Logged In or Out, Facebook Is Watching You

kaos07 links to this ZDNet story, according to which "Researchers at software vendor CA have discovered that social networking site Facebook is able to track the buying habits of its users on affiliated third-party sites even when they are logged out of their account or have opted out of its controversial 'Beacon' tracking service. Responding to privacy concerns, Facebook has since moved to reassure users that it only tracks and publishes data about their purchases if they are both logged in to Facebook and have opted-in to having this information listed on their profile. But in 'extremely disconcerting' findings that directly contradict these assurances, researchers at CA's Security Advisory service have found that data about these transactions are sent to Facebook regardless of a user's actions."

Comments

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you have a Facebook account.

Shocked

[Romancer]

I'm shocked that you're shocked. Or even expect me to be mildly surprised that this is happening.

The only difference is that this is supposed to be a larger company and therefore better than the millions of smaller opt out pipe dreams out there?

Re:Shocked

[ivan256]

I'm constantly amazed about how people will post private information in a public place (thus making it public information), and then complain about how they are being robbed of their privacy.

Of course it also amazes me how popular these social networking sites are with adults. It's understandable that kids and teenagers want to climb a social ladder of sorts, since it is human nature to attempt to achieve more than your peers, and there is little available in the environments we provide to kids other than social hierarchy to climb... But when you grow up, generally people move on to trying to get ahead in other types of accomplishments. It seems things like MySpace and Facebook have extended High School into adulthood. When you place that much value on your social network, perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that people are willing to give up their privacy to maintain it.

Re:Shocked

[deraj123]

There's a difference between "party on the weekends" and a photo history of you making a lot of poor decisions. Think, pictures of inappropriate jokes, pictures of you not just drunk, but completely obliterated, pictures of you breaking the law, etc.

If I'm hiring somebody, I don't care if they go out drinking on the weekends (in fact, I might be concerned if they didn't occasionally), but I would probably think twice if presented with evidence of them making repeated, poor, destructive decisions.

Decision making is a trait that translates over to work.

Re:Shocked

[philspear]

Right, because that couldn't have possibly been humor.

Hell, the fact that she was applying for a job should have clued you off that it was a lie.

Not for nothing, but applying to jobs is annoying, and while we all must do it, that doesn't make it any easier. It's tedious paperwork, waiting, not getting paid, and half the time those of you who are hiring don't have the courtesy to let us know we're not getting the job. If you decided not to hire her based on something as trivial as that and that alone, you're an asshole.

Re:How Dare They

[plasmacutter]

Way to one-sidedly misrepresent wholesale privacy violation as innocent altruism.

Apparently the telecom domestic spying scandal has not reached your part of the world?

In these times, companies have as much or more assets and power available to them than many of the world's nations, and allowing the wholesale gathering of information on individuals by private firms under the red herring of "private property" will lead to the exact same kind of oppression as allowing the government to do it under the red herring of "national security".

There are other ways to better serve me without having to identify me personally. Inventory tracking has been done successfully at the branch level for a century in its current form, and if they don't carry something, speaking to a manager will often get results.

There is a difference between profiting from advertising, and profiteering from spying on me and selling that data to telemarketers, government agencies, and other shady organizations.

Re:Well What ROYALLY pissed me off earlier

[davidsyes]

What might have royally pissed off others was that when facebook asked for the new member's valid email address, it implied or outright expected them to provide to the f/b interface the VALID PASSWORD OF THE VALID EMAIL ACCOUNT.

This royally inFURIATED me. All they needed to say was Give us your valid email of choice, and reply within 5 minutes of receiving it and supply the code we give you, or you'll have to redo this and still try within 5 minutes to validate yourself.

They had NO f*cking business structuring it in such a way that MILLIONS of users would blindly or hopelessly supply their gmail, yahoo, msn, and/or other passwords through a facebook conduit.

Can you IMAGINE how much snooping could be done if facebook were compelled by law or court order to submit subscribtion/memberhship application logs to various agencies that don't want to actually leave traces of intel-snooping? All they have to do is notice whether or not the user is online or not, then log in as them, quickly look at non-viewable things, then log out. Only if friends and bots are somehow tracking friends login/logout activity can anyone be tipped off that something might be amiss.

Even without the conspiracy theory stuff, facebook should NEVER have culled or duped people into giving facebook their other account's passwords, nevermind the fact that there are other means by which other parties could steal or surreptitiously obtain a targeted user's password.

I cannot remember what I did to foil that frackin' attempt, but I think I did foil it.