Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Lets Advertisers Use Pictures Without Permission
Krokz sends in an LA Times piece that begins "A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: 'Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.' It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos." The attention-grabbing incident in this furor involved a married woman, whose photo appeared in an ad for a dating service that was presented to her husband to view. Fortunately, both husband and wife had a sense of humor about it.
I guess some people will put up with anything in exchange for appearing in the media somewhere. Frankly, after all the very public warnings about facebook I have no sympathy for anyone foolish enough to use their service.
Caveat Utilitor
My wife, who is not that up on tech things, told me about this earlier in the week.
You mean that a company can make my face appear in an advert? That sounds terrifying...no wait, it doesn't. Why was I supposed to care about this again?
Apart from goatse, I don't have any pictures on facebook.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It seems at this point like Facebook's plan was to make itself an indispensable part of millions of people's lives and then abuse them like this because they know most users still won't quit.
Man who continually stands in the middle of the road is hit by a car. Seriously, what are these people expecting when they sign up to a site like Facebook?
unless facebook has you sign a proper model release form, i can't see how this kind of use is going to hold up.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Read the terms of service.
When you sign up you agree to the terms of service, which clearly says you grant Facebook an unlimited, worldwide licence to use anything you post on Facebook. Unfortunately, no reads it!
I was tired of my lady,
We've been together too long.
Like a worn-out recording,
Of a favorite song.
So while she lay there sleeping,
I read the paper in bed.
And in the personals column,
There was this letter I read:
"If you like Pina Coladas,
And getting caught in the rain.
If you're not into yoga,
If you have half-a-brain.
If you like making love at midnight,
In the dunes of the cape.
I'm the lady you've looked for,
Write to me, and escape."
Mod up please. /. really should check snopes/company blogs before posting summaries like this... :-/
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
The ad network misbehavior that fueled this rumor was covered by VentureBeat in early June, when these networks were banned by Facebook.
The parent comment - not mine ;-)
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Lord almighty. As usual with Facebook controversies, you can very easily opt out of this and never have your photo used by an advertiser.
And of course, Facebook is not mandatory, it's something that you choose to be part of.
And of course, why in hell do so many people post illegal or embarrassing items to a fairly public and insecure site?
Three Squirrels
What Mark Zuckerberg really means is:
We have banned the third party applications responsible for exploiting the privacy of our userbase, because we reserve the right to exploit their privacy OURSELVES".
After all, there IS an option for this in the user settings, so its eems pretty clear that they either already do something similar or intend to in the future. The response from facebook is nothing more than Apple kicking an application out of their iphone app store, because they want to introduce their own version of it and make the money for themselves.
Okay, first off, the article has a follow-up posted at the top of it saying they made a mistake and were corrected. But for the interest of people who would rather read comments than articles, here's what I've been telling everyone on Facebook who keeps passing around this foolishness:
First off, the claim that Facebook is allowing 3rd party advertisers to use people's photos isn't quite the case. In fact, Facebook Terms of Service (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) state (section 10.2) "We do not give your content to advertisers."
Yes, Facebook may pair up your name and profile photo with an ad that gets sent to your friends, and yes, that can be blocked with the option mentioned in the message going around (Settings->Privacy->"News Feed and Wall"->"Facebook Ads" and select "No One" - or this link might work to get you there faster, since I'm feeling useful http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=feeds&tab=ads )
This is not, however, 3rd party advertisers using your photo. Section 15 of the advertising guidelines for Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php) state that an ad won't even be accepted if the advertiser is using photos for which they don't own copyright.
Now for the useful: A Facebook application that has not been authorized by you or a friend cannot access any information about you other than what's in your public search listing. This means, though, that if you have a public search listing displaying your photo, an unscrupulous advertiser could get your profile photo.
Any application you have authorized will be able to access information it requires to work. Definition of "requires to work" may vary. If you play a lot of 3rd party Facebook games, or do a lot of those quizzes going around, remember to check the Privacy Policies and Terms of Use for the application if your worried (or if you're really worried, don't do them).
Any application your friends have authorized may be able to access any information about you (on behalf of your friend) that your friend can access. To limit what the applications can see, go to Settings->Privacy->Applications and go to the Settings tab (or have another link http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other ).
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/downloadsquad-and-facebook-users-get-confused-about-facebooks-advertising-policy/ pointed out what more likely happened and downloadsquad corrected their position.
And apparently, as jdigital noted already, even the official facebook blog says that's what happened. So yeah, if you've posted stuff online, somebody may take it and abuse it.. but no, it wasn't Facebook's doing in this case. RTF....Retraction?
So please Facebook, just put all the creative commons license choices on there, and the problem is solved
Do you mean to say that if a photo of your wife appeared like this you wouldn't contact her for a date? Tsk!
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
If you read the entire blog post you'll see that they describe that option fully. When enabled, it lets your friends see whether you have joined a Fan or Group page. Completely tame and clearly explained.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Thank god for that, for a moment i w.. wait, i wanted it to be real so some people would have went nuts. .. nuts, hilarity ruined. :(
Corporations have come to place a premium on aggregating personal information. If incorporated entities that do business with private individuals place such a premium on the individual's personal information doesn't that constitute value in a contractual sense? If personal information is of considerable value then is any one individual in a position to sell or contract h/is/er private data to a legal entity? Could a legal entity be incorporated in such a manner as to better protect the rights of any one individual to privacy and/or reimbursement for use of their private data than might a single individual? Would there be a pay off? Is it a viable business model, aggregating personal information, as a way to better ensure privacy, prohibit abuse and perhaps see some value in return? I dunno.
ideopath @ play
They do actually have a Privacy option, opted in by default, entitled "Appearance in Facebook Ads". I could forgive users for believing that this option, if set on, allowed them to, well, appear in Facebook Ads. The explanatory text isn't particularly clear, either:
It sounds like they're using something from your profile in Facebook ads shown to your friends, and it certainly doesn't explicitly rule out using your photos when they have you "appear[] in your friends' Facebook Ads".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why don't they say that, then? By wording it as blanket permission for "Appearance in Facebook Ads", it certainly carries an implication that you're giving them permission (opted in by default) to use your likeness in Facebook ads.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They can't legally do that, as I have used the app in Facebook that announces all of my content as Creative Commons licensed, and I chose a NON-commercial option when i did so, so Facebook is breaking the law, or the advertiser is, if my images are used.
Okay. This is "better" in the sense that it is not Facebook itself exploiting user pictures. But it's still bothersome on some level. In particular it's bothersome that Facebook's default privacy rules make this possible. It seems that enabling an application gives that application near-limitless access to a person's account. It's all well and good that Facebook's policies forbid this, and that they've retroactively done something about it. But why was the access there in the first place?
I do think users need to take some responsibility. They should be more careful about the text and photos they upload to some company's servers, and the applications they enable. But still it seems that Facebook is way too permissive with privacy and security settings, and that they are continually pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable with respect to advertising. For instance, why is it that when you go: SETTINGS > PRIVACY SETTINGS > NEWS FEEDS AND WALL, the "Appearance in Facebook Ads" is by default enabled. You need to manually turn it off. Yes it's up to users to manage their privacy settings, but having users continually being opted-in to these kinds of things (without any particular announcement, that I'm aware of) smacks of "let's see what we can get away with--and apologize only if we have to...".
Actually, this was being done yesterday. There was a setting to turn this off in privacy settings which has now disappeared. You can still see the tab for it by going to Privacy > Newsfeed and Wall > Facebook ads
Maybe he accidentally visited some dating sites... perhaps filled out some forms for curiosity... then the smart AI determined who his ideal match would be.
Mod up please. /. really should check snopes/company blogs before posting summaries like this... :-/
CmdrTaco has made it very clear several times that he has no intention of having himself or the other *ahem* editors verify these kinds of things before posting them.
"... two entire advertising networks ..."
Who are they and how big are they to merit "entire"?
Snopes...Probably.
Company blogs...really? I just don't see that as unbiased enough for a fair assessment of the situation*. Word-bandying is just too easy and too common. That's why lawyers cost $400/hr.
Kind of like the Martians running around shooting people, with translator boxes saying "don't run, we are your friends!"
*in general. TFS did not lead me to TFA, so in this particular instance I have no founded opinion**.
**unfounded opinion:
3-5 yrs ago: Hey I have this neat idea that people will love.
1-2 yrs ago: Alrighty, we're mainstream, now we can have ads outside the normal banner format based on peoples freely and absentmindedly divulged personal info.
6 mths ago: Well, our unsustainable growth in a market with very little tangible good and service is proving exactly that, especially as these tough economic times get tougher. However, our target percentages do not meet our horseshit expectations. Hey I have an idea...
Yesterday: Crap.
Today: We have not now or ever done anything, and this is all just speculation and innuendo. If the glove don't fit you must acquit.
6 mths from now: We at MyTweetBook have over 30 years experience safegaurding your ... blah blah blah and have never such and such. Chocolate rations and whatnot.
If they're doing this, they're assfaces. If not, that crappy rumor is only advertising for them.
Did everyone with a facebook account not notice this months ago, or did they really think that their random facebook friends really did love using DirectMediComCo for their Viagra prescription?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Spoiler:
The song speaks, in three verses and three choruses, of a man who, disenchanted with his current relationship, reads the personals and spots an ad that catches his attention: the ad of a woman who is seeking a man who, among other things, must like piña coladas. Intrigued, he writes back and arranges to meet with the woman "at a bar called O'Malley's", only to find upon the meeting that his new lover is his current lover. The song ends on an upbeat note, showing that the two lovers realized they have more in common than they suspected, and that they do not have to look any further than each other for what they seek in a relationship. This rekindles their relationship.
facebook has a history of bowing to user pressures.
They will reverse this within the week.
They're using their grammar skills there.
That's my only major complaint about facebook's privacy settings. Many things that should be by default disabled are not, and vice versa.
Fixing it involves navigating countless obscure and convoluted menus, in a (usually) vain attempt to reach every single case.
Since there is no room for any friends here in my basement, you will never find my profile or my picture on facebook!
I'm going to buy your product anyway just to prove that I don't have to do what you say! NANANANANANA. Na.
Since when did facebook advertisers need anybody's permission?
Every time I log into facebook, I'm greeted by "singles" ads with photos of famous pornstars and myspace girls. Surely, the advertisers don't have the copyright holder's permission to use those photos, do they?
I turned off that option. the last thing I want are my baby pictures showing up as an advert for a swinging singles advert...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yeah, it's like Babushka. That Kate Bush knew a lot about Facebook. That's why her name kinda rhymes with it.
I ball BS on that, too.
It doesn't say "Advertise your participation in Facebook groups and fan pages", it says "Appearance in FACEBOOK ADS".
...what if you go for a job and they recognise you from a site you have nothing to do with called bustedpartysluts.com?
If I recognize an applicant from bustedpartysluts.com, she's almost certainly going to be hired.
I think what facebook has the settings options to opt out of advertisements for things like "Anonymous Coward got 150 on our IQ test, think you can beat them?"
We've all seen these advertisements on our pages, I have even seen my picture and name appear on a friends facebook, I was confused as I never took an IQ test on facebook.
So when they let you know that your likeness and name might be used to personalize the experience of you and your friends in third party advertisements this is what it means, not that 3rd party advertisers will be stealing your pic and sending it out to everone on facebook, just to those you have listed as friends.
I'm not on facebook but I'd assume that there is a big difference between "[insert pic] is the 10 millionth Facebook user" and "[insert pic] hook up with hot singles at sleazey.easy.example.com"; and most reasonable people would assume the first example is what they were referring to not the second.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
http://rs79.vrx.net/.oops/yixe/
Here's where I found my face on an ad on slashdot in late may. Using liknesses for commercial purposes requires a model release and this is actionable. Anybody feel like doing a class action?
Need Mercedes parts ?
Where do I sign?
Somewhat worrying is that on a site completely unrelated to facebook (osdir, some random mailing list archive google pointed me to), I saw an ad mentioning the name and photo that I use, inviting me to "zoosk" whatever that is -- I'm quite aware that my name and a photo (not actually of me) are visible in all sorts of public listings and search results, but I'm somewhat confused as to how an advertising network is matching facebook accounts to IP addresses (a legal query as much as a technical one)...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Wow.. way to rake in the Karma there :-P.
Help I'm a rock.
"What is your photo doing on an on-line dating site?"
"Honey. What ate you doing looking through on-line dating sites?"
Have gnu, will travel.
Mod parent up!
http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?id=567
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
This is the real problem with Facebook. They've cleverly engineered a system which *allows* you to control your privacy but then seduces or fools you into giving it up by making settings so obtuse, difficult to find and anticipate that almost nobody successfully does.
Example: I thought I had my facebook settings locked down pretty good. I turned off access of just about everything to anybody except direct friends. A few months later, my birthday comes around and all my friends start sending me happy birthday messages via Facebook! Turns out, there is / was a completely different location for the control of your birth date privacy. Not only did my friends see my birthday, but half of them had installed some kind of 'notify about your friends birthday' application so my birth date (something used commonly as security verification data) was now spread into some unknown number of 3rd party applications around the globe. There is basically no way to know now who on the planet might have gathered my birth date, be correlating it with other data and on selling it for the purposes of identity theft. It's just one small example, but this is everywhere in Facebook.
I thought over 99% of websites stopped showing advertisement banners and flashy flash movies with annoying sounds a couple of years ago... around the time I started using AdBlock...
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
I really don't understand how something crops up like this. Yeah, I've seen the message going around but anyone that has been a subscriber knows that this has been the case for almost a year now. That is of course unless they've been living in a cave or under a rock...
Architectural Renderings
I'd just like to point out here that I've never been a member of facebook, but I've seen more than one slightly humiliating picture of myself in a completely drunken (but conscious) state. One was on someone's page who I knew in real life, the other I did not know at all. Where does that put me?
Sig: I don't spell check and this is legit. This was written while I was drunk, and quite possibly with m eyes closed, b
Link is a GNAA "attack" site. I haven't bothered to look more into it, but enter at own risk!
What is this RUBBISH that you write?
Dare you question the irresponsiby edited melodramatic flame bait that is the unyielding word of kdawson? Futile heathen.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
/. really should check snopes/company blogs before posting summaries like this... :-/
What is this "/." of which you speak? You're obviously not talking about the site where we're posting right now.
The page (& link) for Settings>Privacy>News Feeds and Wall>Facebook Ads now has NO OPTIONS. It is currently empty, perhaps because of all the upset customers.
I try to keep all of my info private, although I have started to use Facebook to connect with friends & old classmates. This is for the general paranoia of personal data, even though I don't use such simple things as passwords or recovery passwords. Still, I have experience with people's credit card information (inc purchases and purchase locations) and unlisted cell phone numbers being compromised by "social engineering", by ex-wife, friends, etc, without even the claim that they were the person themselves-- just as a "knowledgeable" friends or supposed spouse.
The fact that the privacy settings are by default ALLOWED, and may be kept by any application or advertiser who already has it (and that transfer may happen in an instant) still remains very troubling.
As always, XKCD has the answer.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Remember that other slashdot story recently where a couple was on vacation in some Asian country and saw their friends' christmas card photo on a huge printed banner in a store window. The people designing the ad apparently just looked for a nice looking couple online, found the pic on a blog, and tada, they're 10 feet wide, on a store, in korea or something. THAT is exactly what people don't want happening in digital or printed format. It's just creepy knowing your image is being used to sell something somewhere and you don't even know about it. They could put you on an erectile dysfunction ad for all you know. What were these moron execs thinking?!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I believe birthday notifications are part of the Events application, which comes as part of a new account.
The page (& link) for Settings>Privacy>News Feeds and Wall>Facebook Ads now has NO OPTIONS. It is currently empty, perhaps because of all the upset customers.
I still see an option when I just checked now, so either it's back or maybe you have some plugin that's hiding it? I've heard ad/script blocking plugins might hide some options (haven't confirmed that myself though), and I know one person who hid some Facebook stuff via Stylish and if I heard him right had to disable some of the style mods in order to see the Terms of Service later - so if you've tried to hide some things (like annoying ads, or pictures that are cluttering up the home page) other stuff may be caught in the crossfire.
Maybe Slashdot should. Still, it is an attention grabbing headline, and /. users will do the fact checking for them anyway, so why bother? Plus, fact checking takes time and effort. Hitting the "approve" button is far easier.
This is why I always lie about date of birth on website applications. I chose July 20, 1969 because it is easy to remember. Although it might seem suspicious to use the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the fact is that some fair number of people were born that day, as with any other day. It's close enough to the right date that I'm not really misleading anyone about my age to a degree that makes a difference. A year and change just doesn't matter all that much once you get past your early 20's.
This of course meant I got a bunch of automated greetings on Monday, but all that did was serve to remind me why I did it in the first place.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Mod this parent up also so as to attract more attention to the necessity of modding of the parent of the parent.
On Facebook. Clearly.
Didn't you notice that it referred to Richard (I assume that's you) as "you", the user viewing the ad? Most likely a cookie from an ad on Facebook was connected to an ad on Slashdot (or maybe it just guessed most viewers of the ad visited Facebook), so it pulled your FB profile pic from your browser's cache and plugged it in to the frame.
Don't flatter yourself, it isn't like they went trawling FB profiles, took a bunch of people's photos, and passed it off as their own.
Is a banner ad using data from your cache "actionable"? An unauthorized access of your computer network? Or are you just trolling?
Indeed. Don't click the link in grandparent's post! Morbid curiosity inspired me to do so, and I regret it, as for the first time in a very long while a website did things which made me seriously reconsider Firefox's security. I should have heeded AC's warning -- or at least disabled Javascript.
For instance, somehow this website even manages to get Firefox to spawn Internet Explorer windows, and Windows mail (to check some newsgroup). Does Firefox have some really stupid URL handlers enabled by default? I had been reasonably sure I'd disabled this kind of crap in about:config (doublechecks... yeah, looks ok...). If that's true then Firefox out of the box is only as secure as the worst application it uses to handle any kind of URL. And as Internet Explorer now seems to be one of them, that would make Firefox no more secure than Internet Explorer. A frightening thought! So what's going on?
And by unfounded, you just mean they've already issued the damage control? Shocking!
Interesting guess but I don't think so. One of the other 4 poeple is somebody I know, the other two I'd never seen before. That had to have come from the adserver. I'm guessing they all did.
I know what I agreed to when I clicked the thinger in facebook. You show me where is says personal likeness in commercial conduct is authorized.
Oh yeah, Jenine is Nat Torkington's wife. She's pissed. And she's not somebody you want pissed at you.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can confirm this. I was seeing no options on this particular page (even though the rest of the pages displayed fine). After disabling AdBlock Plus, the page showed up properly.
I just created a group on facebook called, "Facebook, Please don't sell my photos to your advertisers!"
If you're on facebook please join.
Here's where I found my face on an ad on slashdot in late may. Using liknesses for commercial purposes requires a model release and this is actionable. Anybody feel like doing a class action?
:)
Wouldn't a DMCA takedown notice be easier and quicker
I think it would be a bit unfair singling out Facebook without highlighting another major offender in that category. You really ought to spend some time reading Terms of Service because they can contain the most horrendous rubbish.
Let me show you a bit of text from the Google Terms of Service that more or less appropriates *anything* you post. It's not that they claim copyright (they acknowledge that, probably because there's no legal way around it), but see what you make of this:
IANAL, but as far as I can tell this means in layman's terms "it's yours, but we'll use it any way we damn well please, including and not limited to handing your content to anyone else who pays us enough for it".
Keep in mind that this is the general license to all Google services, as far as I know this governs your use of email, Google docs, Picasa web albums - in principle they have turned their services into a sort of private version of iStockphoto where they can just take and use ANYTHING published without as much as acknowledging it - let alone pay for it.
That they haven't done so yet is either a function of them not needing to do it - or we haven't discovered it yet. But the door is wide open due to the Terms of Service their users accepted.
Now, do you still feel like keeping all your holiday snaps online?
Insert
"but this is everywhere in Facebook^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H." There. Fixed it for you...
Is this the same facebook that has third party ads that incorporate my exact age?
Just coincidence...
The right way for Facebook to do this would have been for them to implement this with a payments system, and obviously, opt-in, instead of in by default and opt-out.
The advertisers should be paying for the use of the photos. The settings should be [Unavailable], and [Available / Price per View], with the price per view set by the user. The setting should be both for the full set of pics, with individual overrides for specific pics (e.g., pics that the user doesn't want used, or wants to set a higher or lower price). Obviously, better pics should command higher prices, and cheaper pics might get used more, and users wanting only fame could set the price to zero.
If properly implemented with accounting and logs (views, display, clicks, earnings, etc.), they'd actually be doing something respectable, instead of just pimping out all their user's property without their permission.
They also seem to have completely overlooked the issue of model's releases, which their vague TOS docs don't really cover. Of course, a good ecommerce/micropayments implementation would cover it properly as in if you set it to available.
Did you disable or uninstall the Microsoft add-on? I forget the name of it at the moment, but there is a Microsoft add-on installed into Firefox from a recent patch that basically makes Firefox as insecure as IE is. You have to disable (or if using 3.5, uninstall) the add on to get your security back.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Ok, found the link to it on Slashdot. HERE it is.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
It seems that enabling an application gives that application near-limitless access to a person's account.
Not just that, but also quite a lot of access to all their friends' personal details too. I think there may be settings somewhere that can be used to restrict this, but as zuperduperman says, there are so many settings and they're so hard to track down that locking down your personal details effectively is a huge pain. (Plus, every time they add a new feature, you have to go lock that down too. It's not just set and forget.)
If they didn't change anything why is it that suddenly I can't disable jack shit on the FaceBook Ads tab? It's totally blank. No menus, no selection boxes, NOTHING.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No, they don't.
But I like your rationalizations, they sound like the kind of stupidity that would go over well in a smoke filled dorm room.
Yea I have one of these prepaid portable payphone's from "Poser-F" otherwise known as a TracFone. How does that billing system work on such prepaid things that I own? Do they measure a dollar value to an equivalent number of my minutes and just siphon that off? If I get a bill say, that exceeds the number of remaining minutes on my phone, then does that put my phone on the negative minute mark so just like in Diablo-1 my phone is invulnerable to enemy attacks as long as they don't use the Heal Other spell?
Or is sending a bill to a Cell Phone account number just another panzy scheme of private-process extortion like how PayPal allegedly sends money through an eMail address and they've evaded prosecution since the 90's on that?
Thanks for the help.
Sincerily,
Nick Gerr
No idea how it works. All I know is that it is evil Evil EVIL!!!
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I seem to remember this "feature" having been around for several months now, it was released the same time they were testing product placements based on the clothing you were wearing in your profile picture. The example I saw was of a guy who was wearing a particular style of sunglasses in his profile picture, and on the advertisements on his profile page you saw an advertisement for similar sunglasses. Just because some morons are spreading viral status updates doesn't mean it's recent by any means.
oops! You are quite right-- AdBlock Plus was blocking display of that option for some reason.
When I disabled the add-on, the option was visible (with "No One" previously selected)
I have Moderator points: How do I use them to mod down the original story for being invalid, kneejerk, flamebait?
My
A grue?
Are you using FireFox?
Are you using AdBlock Plus with the default filter?
If so, then that'll be why. If not, I suspect it will be a similar filter, somewhere, causing it.
There's a difference in the law between granting a copyright license over a work (a "license agreement") and authorizing the use of one's identifiable likeness for advertising (a "model release"). The one does not imply the other; if I take a photo of you I have the copyright to that photo and have the right to license it to others, but nobody has any automatic right to use your recognizable likeness in that photo to advertise that product. The advertiser must secure both copyright and a model release. (If the licensee is a newspaper using it for reporting or editorial purposes, then it's another story.)
Of course, all this means really is that OP quoted the wrong section of the license agreement:
In short: you grant them a copyright license to any pictures you upload, which allows them to sublicense to any associates of their. You also grant them, given certain profile settings, a model release to your profile picture, that allows them to use your name and profile picture to advertise any of their partners' products.
Are you adequate?
So don't use it? There is exactly 1 deactivate button.
There is basically no way to know now who on the planet might have gathered my birth date
why did you give it to facebook in the first place?
A few months later, my birthday comes around and all my friends start sending me happy birthday messages via Facebook! Turns out, there is / was a completely different location for the control of your birth date privacy. Not only did my friends see my birthday, but half of them had installed some kind of 'notify about your friends birthday' application so my birth date (something used commonly as security verification data) was now spread into some unknown number of 3rd party applications around the globe.
Those bastards! I can only think of a few hundred thousand people - including everyone in my family, everyone I went to school with, everyone at my job, and everyone who read the newspaper one day when my friends thought it'd be funny to take out a "happy birthday ad" - who might know that private and compromising information about me.
Listen, I'm about as unlikely to give hand out personal information as the next paranoid, but your birthday? Even I can't work up the righteous indignation to be bothered by that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?