look (at first glance) that Megan Marks sent the advert? )

And, worse, IMHO, does that example not imply that Megan Marks *endorses* the "Blockbuster Total Access Online" to see "Top Gun?" as opposed to merely Top Gun itself. (i.e., implies that subject of the advert is endorsed by your friend which is probably not true at all!)

Finally, this is done by facebook, not an external application (it's part of the platform even, not a facebook application). Thus, it might simply ignore privacy settings.

I don't think so.

Face book says that this is directly for advertising.

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=6972252130

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

No account registration necessary.

So, you gave them permission, good luck fighting it.

From their Privacy Policy:

1. You should have control over your personal information. Facebook helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.

Using people's personal information in advertising is a violation of this policy. So, yes, you will have good luck in fighting it.

Facebook, for the most part, is a place to post information about yourself for the community to see. That is fundamentally in contrast with the practice of privacy.

Nonsense. Facebook is purported to be a place to post information that you choose to post about yourself for the members of the community you choose to see. Social networking doesn't mean telling the world every detail of your life (unless that's what you want to do); it's about telling the people you choose, what you choose.

Facebook's privacy policy says "You should have control over your personal information." If they were to use people's images in advertising without permission, they would be in violation of that policy, and ought to be sued into oblivion.

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Don't like it, don't use facebook. I don't.

They have consent.

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

http://mirror.facebook.com/fedora/linux/releases/

I wonder how long ballmer will be throwing chairs because one of his favored investments is giving away/make freely available an operating system he'd like to suffocate.

He is probably going to have a cozy little chat with one young Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. But, he'll start out easy. Won't throw REAL chairs in his office, but maybe lawn or bean-bags first.

Mark: (seeing chairs break the speed of light for the first time...) DUDE! Aurora Boralis, up close!

Lets see what happens with this and a Facebook group... http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5825738795 Join up!

Even the Weighted Companion Cube has 16 accounts. What an attention whore! So much for being faithful...

At least he's never threatened to stab me.
=Smidge=

• Penny Arcade Childs Play Charity on Facebook
• Board Game Geek Microbadge

Cons: Adobe is very large, and has a lot of money. So they do not think basic rules apply to them. What I mean by this, is a lot of companies are running a tab on how much Adobe owes them, because Adobe doesn't bother to pay on time. I know they owe my company 70 million, I would hate to think how much they owe other companies... If Apple bought them I would think its because the execs at Adobe sees that their magic bubble is about to burst, and they have to flee with as much cash as they can...

Want to show your disgust at the current electoral system in America? Can you legally vote? Then hop on board the write-in train at http://uml.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5775143879&ref=nf

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7406420086&ref=nf

I'll agree that 99% are crap, but you'll have to take scrabulous from my cold, dead hands ...

Not all of them are bad. The masses just love the stupid ones, and they grow the biggest because they are so simple and viral.
The app developers who created the initial popular apps also cross-promote their other stupid apps which creates a mass of stupid apps that stand in the way of the really cool applications.
There's a lot of app developers working on apps that provide a lot of user value and facebook should work towards highlighting that with some type of score mechanism.
I created a wishlist app that allows you to aggregate products from over 40 online stores so you can create a gift registry that your friends can use for giving you gifts for christmas and/or your birthday. It certaintly provides a real value to people and they love it.
You can check it out here.
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5892611090

In anyone's life there are hundreds or thousands of people that know you, but with whom your relationship doesn't rank quite high enough to merit weekly or even monthly e-mails or phone calls. That doesn't mean you wouldn't like to keep track of them, where they are, or what they're doing.

A small business may have a similar group of people who they would like to keep track of as potential customers, or who would want to know what the business is up to. Again, not your prime customers, but that second tier of interested people that a sole proprietor doesn't have time to keep in touch with.

With Facebook you can add two or three hundred "friends" and with no further effort see on a daily basis what at least some of them are doing in their lives. They choose to Opt-in, so you can e-mail them your news without worries about backlash, and since they choose what information to display to you, you get a pretty nice picture of what matters in their lives.

Probably two thirds of the friends that I have in Facebook are people (including relatives) that I would never otherwise be in touch with.

Plus, you can turn all of these people into Vampires.
br

Because we'll NEED one. Especially since over 800 FaceBook users do NOT want microsoft's paws all over facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3261815073
----
Don't let microsoft buy facebook
Business - General

Size:
        890 members
New:
        56 More Members

Profile updated on Friday

-----

And that's not the ONLY group in Facebook now wanting ms owning or having control in some way over user information, f/b direction, etc.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7406420086
seems not to show up in the normal search.