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Facebook ID Probe Shows Things Getting Worse
An anonymous reader writes "According to Sophos, Facebook users are getting sloppier with their personal info, not better. Revisiting a 2007 survey in which a plastic frog got 87 hits out of 200 friend requests, this time a rubber duck and a cat got 87 out of 200 friend requests, plus a bonus 8 friends who decided to trust them anyway. The research also suggests that older Facebook users are sloppier than the young, being keener to build their list of friends. (The older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young.)"
...the younger members just need more time to make friends!
Good. Let Facebook go the way of the dodo. It's the equivalent of those "personal home pages" people put up when they first discovered the Web.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young.
It's like older users know more people than younger users, and that's just not possible. Kids know everything, just ask them.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
I use Facebook to let members of the forum know if there's a server problem. Most of my 50 or so friends are from the forum with my Facebook Forum page at something over 100 fans. I set up a filter so I can filter out the forum members and get updates from friends and the sites I'm a fan of.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
This proves nothing of any use, since the first probe was done in the UK, and the more recent one in Australia.
From TFS: "The older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young."
They've also had a lifetime of real life social networking (not the online kind) to boost the level of friends and acquaintances they would like to keep in contact with.
Young people are very cliquey with their behaviour in regards to friends. When I was in school, I could've counted my true friends on my fingers. When I went out into the world and bounced jobs for a couple years, I met many more interesting people that I remained friends with after the jobs had come and gone.
Also, do we really need another article to tell us that the older people in society are less hip to the social network scams?
I'm thinking that a lot of people add folks they don't know into their friends' pile for the applications, esp. games. After all, Mafia Wars and the like are rigged to get you more in-game "power" (more defense, offense, etc) with the larger number of friends you add (and then subsequently add into your "Mafia", or "Neighbors", or "Crew").
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Who doesn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky. Anyone raised on that nefarious propaganda brain-washing show, 'Sesame Street' knows to sing "Rubber ducky! You're the one! You make bathtime so much fun! Rubber ducky, you're the only one for me!" I mean who wouldn't want to be friends with a rubber ducky? It's much more meaningful a relationship than anyone you knew from High School.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I personally have 2 accounts. I use one strictly for games where I will accept any and all takers. I post to lists to increase my numbers and can see from 20 to hundreds of requests per day. That account has no real data.
My other REAL account only has REAL friends and Family. I scrutinize every request and all personal settings are very tight as to only allow friends to see the data. I'd consider myself an 'older' user @ +40. From what I have seen, this is not uncommon.
How about not putting stuff up on social media sites that you wouldn't want posted on a bulletin board at the local laundromat? Why on earth would I post my DOB, address, phone number there for example??
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
That's why I don't use my real contact info for my Mafia Wars account . . . I'm not sure why anyone would.
I was sure I knew that duck! Now that little bastard know all about me...
I'd probably accept anyone who cares enough to "friend" me, whether I know them or not. Mark me in the 43.5%, a guy who once accepted a friend request from "Some Pencils" and a random girl in Arizona (thousands of miles from me) just because she was a girl. What are these people going to find out... my hometown? My college? My favorite tv shows? Who cares? I don't think I'm really stalker material, and iIf my favorite movies are that important to some guy writing a corporate spambot, whatever, he can have it. He can't even find my address or my phone number on facebook, two things I consider more personal, and _those_ you can already find in any phonebook site.
Hell, maybe we're _more_ careful about our personal info since facebook doesn't really have anything on it that we value.
I am also seeing that more and more people are calling them promoters and advertisers by adding 1,000 friends on there and don't realize the information they are disclosing. The biggest example is the Palin email account hacking that most of the answers to security questions was found in her Facebook.
Bryan
If this trend is true, it points towards our "habituation" with the notion of the lack of privacy in our society. I think that along with the flood of information in our society comes the feeling that "all information should be freely available". People in general are becoming de-sensitized to this trend more and more, and expect more information about themselves to be available publicly. Not even just online - take a popular show like CSI. I think it's just sort of assumed that everyone is leaving this massive digital fingerprint behind them.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Could it be that these befriendings are from people who don't care about privacy, or, put a better way, want to use Facebook to send spam messages, and so will befriend EVERYONE?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Im going to have to side with B3ttik on this one... most people dont give a shit. This the nature of social networking, and to be frank I think Facebook wants it that way. The more information that is exposed to the masses the more they can use for their massive data mining schemes. Its just one huge advertising machine.
FWIW.
Most of the "young" that I see on FB, e.g. my children, their friends, etc., have 200+ "friends."
Some of the !young that I see have 100+. I call them "friend collectors."
I personally only have about 50 (sucks to be me I guess). I don't send friend requests. I only accept friend requests from people I actually know.
I just set up a group for "limited" access, so if someone friend requests me and I don't feel that I trust them I add them to the limited group right away (upon accepting them) and then they can only see a handful of things. If they turn out to be real people and I become friends with them outside of facebook, at a later point I could always remove them from the limited access group and they'll see what my normal friends see.
So yea, maybe I accepted more friend requests than the average kid (I consider myself an older user btw) but I did so in a safe manner. Practice safe friending!
I assigned all of my "game friends" into their own group and then used Facebooks group security to limit the personal information that they can see. It took all of five minutes to setup. Someone in that group can see as much information about me as someone who isn't my friend at all, which is to say not much.
Now I'll accept every friend request that comes my way. If I don't recognize the name and the friend doesn't leave a note saying how they know me then I push them into the game friend group. Problem solved.
I was running a similar experiment. And my pet cat Heisenberg befriended the Rubber Duck, a Nigerian prince, a Ukrainian boyband, and various sundry inanimate objects from other similar experiments.
TFA is full of shit- their rubber ducky was probably friended, but put on a restrictive friend list.
I'm friends with a famous turkey (long story), but said turkey is on a restricted friend list that can see barely more than my public info. I guarantee you every kid has a restricted list of one sort or another.
Also, did they bother to track how many people friended it just enough to check it out, and then unfriended it?
Please help metamoderate.
Will the rubber ducky help me with my mob? Or farm? Or ?
not for nothing...but you're doing a study of 200 people on a network of 350 million...kind of small study...
I have tons of random friends. Why? Because I use Facebook as a gaming site, rather than a friends site. The more 'friends' I have, the more powerful I am in the games. (Which is stupid, but that's the way they are written.) So I've got like 1000 'friends' on facebook about 10 in real life, plus family. Most of my 'friends' on facebook are the same way.
I don't post things on there that I don't want random strangers to see anyhow, so it's no big deal.
So if they didn't eliminate people like me from their survey, it's badly skewed.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
This is it exactly. I haven't been willing to add strangers yet, but the majority of people on Mafia Wars have the required 500 friends, I mean seriously, 500, nobody actually knows that many people.
I do now! :-)
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
If I added everyone I ever met, including summer camp, I probably would.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I assigned all of my "game friends" into their own group and then used Facebooks group security to limit the personal information that they can see.
Does that actually work at the moment? A few months ago myself and a friend had a play with those features and no matter what settings he used I kept being able to see everything I could before we started. Admittedly we didn't report the issues nor have we bothered re-testing (so maybe our experience is just a fluke or a temporary issue at the time).
When are we going to see real, site-agnostic social graph? How about encryption-based login? Any plans for a bank to let me use a third-party tool to view my finances using OFX or another similar protocol, but based on the third-party asking for permission and me granting it on the bank website? What about data portability: when can I have local databases for all this data that will sync securely and automatically with cloud-based databases (and allowing for merges where both the site and I have write permission)?
It seems like most of the Web 2.0 innovation has focused on making Web 1.0 fast and pretty. Where the bloody hell are the data-driven innovations that actually level the playing field and make the web more democratic?
How does he know that all that "personal info" is real? I don't do "social networking" but it seems to me some might find it amusing to create an account with plausible but fake "personal info" and then "friend" away.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I must be in the minority. If I don't know a person I won't add them as a friend. Heck I've gone through my friend's list and purged out people I don't talk to or in other instances strongly dislike from way back in high school. I also don't play Mobwars or Farmville which is just a needless waste of time. I avoid them because I would become engrossed in it.
Why doesn't facebook offer https to sign in with? Why do we sign in over a insecure web connection?
Everyone is worried about the "privacy" and the most blatant privacy guard is not even implemented.
all smoke and mirrors to cover the real issues..
Facebook sucks and I do not understand why they get such great raves..
Sure I can talk to someone in norway big deal..
My friends don't give a shit what type of toilet paper I wiped with and I don't care what they wiped with.
really it seems like another form of attention whoreism to me
ps: my captcha was construe how ironic..
"The older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young."
Breaking news, those who have lived longer have created more social connections than those who have not.
Pretty cool idea, personally, I really don't restrict what information I show, but to be honest, always click ignore application on the friend requests for apps... I only see a small number of them anymore.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Keep in mind that the game itself still has access to all of your information. The Facebook terms of service prohibits the game from using or storing that information for anything not game-related, but there's nothing other than the honor system and Facebook's vague threats to occasionally enforce the rules that prevents it from doing so. The API itself will happily grant access to everything, whether the game needs it or not.
Your best bet, if you must play FB games, is to maintain an entirely separate profile just for that purpose, and put nothing personally identifiable on it.
I think you can blame Mafia Wars, Farmville
Thanks for reminding me. I need to harvest my crops!
I fear the Y2038 bug
That's why I use the Privacy settings. The people I add for those stupid Facebook games I put in a special group that sees none of my personal information. Just access to the game and no more. The games own websites provide instructions on doing so usually as a sticky on the very forums where people swap Facebook handles!
I personally think the information available to a game should be more restricted and better policed.
Lately I have noticed applications asking for information they didn’t feasibly need, plus asking for the ability to post stories on my wall without prompting me each time. If you don’t give them the permissions they ask for, they ask again until you give permission (or uninstall the app).
I don’t install many applications, but it pisses me off when applications pull this sort of crap. I don’t appreciate having to go to my profile and delete all the updates this app made just because I wanted to do the quiz.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Seriously, have you actaully ever used facebook? Probably half the people I've reconnected with are people I would never have found through online search. Google search won't reveal networks of mutual friends, but it's how a lot of facebook friends find each other.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
The article seems lost entirely in its own little world and clueless whats going on. Facebook IS farmville, vampire wars, pet society, arena, etc. People join those groups, spam them for invites, and get invites in return to build up their game networks. I know one actual person in my list that doesnt do this, shes in high school and actually uses facebook to talk to her friends and complain about homework. Weirdo.
Now to discuss that people who play facebook shouldn't put too much personal information on their profile is a decent topic. But dont come at it so naive.
Isn't that what everyone dose? I need lots of freinds to "help" me play whichever game I am into at the moment. Other people do too. I just assume that when someone I don't know and have no connection to, adds me, it's because they need help with some game or other.
If that person drops me a polite note with the application invite, I usually help out.
I also became friends (The kind you break bread with if you are ever in the same town) with several people I met throgh FB games.
I also add every local political leader I see on FB and occasionally a celebrity who has a personal account (as opposed to the PR firm managed "fan page"). Just for the hell of it.
In all this, I have no problem with obvious fakes like "Syler Petrely" or one of the 500+ "Bob Marley"s. I post info to my account that I would feel comfortable putting in a newspaper. I conduct no financial transactions throgh FB or the email address I use for FB (Facebook is that account's only purpose)
So even a complete takeover of my FB account would be just annoying. Not painful. I wonder though. How defective is FB if simply being on your friend list allows someone to do anything to you or your account? Tag you in a dirty picture perhaps?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Some of my best friends are rubber ducks and cats!
That's a trust by default rule. You're relying on Facebook to get the security right, or just to be sure that you keep up with any changes they make to their security model. If I don't know somebody, then they don't get to be on my friend list. And if an app needs access to my personal information, then I block it too. This Mafia thing looks like fun, but the expense is too high.
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=721
In practice, this probably doesn't matter, as long as you don't spam or start making alts, but it's something that has thus far made me uneasy enough to not make that "work account" lest my primary account get banned.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Heck I've gone through my friend's list and purged out people I don't talk to or in other instances strongly dislike from way back in high school.
Personally, I think its irresponsible of your friend to have given you the kind of access necessary to remove people from his or her list.
Really, if you are worried about people having your information, why give it to them? It is a valid question. It would be like me changing my /. account name to JohnSmith241995 or something like that.
It is the internet. Give the information you want to, and if you give too much, then, uh, I guess maybe you might not want to.
The world is how you make it
Not only do I not even belong to facebook, but I'm posting anonymously to brag about it!
Most people list their birthday, but that is identifying information, so I leave it off.
None of the photos we tag of him reveal his face - we find pictures of normal college activities (parties, football games, etc.) and tag a guy who's turned the wrong way, standing in the distance, or whatever. There are about 100 of these photos and none of them are of the same person.
I think he currently has more Facebook friends than I do. Girls will constantly accept his friend requests, especially if they have at least one friend in common. Each time we chat with someone we use his created persona and 99% of the people never call us out on not being a real person. I can't count the number of times a girl has accepted an invitation such as the following:
"heeay gurl u comin 2 ma paaartay?"
We've acquired dozens of numbers (never used, obviously) and made vague promises to meet up with these girls.
It's scary, really. Imagine how easy it would be for a predator to create an online persona that is NORMAL? When this guy, who's status is regularly updated with lines such as "ayyy yo cause when i git crunk i like to toke...yaa digg??/? ahhaahaahh", is able to have even one successful conversation.
If I don't recognize the name and the friend doesn't leave a note saying how they know me then I push them into the game friend group. Problem solved.
Why don't you just ignore the friend request if you don't know them? I don't understand this - why would you want someone on your friends list if they're not a friend, nor even acquaintance?
Exactly what I was thinking. My parents have a facebook account, and they play Farmville all the time. It cracks me up every time I walk by the computer and see my dad talking in a chat room about his farm. I had to give him a lecture the other day about the security issues related to linking an account with that much of his personal information on it to an online game like Farmville. It's interesting how he originally saw nothing wrong with this, especially knowing how skeptical I know he would be if facebook weren't the intermediary. Anyway, the only reason I heard about it was because my mom complained that some random guy (who I guess my dad added through Farmville) was sending her messages.
Does this smell like Chloroform to you?
Because in many of the Facebooks games, Mafia Wars for example, having a larger clan is a tremendous benefit and the only way people can be in your clan is if you are FB friends with them first.
To be honest I wouldn't have either, if I had thought about it first.
Unfortunately I was new to FB when I stated with Mafia Wars and by the time I figured out what adding all of those people was doing to my privacy I was in too deep to want to start over.
I agree with spamking, I don't use my real contact info for Mafia Wars or Farkle either. My kids are on there, and they might as well just post a sign at their homes which says "Here I am, come and see me!"
Your sig is eerily relevant to your post.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young" - true that for some, it may be eagerness to build up the friends list, but for many of us, just having family members makes for a lot of 'friends'. I have my wife, two children, my brother and sister and their kids, my Uncle and his kids and some of his grandkids, I have my other uncle and his kids... so, as you get older, the family tree keeps expanding, and the friends list grows... you have to worry when the list shrinks due to attrition!!!
nothing to see here, move along.
Seriously, it's just a breach of privacy anyway. Who cares about digg, twitter and all those things from the serious people?
... I ain't got no friends, you insensitive clod!
Not even on Facebook...
I perform poetry and music, and give workshops on various topics. Many of my Facebook "friends" are people who have seen me perform or attended a workshop. When I get a friend request from someone I don't know, I assume they fall into one of those categories.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
For inventing the Internet !!
And in other news, older cars have more mileage than newer cars - update at 11!
Younger people are looking out for their parents. Older people aren't. Also older people have more friends. They've had more time to accumulate. Further, old people are less biased about who they connect to. If you approached somebody at a dinner party, do you think an older person or a younger person would be more open?
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
Except Facebook apps are harvesting all your personal info and anyone who is your friend, whether they have added the application or not. It's the reason my Application Block List is so long, and I'm not even sure that works to block everything.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
When posting things to facebook I usually limit pictures etc to "friends of friends". I like to think my friends are just as selective on who they add as friends as I am. The whole web-of-trust-thing.
By adding everyone you shred that web. Imagine someone stalking a friend of you. Instead of stalking him/her directly, they try to add friends from her friendlist to get close to him/her.
Adding people you don't know is stupid.
Harald
The thing is, there are all sorts of reasons why someone might admit someone they don't know - even a frog - to their circle of "friends" and it's also fairly obvious why older people have more "friends".
To take the second first: older people have been alive longer. They've met more people: at work, in clubs, etc. People from various layers of their pasts find them. There are people in my Facebook friends list who probably never will be sufficiently interested to speak to me again - but who are nonetheless curious what's become of me (or I of them) in the 30 years since we last met. The cliques 'n' crap from high school eventually give way to a sort of neutral curiosity.
To the first point: admitting a frog to your friends list doesn't necessarily mean you're being trusting. It may mean you don't post stuff to Facebook that you wouldn't want to be public. It may mean that rather than vet people closely you're using Facebook more like LinkedIn - as a way to build a network of contacts. Or it may mean that the only reason you use FB is so that people won't bug you about why you're not using FB and you don't GAF because you never post anything anyway.
wg
Kind of small as in "holy crap, it's amazing how you can analyze the patterns of a few to determine the patterns of the many," you mean. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of statistics should know that 200 is more than enough to suggest a high degree of confidence. You ought to take note when the number drops below thirty, because that's when your sample size really begins to affect the usability of the data.
You decide your own level of involvement, amirite?
That's why I don't use my real contact info for my Mafia Wars account . . . I'm not sure why anyone would.
Your post made me question myself, now that Facebook claims 350M users, is it really 350M people?
It would be very difficult to make accurate statistics if puppets are not taken into account.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
I know 500 friends who have 500 friends each.