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Users Sue Google, Facebook, Zynga Over Privacy
Trailrunner7 writes "A raft of class action lawsuits filed in Federal court charge the globe's biggest social networking firms with violating federal communications privacy laws, allowing advertisers to profit from personal information harvested from users. Weeks after the Wall Street Journal blew the whistle on lax data privacy standards on Facebook, a string of class action suits attempt to hold the social networking giant, as well as game company Zynga and Google liable for what the suits contend are lax practices that allow advertisers to harvest personal information on Web users. The suits are seeking monetary damages on behalf of potentially millions of users of the three companies. The suits allege that the users' personal information has been leaked to advertisers and other unauthorized individuals, in violation of the companies' privacy policies and a number of state and federal statues protecting the confidentiality of electronic communications."
users assuming everything is private (I have no idea why)
It's simple, really. Human intuitions about the privacy of their communications developed over the thousands of years before there was an Internet, or even written communication. They're wired that way. So are you, even if on a conscious level you know better. That's why stuff like OTR encryption is so important -- not because you have something to hide, but because it better aligns your intuitions about the confidence of your remarks with reality, and you intuitively know how discreet you need to be.
Who would have thought that posting something to a vast world wide network could result in many people seeing it? It's getting so you can't shout out your front door without people hearing you. You also can't post secrets on billboards without them being read by passers by. What is the world coming to?
Does the billboard have a locked door in front of it that only certain people have a key to?
Facebook does but you know what they did? They decided to allow a second door, this second door didn't require a key but it only let you see a portion of the board. A portion that was previously behind a locked door that you already restricted access to.
Boy, I sure am tired of seeing this old argument trotted out in every one of these articles. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy if you are only connecting to friends. Nobody expects the apps they're playing to be sending private information out to advertisers.
You're a sign of the change happening to posters here. Years ago, this community used to be very pro-piracy. Tor stories used to hit the front page. These days, it seems privacy only matters when it enables risk-free piracy, because it seems like the only time people get pissed off about privacy anymore is when user IPs are requested from ISPs for downloading copyrighted materials.
Do you seriously believe that the mere fact you connect to the internet means all your private information should be distributed to everybody? Does ANYBODY here remember when one of the major appeals of the internet was its anonymity? I guess Google has conditioned you into accepting that everything gets indexed, archived, and sold to advertisers. Even your emails.
It really is true--people can be trained to accept a chipping away at their individuality and their rights if it's done gradually over time.
OTOH, if you make use of a secured storage locker in a public facility you do have some expectation that people walking by are not going to be able to inventory everything you stored there.
Social networking web sites are public storage facilities. Your accounts, being yours and secured by a password, should not be open air cages with mechanical arms for insiders to go sifting through.
Would you use the lockers at the gym if you knew that every moron with an employee badge could go sifting through it or, worse yet, they would accept payments to allow outside third parties to go mining through it?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
DON'T USE FACEBOOK.
Yeah, except that at some point that's like saying "DON'T USE THE WEB". These things have a way of becoming necessary for even entry-level participation in society as a whole. I'm not saying Facebook is there yet, but it looks to be heading in that direction. The time to bring the Zuckerbergs of the world to heel is BEFORE we make their services a part of societal infrastructure.
Take some fucking personal responsibility you god damned nitwits.
In some sense, this is like telling people who voted for Gore to take responsibility for Bush's mess. Facebook effectively has a monopoly, for whatever historical reasons, and the people suing are simply serving notice that the practices of this monopoly are unacceptable. It's easy to take the classic Conservative/Libertarian/Anarchist point of view here, but that view is unworkably simplistic and totally ignores the 'whole is greater than the sum of the parts' aspect of society.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.