Slashdot Mirror
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
Uncheck any Page you don't want to link to. Linking to education and work Pages may also create additional Pages, such as for your major or job title. If you don't link to any Pages, these sections on your profile will be empty. By linking your profile to Pages, you will be making these connections public. [emphasis mine]
You are about to remove this information
If you don't link to any Pages, the following sections on your profile will be empty:
So your options are all or nothing.
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.
How long until identity thieves, 419 scammers & spammers create software that can
trawl sites like facebook for useful info?
Seriously, what are they going to find that will be so useful? "Hello, sir -- I note that you went to the University of Nebraska and worked for a while at Cargill. Because of this, I am interested in repatriating my family's fortune to your bank account, for which you will get a fee." Get real...
The realistic threat of facebook vis a vis privacy is that of your youthful indiscretions being on wide display for coworkers and bosses to see.
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.
You still use Facebook? Call me a troll, but think. Are you being intelligent if you still use Facebook after all this?
After my last Slashdot comment, I deleted my profile. One of the sub-comments explains how to delete it instead of just disabling it.
Banu
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 used to think like that, but the worst thing about facebook privacy is not what you disclose about yourself (which after all is what you choose to disclose and nothing more), but what others publish about you. Here is some news for you: even if you don't have an account, you are probably already on facebook. Unless you live in a cave or avoid social life at all costs, chances are someone already uploaded a picture with you. It's preferable to have an account so you'll usually (though not always...) get to see those photos, comment on them, etc. That's the only reason why I signed up in the first place.
The "real danger" isn't youthful indiscretion. It's profiling in a giant model by Government AND commercial interests in ways that will forever affect your ability to get a job, find insurance or even your ability to freely travel.
How do you build a panopticon, a prison for a society in which real power lies outside of government, in the hands of private commercial and financial interests? Honeypots. Google and Facebook and whatnot. Everyone is so anti-Government, like the stupid Reaganites. That's like being against a small-town cop. He's got the gun, alright - but he works for the man in the big house, at the edge of town. Hired. The enemy isn't Barney Fife - It's Old Man Potter.
How does this relate to Facebook?
You present a real, but minor threat, versus the real evil Facebook represent - along with the darkest nightmare of Google.
Remember, Watson, at IBM supplied tabulation equipment for improving the German Census in the 1930's. Technology was welcomed, and was going to modernize, to improve every German life. Except for a minority or two, of 11 million...
Cypher: "All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead."
Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies. ...
What's interesting about Facebook's lobbying in D.C. is what it spends money on despite its small size. It was the only consumer Internet company out of Google, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple to reach out to intelligence agencies last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms. It has lobbied the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- an umbrella office founded in the wake of Sept. 11 that synthesizes intelligence from 17 agencies including the CIA and advises the President -- for the last three quarters on privacy and federal cyber-security policy. It has reached out to the Defense Intelligence Agency too.
Well, Facebook has always been an "op" http://cryptogon.com/?p=13749
Now, combine those observations with the next two pieces of information:
Virginia Tech Is Building an Artificial America in a Supercomputer
As many as 163 variables, mostly drawn from the U.S. Census, come into play for each synthetic American. Called EpiSimdemics, the model almost perfectly matches the demographic attributes of groups with at least 1500 people, according to Keith Bisset, a senior research associate who works on the simulation's software. The software generates fake people to populate real communities and assigns each person characteristics such as age, education level, and occupation to mirror local statistics derived from the most recent national census. In accordance with the data, some individuals are clustered into families, while others live alone.
Every synthetic household is assigned a real street address, based on land-use information from Navteq, a digital-mapping company. Using data from a business directory, each employed individual is matched to a specific job within a reasonable commute from the person's home. Similarly, actual schools, supermarkets, and shopping centers identified through Navteq's database are also linked to households based on their proximity to the home. When an artificial American goes grocery shopping, the simulation algorithm assigns probabilities that
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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
..that I left that sinking ship (Facebook) a long time ago. It wasn't easy (littorally), but worth it.
FTFY.
:-P
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Unfortunately, for a member of Gen Y, it is not a question of an interest in personal privacy. Facebook has become a legitimate part of our social identity. A great deal of communication and social interaction goes on through Facebook. While I agree that the changes to Facebook are horrendous, deleting my profile is simply not an option if I want to continue to have a full social life - for example, many events/parties/gatherings/whatever are coordinated solely through Facebook, and off the top of my head I cannot think of a single friend of mine that does not have a profile. Not having a profile at this stage would be akin to an 18th-century Frenchman deciding not to go to salons because he thought they were lame. It is simply not an option unless I want to become a pariah.
Of course, the trouble is that Facebook knows how important it has become, and now can essentially do whatever it wants knowing that very few people will ever leave due to the reasons I expressed above.
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.
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.