Facebook, Others Giving User Private Data To Advertisers

superapecommando sends along a Wall Street Journal report that indicates that Facebook's privacy troubles may be just beginning. "Facebook, MySpace, and several other social networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent. The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code. ... Several large advertising companies ... including Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it. ... The sites may have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards. ... Those policies have been put forward by advertising and Internet companies in arguments against the need for government regulation."

Comments

Cue

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the "privacy is dead" asshats, who for some reason are determined to purge the natural human desire for privacy that has existed since the dawn of human evolution.

Re:Cue

[tpstigers]

Don't be stupid. Privacy isn't dead. It just that privacy is - and has always been - up to the individual. The issue we keep running into here is that people expect someone else to protect their privacy. If you want real privacy, it's up to you to secure it and maintain it.

Re:Cue

[Abcd1234]

I don't have a facebook account, and I don't have any idiot farmville playing friends

Are you sure? For all you know, right now, a friend or relative of yours is posting pictures of you on Facebook, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's a brave new world.

surprise, surprise

[Tom]

Is anyone surprised? As soon as companies grow so big that consumers can not easily vote with their wallet anymore, or their offers are non-monetary for the end-user (who is the product, instead of the consumer), there's no reason they would take privacy seriously. I'm pretty sure the bad PR is the only reason they worry about it at all.

In advertisement, all commercial participants conspire against the consumer.

I'm not a friend of government (especially our current one here in Germany, a bunch of monkies could do a better job) - but I don't see which other organisation could regulate these commercial big players anymore. Certainly not the consumers, who despite Internet and all theoretical options of banding together simply have 1000 other things in their lives to worry about, so finding a sufficiently large group of people who care about this particular thing enough to make a difference is as hard as ever.

Re:surprise, surprise

[AnonymousClown]

I think most people don't even think about it or don't think they have anything to hide - until their identity gets stolen or they get fired for a post on their Facebook page.

Unfortunately, throughout the Western World, we have worried so much about government trampling our rights that we completely ignored the private sector.

To head off the "well, just don't do business with them!" posts, I'd like to point out that Facebook stated in their policies that they wouldn't do this and secondly that every service, whether it's cell phones or internet sites, has a little statement buried in their terms that states they can change the terms anytime they want.

I really hope Facebook gets sued over this a loses and a precedent is set over internet website policies - in the consumer's favor.

Re:Unused

[commodore64_love]

Ha! Funnny.

I honestly don't care if advertisers learn that I like collecting old computers and other hobbies. I'm more concerned about the info leaking to people with REAL power over me. Like a prospective employer (hmmm, he is pro-gun - don't wanna hire him), or the US government (this guy sold Final Fantasy 7 for $150 and didn't pay taxes).

Re:Unused

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

Similar to Google's "accidental" sniffing of public wifi -- they didn't use it, so that makes it all right.

Bloody criminals.

"Unaware" Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

> Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it.

Yeah, right.

If you look closely at Google/Yahoo advertising tags - they are proactively trying to catch (via Javascript) and log (in GET parameters to their server) current URL to which their ads are served. Unless you fake referer AND use NoScript extension, you're giving them this data. And I have a strong diesbelief that they do not store this data.

Yahoo and Google are logging huge part of your Web browsing history this way.

I guess they've coded it by accident?

Re:So (yet again) I must ask

[Rob the Bold]

Why would I want to use Facebook at all if I value my privacy? And a follow up which is probably more to the point, with all the shit Facebook has pulled, why are you bitching about it if you're still a user?

Maybe you do value your privacy with some (strangers, employers) more than with others (friends, family). I think that privacy, like intimacy is not a binary thing. There are people whose hand you wouldn't even shake, folks you would hug in public and people who've seen you naked, right? (I'm being rhetorical here, you don't need to answer that.)

I take your point about facebook, though. They don't act trustworthy and do act too capriciously. Nevertheless, people would like to expose some of themselves, just not all of it and just not to everybody. Facebook happens to be extremely popular: many of your friends are there. Bitching about facebook's crap is actually quite reasonable. You'd like them to change to avoid the hassle of finding another alternative. They probably won't, given their history, but they certainly won't if no one says anything.

Re:Unused

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you get it? You can't trust *anyone* with too much information. People say they don't care if marketers know all about them, but if it is allowed to get to the point that advertisers have complete profiles on people for marketing purposes (and things like facebook are very near to making that possible) then what stops them from sharing that info with the government, or selling it to employers checking on an employees private life, etc, etc. Do you think the advertisers would turn down the extra money? Do you think they would decline to do it because it's unethical? We're you born yesterday??

Re:Unused

[Archangel Michael]

"Similar to Google's "accidental" sniffing of public wifi -- they didn't use it, so that makes it all right."

I don't get this one. WHY is it wrong? Didn't we /.ers love the stories of wardriving years ago, when people posted the location of open WiFis so we could leach off them?

Look, if you don't want Google Doing it, because they are "BIG CORP", then don't do it yourself. There is no difference between the idea of wardriving individually, and Google doing, except for scale.

I don't have a problem with Google Wardriving. NONE.

Also, Internet is NOT secure. There is no privacy on the internet. NONE. Everything that makes the internet useful to you, is a way to make it easier to track you.

What you put up on the internet is there for everyone else to see, forever. Even if it "delete" it, it probably lives somewhere on some server or another.

We might as well get used to this paradigm and either not do anything on the internet, or just learn to be careful knowing the whole time that we can't be careful enough.

I'm not all that concerned with what is on my facebook, as it is all public info anyways. And I don't fear stalkers, they should fear me. ;)