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Old Facebook Apps Still Plunder Your Privacy
tcd004 writes "If you added the YouTube Facebook app prior to 2009, you've given YouTube free access to nearly all the data in your profile (as well as many of your friends). But if you install the same app today, it gets very limited access. Older versions of Facebook apps, it turns out, still have 'grandfathered' access to data that the social networking service has restricted for new apps. If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete and reinstall any older apps in your profile."
"If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete your profile."
Fixed that for you. No need to thank me.
I deleted my profile but not before changing me name and deleting lots of stuff.
One thing you should know is that Facebook never deletes anything. Even if you tell it to. The new visibility is just 'appended' to the end of your account. Bit like a journal. TFA does not surprise me.
So if they really wanted to rewind your profile, they could. I imagine the authorities have this privilege.
Think how much time you'll save yourself from FB if you delete it now. I mean you could spend that time on Slashdot instead!
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Do you browse your friends' profiles? Do you send Facebook messages to them? Do you use Facebook's real-time chat? Facebook records everything you do on the website -- just using Facebook means giving them information. It does not really matter if you lie about your age -- what matters is if you list your friends (not even accurately -- even if you have 1000 "friends," they will just take a look at the profiles you visit most frequently).
Everything about Facebook is designed to extract information from you. The fact that you lied or left things blank on your profile has probably been detected, and used to construct the real profile about you: what sort of a person you are, what sort of advertisements you are most likely to pay attention to.
Palm trees and 8
Then, one profile, not connected in any to the above two, using a nickname or alias, and using a different E-mail address (preferably different domain), perhaps in a separate Web browser and sandbox. This profile is for fertilizing your donkey in Farmville and playing all the FB games
No, no, no, no, NO!
You must play Farmville on the account with all your friends who play Farmville, otherwise you won't do very well at all and they won't be able to know how awesome at Farmville you are and how committed you are that you set multiple alarms at night to go and "[fertilize] your donkey". That is the whole point of these games, if it wasn't for that you may as well be playing something like Crysis. Do you know anything about Farmville?
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
In other words, you recommend that people directly violate facebooks terms of service:
Section 4:
# You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission. ... ....
# You will not create more than one personal profile.
# You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date.
Oh, and by recommending people create multiple profiles with false information you are also in violation of Facebook's terms of service yourself:
Section 3:
# You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.
This is one of MANY reasons I recommend people not use facebook. I don't think their ToS are at all reasonable. If you have to blatantly violate them to make the site palatable, then don't use the site. Doing what you advocate just rewards them for being assholes, and if you ever have any sort of dispute with them they have you over a barrel because you are blatantly violating their ToS.
While "delete your apps periodically and re-add them as needed" is probably very good advice most of the time, are there any cases where apps are getting worse with respect to privacy, and so having a newer version of an app is worse than having the older version?
It seems likely that someone out there, having gotten a whiff of the money that might be made, is actually getting worse about this...
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
You might be on to something. Facebook obviously figured this out, and as such began blasting 90% pro-homosexual ads at me.
(insert my best serious Dr Phil wakeup call voice here) ... Oh heck, need I even say it, you all know what we are snickering about.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I always felt that using third party apps in Facebook was a little like playing flash games on random websites -- you're giving alien code full access to whatever information you have on Facebook, and may even be opening attack vectors on your local computer.
The friends and family in my close circle range from promoting social networks for a living, to distrusting them entirely and refusing to participate even under an assumed name. I'm somewhere in the middle -- I have a small circle of friends whom I actually know, I have security locked down appropriately with periodic reviews, and I never play the games or use any of the apps. No interest in virtual organized crime, virtual farms, virtual restaurants, or today's fortune, and I don't care that someone has answered a question about me that I need to click to unlock. And I have absolutely no interest in revealing my Netflix queue to my mom. Like any tool, you can use it properly or poke your eye out, your choice.
For the facebook user swamped with lonely little cows and pillow fights in their news feed, do this: Mouse over the little "x" in the upper corner of the item. Observe a popup allowing you to "block user-name" or "block application-name". Choose the latter, and that particular app will never be seen again. Do this consistently for a week or so and you find that your news feed has been reduced from a firehose of banality to a trickle of genuine social interaction. In the rare cases where your nephew finds new crap to plaster on your wall faster than you can update your blacklist, you can always "block user-name" and ban him from your news feed. He'll never know.
Stop using Facebook? It's a little like saying "Why don't you avoid the spam and 419 scams and viruses -- just stop using email!" If you said that in 1995 you might get a few people nodding their heads. In 2010 it's a ridiculous statement.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
No. HR could not care less, just like when you complain on their demand for "5 years of experience on Windows Vista and 7." Even your specific target department (assuming IT) actually asking to see your presence doesn't care about it --they're only snooping for whether you'll be a problem to avoid. Anyone serious already keeps a non-Myspace/non-FB/non-Twitter website dedicated to their REAL technology presence, completely under their control, or sometimes a leased account on a blog.
We're all IT people, and anyone interviewing for a company 10 years ago didn't have to provide social networking details to be hired. I've been to plenty interviews the past 3 years, and none have even asked me for Myspace/FB/twitter on their paper applications. Not even on the interviews. E-mail and personal phone numbers is as far as they go, because that has 20+ years presence and is less likely to be an empty datafield in their HR database.
Regardless, people asked for FB presence as a requirement do so by their pick of non-IT career, and not every plain secretary job benefits from a FB presence. It makes sense only for Television, radio, sales, sales research or marketting presence job were you're supposed to be a well-known entity outside of your 9to5pm hours, like salesmen, presidents, actors and reality TV people like those Jersey Shore guys. Those are good candidates for a presence mostly because it's free 24/7 self-press, away from cameras and sky-high fees that come with them.
Facebook and privacy are mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other but not both. Personally, I think all the worry about "privacy" is extremely exaggerated and overblown. What are they going to do? Show me targeted ads? That's what AdBlock is for.
Unless you're actually stupid enough to put all sorts of personal info on Facebook, like your real name, address, etc. In that case you're a moron who deserves to be ass-raped by every script kiddie hacker wannabe.. The bottom line is very simple. If you really care about privacy, you don't have a Facebook account in the first place.
It's even worse than that. If you previously logged on/off on Facebook, and fail to clear your browser cache and cookies, then Facebook will track every other website you visit afterward that uses some scripts of theirs (such as the Like buttons). And unlike normal cookie tracking, they know exactly who you are from your profile data.