Facebook Adds Friend Stalker Tool

nk497 writes "Facebook has added a new tool that brings together conversations and photos between friends onto a single page, but — as usual — has crossed the creepy line. Not only does clicking the See Friendship tool let users view photos, comments and events shared between themselves and their friend, it also offers a search tool to do the same between any two mutual friends, making it easy to see everything any two people have ever said to each other Facebook. As usual, the site should have tested the function out on their users first, with one saying: 'I've always wanted this! And yes, I'm a creepy stalker.' Also, as usual for Facebook, all users are automatically opted in, and there's currently no obvious way to turn it off."

Comments

Put this on the list

[Anonymous Coward]

of reasons not to use Facebook.

As if you needed more.

Re:Put this on the list

[biryokumaru]

No, put this on the growing list of pointless complaints about Facebook. If people didn't post idiocy on the internet, they wouldn't have to be so afraid of people seeing their idiocy.

Re:Put this on the list

[cynyr]

But it's not just me i have to make sure that doesn't post idiocy, but everyone that i do anything socially with. Since facebook has no way for me to remove photos of me posted by other users. The best i can do is remove the tag, but not remove me from the photo or my name from the comments, or have the photo taken down entirely.

Re:Put this on the list

[rufty_tufty]

Hang on, what happened to the Geek's warcry of "Information wants to be free"?

So the big problem here is that if you have ever been an idiot or done something you'd rather forget then either you or one of your friends will purposely or accidentally post it on the internet in a way that can be linked back to you.
I think like the record companies cannot put the genie of digital music/mp3s/filesharing back ion the bottle we as a society can't put all of personal privacy back in the bottle without also losing personal freedom. Unless you want draconian laws restricting information - which I thought was the antithesis of the internet - then we have to accept that if we do embarrassing stuff in public then that will stick with us.
But that's no different from real life, if while drunk I told my best friend's wife I thought she was hot then that will stay with me for the rest of my life too. The difference is strangers/employers can get that information too, but remember they can do it for everyone so the lesson for me here is not to not make mistakes but to make less mistakes than the next guy and to learn from those lessons sooner.
That said I wouldn't want to employ someone who didn't have a good time at University, If they didn't know how to have a party and relax then I'd be concerned they were a well rounded person. So seeing photos of someone drunk off their face could well help you if you met me interviewing you.
The door swings both ways...

Re:Put this on the list

[Pojut]

Two things:

1. If you engage in social activity with the kind of people that would post incriminating photos of you, you need to find a different group of friends.

2. If you engage in incriminating activities in a public place where other people can take photos of you, you need to be smarter about where you engage in incriminating activities.

Re:Put this on the list

[node 3]

You seem to be confused. Just because you'd like to keep something from general knowledge doesn't mean it's incriminating.

Re:Put this on the list

[CowboyBob500]

If you lose your job because of a photo posted on Facebook, you have an asshole employer who cannot distinguish the difference between your work life and private life, and you probably ought to get a new job anyway - unless the photo is of you doing something illegal, in which case perhaps you shouldn't have done that in the first place. Still finding it hard to have any sympathy here.

Re:Put this on the list

[gknoy]

If you lose your job in a manner that makes you say "well I was better off without those jerks", you're still unemployed. Sour grapes don't pay the bills.

Re:Put this on the list

[grumbel]

Just because its "on the Internet" doesn't mean its viewable for anybody, my whole mail is "on the internet" after all and that is only viewable by me (and google). The problem with Facebook and social networking in general is that they are all extremely bad at telling the user what information is making it to the public or to the friends, so you end up with a lot of involuntary information leaks.

Re:Put this on the list

[Culture20]

Please tell me, what perfectly innocuous things might your friends take pictures of that would ruin your job/life/whatever.

If you drive a Pepsi truck, and your friend takes a photo of you drinking Coke Zero. (Or the other way around)

Re:Put this on the list

[slim]

In most states, employment is "at will".

You can be fired for showing up at work early, because you boss doesn't like the color of your shoes, or just for the heck of it.

This is most certainly not the case in the United Kingdom, and if it's true of the US, it makes me think your legal framework is more than a little backward. Here, there's a short list of fair reasons for dismissal (misconduct, inability to do the job, redundancy etc.) and if the employer can't demonstrate one of those, they can't dismiss you.

OTOH I have seen American colleagues have their employment ended on a whim on several occasions, so nothing surprises me.

Still, the answer is to campaign to firm up your employment law, not spend your life trying to hide stuff from your boss.

Re:Put this on the list

[lgw]

Yes, in most places in America you don't lose your fundamental freedoms just because you become an employer, though we do keep chipping away at that idea.

Re:Put this on the list

[clone53421]

Yes, an at-will employee can be fired for “any reason or no reason at all” – but if you were fired for an illegal reason and you can prove this or at least back it up pretty substantially, then you have a pretty good case for a lawsuit.

It works both ways, though... an at-will employee can also leave for pretty much any reason.

Employees who are contracted in for a longer period of time, on the other hand, will also have terms in their contract that ensure their employer can’t dismiss them for no good reason... but in return for that security, they give up their ability to leave that job whenever they want to find work elsewhere.

It’s a give-and-take, and personally I think it’s better this way than having the government dictate to companies whether they can or can’t hire or fire someone.

Re:Put this on the list

[eugene ts wong]

Also, who's going to believe you at the next round of job interviews, when you say, "He fired me because my car was messy?".

Re:Put this on the list

[HeckRuler]

As much as I ought to get a new job where the boss isn't an asshole, where the users understand software development, where flextime is acceptable, where I'm paid an extra $20K, in an industry that isn't powered by fear, controlled by foreign influence, fueled by vice, or run on questionable economic principles, where nearby housing is affordable, and the neighbors don't suck, where they run Linux, and code in C, under the GPL, where my skills are honed and expanded, where the commute is painless and cheap, where my future employment is in my hands, in a city my wife can find a job with similar properties, where Sharepoint has been banished from the land, where they pay for overtime but don't ask for it often, where they're loose with vacation and don't mind weeks of unpaid leave, where buzzwords earn you slap across the face, where the mythical man month is understood, where the chairs are comfortable, the carpet is clean, and temperature doesn't have a 20 degree swing.

As much as I ought to go get that job, it turns out that they're not hiring at this moment. I guess we can't all have the perfect life delivered to us on a silver platter. So you can take your apathy, add it as a bullet point on your resume, and shove it up your ass.

Re:Put this on the list

[QRDeNameland]

Please tell me, what perfectly innocuous things might your friends take pictures of that would ruin your job/life/whatever.

How about a picture of you at a cancer patient support group, which is then discovered by a prospective employer that is concerned about keeping the cost of employee health benefits down? Even if such discrimination is technically illegal, do think such knowledge couldn't affect your ability to get a job?

Nonissue

[Schezar]

If this information was already extant, and this functionality is just an aggregation and compilation of said extant data, then there is no problem. No new information is being provided: public information has simply been correlated, something any person could do on their own at any point prior.

Making already legally accessible data more readable is not in any way wrong. Anyone who fears or is angry about this is in for a shock over the next decade or so as technology reveals all sorts of already public things about them, and younger generations simply won't care.

Re:Nonissue

[ridgecritter]

This seems a bit like saying that because a computer is just a really fast abacus, there's really no difference between them or their effects.

At some point, mere quantitative increase becomes a qualitative difference.

If it now takes 2 seconds to do with Facebook's new tool what used to take 2 days, that's a qualitative difference (degradation of privacy) that people might reasonably be concerned about.

Re:Nonissue

[Schezar]

Ahh, but our entire society's expectations of privacy have been unreasonable for the better part of the last several decades. This false sense of privacy has existed solely due to the inefficiency of access to public data, much in the same manner that entire localized business models disappeared with the advent of national television and freeways.

It's a nonissue only because the work, both in law and expectations, to actually address the fact that we're finally having to come to terms with the fact that there is a lot of perfectly legally accessible information about all of us in the wild will never be undertaken by our government or our society, and technological workarounds will evolve far faster than any legislation or agreement can. The point is moot. If Facebook didn't do it themselves, someone with a screenscraper and a database would.

If you can see it, you can correlate it. This is a nonissue only because there is no possibility of a solution for anyone who is upset.

Re:Nonissue

[morgan_greywolf]

The point is moot. If Facebook didn't do it themselves, someone with a screenscraper and a database would.

Quite correct. And it would be even simpler than that. It's Web site. At the end of the day, Facebook presents your browser with HTML and JavaScript. A competent individual could write a script to do this in very little time with any modern scripting language -- Python, Perl, Ruby, or [insert your favorite here]. Or they could create a mashup with Google Web Toolkit. In any respect, HTML is, more or less, easily parseable programmatically.

Those griping have no room to do so. You provided the data to Facebook, and explicitly or implicitly, you have Facebook permission to display this data to other users. You have no idea how these users will end up using the data. If you have a problem with this, or any other aspect, you should terminate your Facebook account. Now. No buts. I don't want to hear it.

Re:Nonissue

[whoever57]

as technology reveals all sorts of already public things about them, and younger generations haven't realized they need to care yet

FTFY

Re:Nonissue

[node 3]

Stalking can be illegal, even if the individual actions aren't. It's all about the effects you are having on another person.

I don't know about IndustrialComplex's specific example, but his point stands. Privacy is pretty important and shouldn't just be ceded because it's difficult to objectively define where the line should be drawn between invasion of privacy and public knowledge.

Privacy on the internet

[Dancindan84]

Here's a helpful Venn diagram for people who still aren't sure:
http://graphjam.memebase.com/2010/10/25/funny-graphs-never-forget/

If people seem stalkerish..

[jDeepbeep]

Why the worry about your "friends" doing stalker-ish things to you? Didn't you accept their request (or they yours) based on some level of familiarity and/or trust? It's not strangers watching you. It's people you agreed to let into your little online life.

Re:If people seem stalkerish..

[Tom]

That is the #1 problem with Facebook (and almost all other social networking sites): You only get a binary setting.

I have a few close friends, who by all means could see whatever they want to, if they'd ask I would tell them anyways.

But I also have a lot of not-so-close friends, acquaintances, people I'm friendly with. Whatever you want to call it, there are degrees of friendship. And Facebook doesn't recognize that.

Re:If people seem stalkerish..

[Tim C]

You don't use Facebook because of the number of people you've added as friends not based on some level of familiarity and/or trust? Seems to be a PEBKAC to me...

Aren't we over Facebook yet?

[cindyann]

Personally I think it jumped the shark about two months ago.

I rarely look at it.

I've filtered out about half my "friends" because if I wanted to know what they had on their toast this morning I'd sign up for twitter and follow their stupid tweets.

The AntiSocial Network

[NYMeatball]

I'm as big of a facebook hater as the next guy, but it seems like Slashdot's favourite pastime is getting on a social network for being, well, social.

If their inference is that facebook should become an antisocial network, I think Slashdot honestly has that market segment covered pretty well already.

Re:The AntiSocial Network

[Anubis IV]

I don't think anyone wants it to be antisocial. What I do think people want, however, is to have their privacy respected and to have control over it. As I recall, I registered back when Facebook still had around 50K users (my university was one of its first big breaks), and the settings I configured then in no way reflect the reality of my privacy today, largely due to unexpected and unwelcome changes Facebook made over the years which automatically opted me in to having information publicly available that I had explicitly expressed a desire to keep private in the past. It's that sort of behavior that gets them ragged on and trashed in the media. If Facebook would just stop making public information that we told it to keep private, I think it wouldn't be getting nearly as much bad press.

Re:The AntiSocial Network

[Anubis IV]

You're so very right and so very wrong. The adage is absolutely correct, of course, and it does bear repeating (despite the fact that it has sunk in with me, thanks, and I only post data that is fine with being spread). Your other point is very wrong, however. We still need to place the blame due Facebook at its feet, and hold it accountable for the mistakes it makes. There's plenty of blame to go around however, and if people are posting videos, images, or text that they may later regret, the blame falls on them too for being stupid enough to do so, even if they thought it was private information. Both parties are at fault, but "Internet user is stupid" is not nearly as interesting or unexpected as "major company betrays user's trust (again)." Nor was it the point of my previous comment.

As an aside, speaking personally, I know it's popular to attack folks with highly-modded comments by making assumptions about them, but I only post things that I'm fine having out on the Internet as a whole, should that ever happen to me. Even so, I have a preference that the things I specify as private should remain private, not because I have anything to hide (I live my life in such a way that I will never have to answer to a future employer, spouse, or child for a photo or video that was taken of me (i.e. I simply don't do compromising things)), but because I cherish privacy. I'm fine sharing my daily life with those around me, and I'm fine if that information does go public since there's nothing in my life that I'm ashamed of. I just would prefer that it didn't. It's a simple matter of preferences for me, and I would prefer that Facebook honor them as they said they would.

Simple solution: email

[noidentity]

Also, as usual for Facebook, all users are automatically opted in, and there's currently no obvious way to turn it off.

And as usual, Facebook is discussed as if it weren't opt-in. There are plenty of other ways of communicating with people.

Re:Simple solution: email

[clydemaxwell]

aside from whether anyone considers facebook necessary, the issue is that the service they signed up for, and the service they now use, have different privacy issues. so it is now an opt-out procedure every time they add some new security debacle. the opt-out is, if you're lucky, a setting. if unlucky, it means leaving facebook.
I myself have what I call a read-only facebook, I post nothing and comment rarely. It is similar to twitter (but more universally used). Still, I get concerned about who can see my friendship network.

Oh, I think I see the problem

[SmallFurryCreature]

Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

ws: Facebook Adds Friend Stalker Tool

Gosh, within one line, asking people to join Facebook and then yet the Xth article about how dangerous facebook is for your privacy.

We know this, but we don't care because we care more about our friend count.

Facebook is a nudist colony. Fine if you want to air your tonker but then don't complain people can see it. You can't share all your personal details withour your personal details ending up shared.

I wonder how people who use Facebook and complain about privacy go through life in general:

Omg! I bought this phone with a subscription, but now I do the math I actually end up paying much more for the phone! How can this be?

Oh no, I bought this gadget with monthy payments and now the payments are more then the original price, why!

I borrowed money for my house, now the bank thinks it owns it. Why didn't anyone tell me!

I streaked naked down the high street, now people are claiming they saw me! I didn't know that what I do in public can be seen by others!

I gave a full confession to a cop and now they using it against me in a court of law! Won't someone safe me!

If you do NOT want everyone on facebook to see what you do, don't use facebook. It ain't hard. It is not an essential product. Billions life happy lives without it. You can too. And the first person to claim that it allows them to keep in touch with friends they never bothered to keep in touch with before I will beat until they learn the difference between a friend, a distant aquintance and a stranger.

Re:Oh, I think I see the problem

[StuartHankins]

The difference is that every minor thing can be recorded forever. To use an obvious example, pretend you picked your nose driving down the road one day. The other drivers might have seen it, but in Facebook terms not only does everybody you've ever known see it, but they can choose to send it to their friends and their friends and their friends. You might eventually end up on Tosh.O or something.

At some point you have to say, wow, this is getting out of hand, now I'm paranoid to go out and do things because something might be misinterpreted and come back to haunt me later. When all activity can be recorded and transmitted easily you lose your privacy.

Re:Oh, I think I see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is like having a webcam installed at the nudist colony.

Fearmongering as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

People on Facebook could always see posts between mutual friends (Wall-to-Wall, anyone?). This just expands and cleans up the feature that's always been in place.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Privacy Settings, Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to use the privacy settings or go fuck yourself.

Troll? Maybe. Correct? You know I am.

Billions of dollars are being made off your info

[digitaldc]

It's a pain to turn off all the default features that facebook conveniently opts-in for you. By WHY should we have to?

Some of us are not on Facebook

[betterunixthanunix]

You could always just not be on Facebook -- that strategy has been working just fine for me. I am still in touch with my family, I am still in touch with my friends, and I still get invited to parties.

Re:Solution

[dintech]

That doesn't stop random asshats tagging you in photos.

Re:Solution

[betterunixthanunix]

Or you could delete it, and stop passively encouraging others to be Facebook users.

Remember Wall to Wall?

[rakuen]

Remember when Facebook used to have a Wall to Wall feature? You know, you'd be able to click on someone's post on your wall, and then you'd see every wall post either of you had ever made to each other. I'm pretty sure you could use it on two friends, but this was a while ago and I can't quite remember. I also believe they removed the feature when they added comments on wall posts. If they didn't they sure hid it from me.

Now we have the See Friendship tool. It does... the same thing, pretty much, perhaps a little more extensively. Essentially you're all complaining about Facebook adding a feature they removed earlier out of redundancy. Do you have a right to complain? Yeah, of course you do. However, if you were fine with that feature before, don't you think it's a little hypocritical to criticize Facebook for putting it back in now, just because it's shiny and "new"?

Wall to Wall?

[edmicman]

Hasn't this been around the whole time as "Wall to Wall"? I remember there used to be links where you could see a "Wall to Wall" conversation between yourself and your friends, and you could change the PID in the URL to other mutual friends and see conversations between them. I envisioned making an app to basically do the same with an interface....I thought it would help in searching for conversations. There currently is no good search tool for stuff on facebook as far as I know. For example, I'll remember having someone post a link to me, or mentioning something in a comment but I have no way of finding that. If I could view all of the history between them and myself, I could at least ctrl-f for it.

Good to see Facebook making this easier!

its a different issue than you think it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Data aggregation attacks http://books.google.com/books?id=Y9sCjLBKtzgC&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258&dq=classified+data+aggregation&source=bl&ots=bJ55DKAE7w&sig=s53j8mXqwAYQFH4-IJA1SgyYDgY&hl=en&ei=leDKTPHCGoT68AbZr6nHAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=classified%20data%20aggregation&f=false are a genuine threat and one of the reasons the military objects to Wikileaks release of classified documents which per document contain no information that would appear to merit being classified. (grr, the civilian population was a lot better educated about the existence of aggregation attacks when we were fighting in WW I and WW II).

The issue here is not that Facebook has automated aggregation of the data you have permission to access. The real issue is that Facebook does not provide the ability (or makes it functionally inaccessible) to apply proper, fine-grained, access permissions to the data you share with any one person.

Re:100% dead on

[Monkeedude1212]

blaming facebook is just shifting responsibility and personal accountability away from you when things go wrong because you weren't discreet

If only the system works like you described. Like someone said earlier, you have more to worry about from OTHER people's posts than you really do your own. Let's say I make a Facebook page - but I don't enter any information but my name and photo. I don't add any of my friends, I basically be a social outcast and hermit on Facebook.

Facebook still allows people to tag "nothings" in photos, so they can tag me in a photo and I won't get ANY notification because the Tag itself won't like to my page - instead it'll just say my name when they hover over it. A potential employer does some research on me - and they find that I have a facebook account but can't see anything but my picture. They then continue their goolge search and see a random picture someone put up of me with my tag on it and know its me because of the photo.

Damn - all I did was enter my name and a good photo of myself - and my reputation got ruined outside of my control.

"Stalker tool"?

[Beerdood]

Oh come on now, Facebook has always been a stalker's paradise. A stalker will meticulously look at someone's profile anyway - how does this help them? They're gonna see everything their "stalkee" posts already.

This only really a helps stalkers stalking multiple people - that way they can see all the juicy details both stalkees are saying to each other

What?

[canajin56]

Google is awesome for letting people search the web. Facebook is ultimate evil for letting you search Facebook. If you posted information publically, that all your facebook friends can read...in what way did you have an expectation that your facebook friends wouldn't read it? Were you hoping it would get lost in the flood of bullshit and nobody would read it? Really? You were relying on signal:noise ratio for privacy, rather than actually sending a PM? That's beyond absurd.

Re:100% dead on

[GeckoX]

You know, once upon a time a person could make a mistake or do something they regretted that would be forgotten and never become an issue. You really want that pic that some 'friend' took at a college party and posted tagged with your name to still pop up on searches when you're 40 something looking for a new job?

Is it no longer OK to make mistakes and have them forgotten?

The number of posts in this thread that are basically saying 'be perfect all the time and you'll have nothing to worry about, or else suck up the consequences' is absolutely shocking.

Sure, if _I_ choose to post something online about myself then I will live with the consequences of doing so. But that is not what this is about. Not even a little bit. (Is it just me or is this thread getting very Orwellian?)

Problem here specifically is that there is this online social community out there that a ton of people use. A lot of people carry out all forms of conversations on it. Sometimes two people will even have a conversation between themselves discussing someone else with the intent that the someone else won't be able to see it, at least that's the way it was the other day when they had the conversation. Now lo and behold, for example, your SO knows all about the exciting trip you have planned as a surprise for the weekend! (See, doesn't have to be about getting fired over some drunken party pic now does it?)

Kids today, so used to their freedoms being given away by the powers that be that they take it for the norm and now are totally willing, or worse, expect that, privacy is to be given away or be non existent as well!

Anyways, for my own self, just another tick on the reasons not to Facebook list.

Re:100% dead on

[lgw]

Why would you mind people seeing those?

Because not everyone has the same values as you and your friends. I know that may come as a shocker, but different people have different deeply-held beliefs about what is moral and what is not. You may not even know what your employer (or potantial employer) considers deeply wrong/offensive until it's too late.

I keep my private and professional lives as separate as I an. That includes not having a Facebok account, and never posting anything, really, under my own name on the internet. There's just no need for it.

Privacy on the Internet?...

[skiman1979]

If you don't want something seen on the front page of the newspaper, don't post it online.

I think as long as this tool abides by the privacy settings on your Facebook account, it should be ok. If you don't want people seeing your communications on Facebook, why have them as a friend? Or put them in a group that doesn't have access to certain areas. If you want communication between you and another friend to be private, use a more private means of communication. Secret posts to your mistress don't belong on a Facebook wall post.

The information this tool makes available is already available anyway. If you're concerned about one of your Facebook friends having access to all of that information, why not just remove them as a friend?