Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Suspends Personal Data-Sharing Feature
Suki I writes "Facebook has 'temporarily disabled' a controversial feature that allowed developers to access the home address and mobile numbers of users. The social network suspended the feature, introduced on Friday, after only three days. The decision follows feedback from users that the sharing-of-data process wasn't clearly explained and criticism from security firms that the feature was ripe for abuse."
Tell users they can earn stuff to use on FarmVille, and people won't care so much anymore.
As an applications developer, lacking this feature means that I cannot increase my budget to hire more programmers and produce a better product. Without the personal information I have nothing to sell to advertisers, and must rely on much lower advertisement rates and donations from users.
Users will suffer from lower-quality apps, and I'm sad that Facebook has taken this step. In a world of openness, this is a huge step backwards.
I don't want to go back to a "pay to play" internet. Please lobby FB to reenable these features if you also believe in keeping the internet free.
I believe we called it.
3 days was enough for most of the big apps to collect most of the data from the nearly entire userbase.
I think that the "Spam your wall with requests for people to take this stupid test" application is very high quality indeed and would greatly be helped my knowing where I live.
Mine's empty but I was going to fill it in with his address and phone.
Consider again Facebook's recent proposal that they become the new unified messaging service. Every email, text and IM goes through them.
And consider again how many times Facebook opens up private data and hands it out.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I, for one, am shocked, shocked! that Facebook of all companies has introduced something so invasive!
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that with Facebook and other so called free stuff that they are the product that is being sold.
Damage is done... privacy is no more... They have your info after 3 days.
This is the time when I really like to say I don't use facebook.
The decision follows feedback from users that the sharing of data process wasn't clearly explained and criticism from security firms that the feature was ripe for abuse.
So basically they will just wait another few months, have a better explanation(an added sentence), and try again.
It really is a shame what Facebook has become. I joined back in 2005 when you had to register your account to a university with a university email address. Not many people had it, it felt like a unique little club that only a limited number of people could get into. The security was better in the sense that you had almost full control over anything anyone could see.
But now anyone can have a FB page from your grandmother to a company, it lost that unique feeling of being part of a club that was closed to outsiders.
I sanitized my account about 2 years ago with fake information except for my name and two photos. When they released the ability to backup your account I tried it and to my surprise all that was left was my sanitized information. Could old photos and posts be in their system? Yeah, but nothing that could really be used against me, although others that just posted whatever they wanted will not fair so well.
Another attempt by Facebook to undermine its users' privacy? I'm shocked!
Facebook introduces some hugely draconian abuse of privacy, then 'backs off' - lather, rinse, repeat. And every time this happens, their users, and the public-at-large, get more and more immune to the controversy, and more and more immune to the abuse. That's why Facebook, and Google, and your-favourite-evil-giant-company, and your-country's-government, do this kind of thing.
Sadly, as a society, we keep falling for it, over and over again.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
FTFA - they recommend that each and every application has a privacy policy and determine how gather information might be used... But they fail to mention that virtually all privacy policies have a little "get out of jail free card", a clause that reserves the right for the company to change the privacy policy from time, and continued use of the application constitutes acceptance of the new policy.
With an escape clause like that, privacy policies are pointless and useless. When company A with an application follows their original privacy policy and uses all that personal information for only its prescribed use, everything is great. But when the stockholders or the president of the company decide their payout are enough, or the economy drops, all that information can be sold to other companies that that will pay for it; and with our privacy policy that includes our "famous" escape clause" allows us to modify our policy and our users can't say a damn thing about it.
Or to put this in to slashdot terms....
1) Develop useless application that makes legit use of personal data
2)Have privacy policy escape clause
3) President/board demands more money
4) Modify privacy policy w/ famous escape clause
5) Sell private data to anyone that will pay.
...
PROFIT!!!
With privacy policies like this, why are they even helpful?
If there was a $5/month social network that had no ads and guaranteed privacy, I'd consider joining it.
If there was an open-sourced not-for-profit social network that had no ads and worked to ensure privacy, I'd consider joining that, and donating to it.
Otherwise, you're at the vendor's mercy. And like they say, there's a zucker born every minute.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Seems like this is how Facebook continues to do it. Expose the users without telling them that they're going to do it, wait for the backlash. If there's enough, backpedal on the decision. But only after giving the parties interested in the data plenty of time to mine a ton of it, making the reversal pretty much pointless.
Well played, Facebook. Yet another example of why you don't post anything on the Internet that you don't want known publicly.
Come on, Facebook only knows as much as you fill in. Don't want to share your address and phone number? Leave the fields blank. No one is forcing you to fill this in. If it's not there no app in the world can get it. If someone is really my "friend" they probably know where I live and have my phone number and email. If they are just an acquaintance, they can ask for it and I may or may not give it out. Just stop compulsively filling out anything blank on your screen.
"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" Julian Assange
not just this one issue, but this and all future attempts at exploiting user information. because facebook has the interesting quandry that it makes more money the more it exploits user information. but it drives criticism of facebook when it does this
the interesting part comes when you ask exactly how much people care about this, or if it is only a vocal minority. i've noticed more media attention to the issue, but again, that doesn't necessarily translate into anger amongst the common user
my personal feeling is that facebook will go the way of myspace, friendster, angelfire, geocities, etc... that social networking is just naturally cyclical. like the in club in the city for a couple of years goes belly up, to be replaced by some other in club somewhere else in the city, in endless repetition. however, i could be wrong, and facebook could have some sort of permanent lock on social networking. we'll see
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Facebook is the prime example of how not to handle personal data.
Or maybe the prime example of how to, depending on which end of the fence you're on.
Great, but can't you still harvest with some old fashioned screen scraping for at least those people who expose things via the permissions "friend", "friend of friend", "everyone?"
Who puts their real information on the internet anyways?
... with "To share your phone number with this app type it in here" and we'd still hear howls of outrage about invasion of privacy and how the process wasn't clear enough.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
too much value is placed on such information, and the information gathering, grouping, etc... is not as infallible, nor as interesting as one might think?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
But: I do use AdBlock Plus. I don't provide any phone numbers, only provide a junk e-mail address, and provide a city only for the address. I find I can tolerate Facebook's privacy shenanigans just fine... when I don't provide them with any information that would really violate my privacy.
Of course, you can look it up on the internet, and before that, you could look it up in phone books. The reason they're doing all this is that random lists of names and addresses are not very useful to anyone - what they REALLY need are your name and address tied to your browsing, buying, and social habits... so they can sell, sell, sell to you even harder. What people are getting in a snit about is not that anyone can figure out where they live. It's that just about any organization, anywhere, can start building a dossier on you to a positively creepy level of detail - even if you've never had any relationship with that organization, and without their knowledge that it's even happening.
Then again, the cure is pretty easy too - use tools like AdBlock, NoScript, etc; and above all, don't put your damn phone number into Facebook.
What i've gathered from this is that it took under 3 days to get all of the present info databased to another company/locus/system where it can then be redistributed and facebook can return to seeming like its safe now.
I'm the one who got the HTC Droid a few days ago, apparently right when FB 'flow of info' started. I was going to use my phone as a demonstration @ meeting on Thursday re: why FB isn't 'safe' and shouldn't be required for our committee members.
So I got the mobile phones and addys of my FB contacts, and made the appropriate calls to warn people to take their private info off FB since "friends" apps' have access to anything you put on FB.
I just checked my Droid fb app(s) to see if I was grandfathered (still had the info); apparently, *not* for home addys, but phone numbers were still there with a little "F" (fb) symbol (signifying, I guess, that those contacts' phone numbers came from FB), and of course birthdays and other stuff seems to still be pulled from FB into phone contact list.
Some I *know* are mobile numbers, but I suppose they weren't entered in the right category (ie, fb user put mobile phone as home phone)???
Well, I'm going ahead with my presentation and droid demonstration anyway. FB *opted* to stop allowing addys/phones from FB info, but AFAIC they could decide to release it again. I don't think FB [as its current 'privacy' stands] is trustworthy.
The interesting part for me is that, running up to this "unintended security mishap" Facebook were actually encouraging people to add their phone number details as a core feature, ostensibly because it would give Facebook a way to re-enable your account if your password was lost. This seems like a very premeditated act of deceit to me. So premeditated that I saw straight through it, as I'm sure many others did, and actively removed as many details as possible.