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Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public
jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."
It's a b****.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I am really worried about the fact that Facebook has access to data such as people's real name (that's the point of it, right?), IP addresses, friends' lists, and other info. It worries me enough on a personnal level, so I'll never register, but what worries me more is on the macro level. Even if such company did not want to 'do evil' with this tremendous amount of info, I feel that the power they posess is ultimately too big to be own by a for-profit company.
"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"
I have spent the best part of the week trying to adjust my facebook profile to some level of discreteness that I am comfortable with. Have been very unhappy with the "all or nothing" choices, and have started just simply deleting content. I feel a little better, because now I am sure the settings will get some fine-tuning.
Just for fun:
http://www.facebook.com/pertelote
And this is after I have locked down as much as I can without insulting my family and classmates.
I clicked the link in the summary and I didn't find any pictures. So after a quick search I found this http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-private-photos-2009-12#with-girlfriend-priscilla-chan-from-her-album-moments-have-you-seen-a-sweeter-thing-today-probably-not-1 Enjoy!
takes on another outfit.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
He definitely should have left them public. He should've made it look as though he meant to do that and left them on. Somebody will have downloaded them all anyway.
"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg
I think it says a lot about his personality that he posted to his newsfeed that he meant to post the pictures, then somehow the pictures mysteriously disappear. Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small. If there ever was a security breach would facebook ever admit to it?
I vaguely remember automatically being "friends" with mark zuckerberg when I originally signed up for facebook eons ago... (This was before "fans" existed...).
In any case, I wouldn't think someone like mark would want most of his pictures private.. it is his site after all!
Note to self: think before clicking links to private pictures of nerd.
Not unless they were legally liable for it and also had a decent chance of being sued at that. But that's pretty much standard operating procedure for any IT company.
I would not be surprised if PR suggested he take the pictures down just because people THOUGHT there was a security problem because some of them were available to the public. I would also not be surprised if there was a problem and he lied to make Facebook look better so as to try to keep their reputation (read: investors) looking good. I'm not sure we can really surmise much about his ego from this though given that his actions may largely be pressured by what Facebook needs than what his ego desires.
Well, that's par for the course, isn't it? Naive "I have nothing to hide" never lasts long when the attention comes. Even people who are in the showbiz don't want everybody rummaging around in their private lives. Can you imagine how Zuckerberg's friends reacted to that kind of scrutiny?
Banks won't admit to it, when they have a breach. I doubt Facebook will.
[name] dislikes facebook's new privacy alert that by default would have made my facebook LESS secure... *rolleyes*
Today's status update is a link to this article with my comment "Oh, the irony!"
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Facebook might be the social network giant but it's a really pointless site. It's more about showing off how many friends you have who most of you probably haven't met.
Joining groups who's point is to see how many people join the group and most of all showing off your pics and status in life.
I do have a facebook account but I haven't updated it in 3 years which is about when I made it. If you want to keep your life private don't put it on the web. How hard is it to just pass a USB key or pass a memory key and let your real friends see your pics / status or anything else you feel like sharing.
Facebook might be the social giant of the internet but it's also a giant waste of time and resources. Don't complain that your pics get stolen, released or broadcast. If you really want to keep your info private then don't put it on the net.
Any system which defaults to "share everything" is a fail. You should never have to opt-out, only opt-in, to release data. Otherwise it's way too easy to screw up and show something private to everyone (as in this example).
Oh, the irony! :-)
Thank God I don't use FB (and never ever will).
As far as I can tell there are two options for privacy on Facebook
(1) Be 'searchable' which means some information about yourself should be included otherwise the search is useless
(2) Not be 'searchable'. Everything you have is private and between you and the friends you have
I have option (1) and I haven't had any problems with it yet.
Please tell me specifically what it is about Facebook that is violating your privacy?
Actually, there's a "Preview my profile" in the privacy settings - it shows you what the general public sees and you can modify it so that it shows you what any specific person sees.
Not sure how long they've had that, but I got a nasty surprise the first time I used that, having previously thought my profile was locked down pretty tightly.
This last debacle was pretty disgraceful, though - sending out a message telling everyone they should change to the "recommended" setting of making everything public by default and even calling private settings "old facebook" rather than actually describing them as what they were. For some reason they still don't realise they're not Twitter.
I love it when I read a story about another story that is all about photos, yet neither story contains or links to any.
or else!
When I hovered my mouse of the "old facebook" a tooltip was displayed that showed what the old setting was. But still, not very obvious.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Removing your friends from public view is possible. Instead of privacy settings, just go to your profile and click the pencil icon that magically appears next to "Friends" when you mouse-over. Terrible UI to have this stuff split up and not explained.
My mistake, munging the URL reveals his friends, as pointed out in another comment here: http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck
Thanks for the pointer. I'd been looking all over for that. I'd also suggest checking out the settings on what your friends' apps can see in your profile; it's very open by default.
You used to be able to exclude yourself from the system. Now you can't even opt out of the Facebook API, there is information that is accessible to 3rd party developers as long as your friends install an app. Used to be you could opt out of it though. After this whole debacle I ended up requesting deletion of my facebook account, which should be processed in 10 days.
OverflowingBitBucket likes this.
We all know that Facebook is afraid of Wave. Now why don't they behave like it?
That's a little counterintuitive, thanks for pointing that out.
I love that too! But I can't find the link to become a fan of things like this?
There's been no major hack and subsequent large data leak AFAIK, but Facebook has had countless vulnerabilities, one of which has gone unfixed that allows you to grab someone's private photos, messages and other private information that I discovered and reported over 2 years ago.
I gather many other people who have discovered and reported vulnerabilities have seen a similar story.
You were looking because I don't think it was there before. I previewed my profile the day after the changes, and indeed anyone could see my friends. I just tried it now, and now one can anymore. So either there was a glitch, or they snuck a change in.
Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small.
Considering how much press this generates, it's not exactly a small mistake. This is akin to that guy who used to promote his identify theft prevention business by putting his social security number in his ads, and then eventually getting one or more loans taken out in his name. When much of Mark's business is involved with privacy, he certainly wants to do everything possible to make it appear that the privacy policy that his company sets also works for him, but apparently it doesn't. That's not something he wants to admit.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Hopefully Google will buy FB so we don't have to worry about someone using the data for evil.