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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.
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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!
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.
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?
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.
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Actually, facebook modified their terms recently, such that their rights to materials you upload expire if you choose to terminate your facebook account. I agree that it's still not good to grant them that right at all, even if it's not forever though.
What I tend to do is this: photos of people I know and which people will likely want to be tagged in and discuss I upload to facebook. Photos of scenery, vacation photos (without people), wildlife photography, etc, I post to Flickr. Facebook has an option on your wall settings to post a blurb to your profile when you upload photos to Flickr. People still see the link and get to see the photos, but facebook doesn't get rights they don't deserve, and you can apply a CC license.
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's entire reason for existing is collecting advertising information and making advertisements more effective. Why would you act like it is terribly misguided to declare that by using Facebook, people are asking to be subjected to this kind of stupidity? The entire setup of Facebook is designed to extract as much information about you and how you interact with your friends as possible.
Palm trees and 8
Actually no. If you find one of your photos used in an ad, contact that company asking for $30,000.00 for use of the photo.
If they dont, Pull a DMCA takedown on their ass via their ISP.
Honesty, people need to use the same scumbag tactics these companies use.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
You know cows are female?
Not only female, but Adult Females who have already given birth to 1-2 Calves (depending on region).
Link is a GNAA "attack" site. I haven't bothered to look more into it, but enter at own risk!
This is bullshit, as usual, you can disable this. It's in the privacy settings. If you leave it open your friends see you as an advertisement. No news here, move along....
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.