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Facebook Retroactively Makes More User Data Public
mjn writes "In yet another backtrack from their privacy policy, Facebook has decided to retroactively move more information into the public, indexable part of profiles. The new profile parts made public are: a list of things users have become 'fans' of (now renamed to 'likes'), their education and work histories, and what they list under 'interests.' Apparently there is neither any opt-out nor even notice to users, despite the fact that some of this information was entered by users at a time when Facebook's privacy policy explicitly promised that it wouldn't be part of the public profile."
Actually, there is another category: the uninformed. A lot of people really do not keep up with the latest decisions Facebook is making with regard to personal privacy, or are even aware that Facebook can, at any time, reveal their data. I am referring, of course, to the same sort of people who are not sure what a web browser is or which browser they are using -- which appears to be the overwhelming majority.
Palm trees and 8
Black and white much?
There's such a thing as only giving facebook the information you don't mind being public. I don't give much of a crap who knows who my friends are but at the same time I'm not posting credit card details in my status updates.
Why be on Facebook at all? They don't run it for warm fuzzy feelings. The bulk of the $$$$ is contained in its user data so they'll tap that well more and more as time goes on, not less.
Yeah, some stuff is OK to be public. The stuff I don't want to be public I put "I DON'T WANT THIS INFO TO BE PUBLIC" in the fields. Oh and don't "like" anything you want to keep private.
Facebook is like a friend that can't keep his mouth shut. Don't tell him EVERYTHING, silly people.
I doubt 419 scammers also... Employers maybe... Goverment, yes? The fact that I'm on a number of fanlists that would probably have me labled a radical conservative is not something I want available on my facebook page. (Even if people know by my posts and who know me, etc..) So I went into the profile options and figured I'd "customize" it. Well I changed it to "only me" option and logged out,etc. they still show up. So now the goverment can deploy a robot to crawl facebook and build a map of your "like" links and probably come up with a good profile of you opinion/politics.
Is there a paranoid group I can like too?
Where is the outrage?
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
It's not useless. It's a damn good way to keep in touch with friends all over the planet.
Yes, I know personal web pages, email and (god forbid) the phone is still there, but it turns out the status updates in fb keep just the right amount of info flowing to keep people like me interested.
Email and other forms of contact often get stale, you stop writing, you stop calling after a few months of not seeing each other. FB keeps a minimal level of contact going, and it keeps people together.
I'm prepared to have some of my data mined for that convenience. I doubt very much that identity theives could get very far with what's on there.
I'm amused by the constant uproars people make every time facebook changes something. what the hell do they think the whole point of facebook is? that they are just providing this service for free? this is a classic case of people wanting their cake and eating it too.
meanwhile, government already has complete access to everyone's communication. you don't hear nearly so much about that anymore. I'm a lot more worried about law enforcement abuse than marketing products I might actually want at some point.
In this case, particular bits of data were disclosed to Facebook with the written understanding that they would remain private. That was according to Facebook's own privacy policy. Later, Facebook reneged on this understanding and unilaterally decided to made them retroactively public. They did this without giving anyone a chance to opt-out and there was no period of notice (between announcing this and actually doing it) to give users a chance to remove or edit that data. This is your classic bait-and-switch. They said one thing, got people to accept what they said on good faith, and then they did another thing.
I understand that Facebook wants to make money. Every for-profit corporation wants to make money. However, that doesn't give them the right to use deception and that's what happened here. Reputable companies manage to make profit without making promises they refuse to keep to their users or customers. What Facebook did is like moving the goalposts or changing the rules while the game is being played. Can you understand now why saying "did you think they were providing you a free service" is a strawman and fails to address the actual issue here?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
What's the big deal? This is all information I would share with a random stranger sitting at a bar in an airport. I do use the strictest 'privacy' settings, but that is just to put a little more control over companies using my information for their monetary gain - not because I'm terrified of people finding out about it (why would I put it online if I were?). I don't join groups or post comments regarding politics or anything else one might consider sensitive, but if used correctly, Facebook can be harmless.
Its possible the retroactive parts of these changes are in breach of UK/EU data protection laws. The issue is that a holder of personal data may only use information for the purposes for which it was provided. If the person supplying the data wished to keep it relatively private and Facebook then later make it public without the informed prior consent of the user then there is a probable breach of the regulations.
Of course Facebook will say that they are not based in the EU but they probably do have servers and interests there and gain revenue from EU based advertisers.
The enemies of freedom in our country use the words "liberal" and "conservative" to lump people who are truly trying to effect positive change together with the various groups of screaming man-children depicted with those monikers on television. So since I believe that government should not interfere in people's lives except when fundamental rights are violated, I get lumped together with the Glenn Beckbeast with the word "conservative." I disagree with him and others like him on many points, mostly that there are no outrageous conspiracies to deny people rights.
Words like liberal and conservative are being twisted to deny people the ability to think rationally. In that sense there is a conspiracy and everyone who uses those words is part of it.
Maybe you should retake that class?
We are the product. We're what Facebook sells to advertisers in order to bring in their business. Facebook needs to offer just enough privacy and control to keep most of us, but not so much as to ruin the value of the product.