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Facebook: Your Personal Data is a Trade Secret
An anonymous reader writes "An Austrian group called Europe versus Facebook has so far made 22 complaints regarding the social network's practices. In the process, the organization has stumbled upon an important tidbit: Facebook says it is not required to give you a copy of some of your personal data if it deems doing so would adversely affect its trade secrets or intellectual property."
Of course they'll tell you that. In fact, haven't you realised? You ARE their intellectual property. All you iSheep, Twits and FacePalmers. Go on, put your private life on teh intertubes for all to see. Check in with FourSquare to become the mayor of burger king to get a 10% discount on your next piece of crap for lunch, and watch your insurance company make a silent note. Write on your wall about your cool new Nike Football shoes, and watch targeted advertising appear to you for other football related products.
The herd is a goldmine, ripe for the picking.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
So you, by definition, have knowledge of all of you personal information (otherwise it wouldn't be personal), they must think that they have a way of turning knowledge about your self that is available to you consciously, into information that isn't, for example by analyzing your web history, or use of language, or friends, in order to predict certain cultural preferences, or ad susceptibility. That's perfectly believable, and no, you probably aren't entitled to it. If you don't want them building models of you, don't submit your information.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
If it is free, you are not the client. You are the product, and you are being sold.
Whether good or bad, the type and structure of the data stored can definitely hint at the proprietary stuff they're doing with it.
Facebook: Your Personal Data is a Trade Secret
I agree 100%, which is why I refuse to give my personal data to Facebook (or anyone else).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
He was originally talking about television but it applies to Facebook as well:
...Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold...
Res ipsa loquitur "... the elements of duty of care and breach can be sometimes inferred from the very nature of an accident or other outcome, even without direct evidence of how any defendant behaved..." i.e you made an account, gave them all your info, added friends who gave them even more info about you...so by "accident" you breached and transfered any info about you to them, without neccesarily knowing you were signing away your right to privacy with your life,so even though they dont have the direct evidence you intended this to happen, it is their data none the less.
#include bier;
Minor rearrangements of existing facts can be considered to be innovative new facts.
Consider this cool paper from Aragones et al:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=643545
It could be that the quantity of data they collect is far more than anyone suspects and that's the trade secret.
Now, your private information is THEIR property. The ownership of YOUR own private information, is lost.
Read radical news here
NATIONALIZE THE INTERNET. its a commons. free government paid for social networking, privacy protection written into the constitution, national constitutions amended to include the right to access to the internet. think about it. we dont have private roads, and most of the privatization recently has really sucked. start reversing privatization. people act like facebook is a free government service, so lets turn it into one.
I am curious to see what would happen if somebody posted a Scientology text on Facebook. I doubt Scientologists would accept the text being 'deactivated' but kept in Facebook's servers.
Facebook has a legitimate interest in keeping their trade secrets secret. Unfortunately for them, the interest of the public of knowing what information they are keeping and potentially selling about each of us completely trumps their trade secret interests in any sane world.
to Asimov's psychohistory?
That is true for companies with which you have a contract that involves sending them personal information.
Whether Facebook and others like Google, Microsoft, etc. are bound by the DPD remains to be seen. They are not from a EU country and they did not sign a contract with you - I don't think there's an official client-provider relation between their users (especially their EU users) and them. Some court might try to force them to hand over the data on account of national laws but that's open to interpretation. It would be interesting to see how that would work out though.
Two can play at this game. Everybody place a legal notice in the paper that does essentially the same thing, except that you are simply claiming your own personal data. State that your data may not be used without a contract and payment subject to negotiation, and that you regard unsigned agreements as invalid. It may or may not stand up in court, but it'll be a helluva good show.
That won't work for adults since they can claim that as the owner of your personal data, you automatically give them a licence to use your data when you agreed to use their services. It might work for minors, since in many countries, minors are not allowed to sign contracts or give up rights, without parents' permission.
For adults, one can formally sign the complete rights to their personal information to a trusted individual (like a parent) or organization, before joining any social network service. Then have the trusted entity sue the social network service when they use your personal data without permission.
Of course if that trusted entity decides to "DO EVIL", then you will be total screwed.
Unlike some governments, businesses are not subject to "Freedom of Information" queries.
Nor do you have any "rights" other than those set out in the terms of service, other than the right to refuse those terms and go elsewhere.
Surely these Austrians aren't naive enough to think they're going to shove their laws down an international organization's throat? If they object that strongly, try to have Facebook blocked and banned from Austria. That is and should be their only legal recourse -- you cannot have international organizations subject to the whims of every nation in the world that the internet reaches.
Granted, some organizations may capitulate to pressure from some governments rather than lose that audience/revenue stream, but that's their choice, and they can just as easily pull their operations as Google did with China.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If you still are a face book member you have zero to complain about. If your not a member why do you care? Your not going to change anything, your not a member you don't have a voice. Whats not so funny to me is that they are allowed to continually,repeatedly break privacy laws all over the world and no ones been arrested yet. Why is that?
Jack of all trades,master of none
"Data like the biometrical information or ”likes” are seen at trade secret, intellectual property or are simply too complicated to send to users according to Facebook."
It raises the question whether it's reasonable to request from them information such as your "likes". It sounds to me like asking a company to hand you over a log with your phone calls and email exchanges; I don't think they have that obligation.
As if your personal information is only valuable to big corporations. How about personal data mining? When are we going to see on-line services that actually offer something relevant, information about yourself! I'd actually be interested into my own buying habits,health friendship and emotions by generalizing over patterns of behavior of million others just like me. This would require an open standard where all your personal information is available.
You'd be surprised how many 30+ year old's use it. If anything, they'll be the more ignorant internet users.
Can someone explain why "you are the product" translates to carte blanche for facebook to do what they want with your data? If the FBI maintains a file on me, using purely public information, do I not have a right to that information? I don't understand why "you are using this for free" translates to "you deserve whatever they do to you". If Facebook charged for their service, would I suddenly be entitled to more? So do products (aka users) have zero rights? Should we?
It states (copied from wikipedia):
“Any person shall file this action to obtain information on the data about himself and their purpose, registered in public records or data bases, or in private ones intended to supply information; and in case of false data or discrimination, this action may be filed to request the suppression, rectification, confidentiality or updating of said data. The secret nature of the sources of journalistic information shall not be impaired.”
The fortune of the day was quite on topic: "Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies." -- Charles D'Hericault
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Keep telling it to Mr TSA agent.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
.... use of language, or friends, in order to predict certain cultural preferences, or ad susceptibility. That's perfectly believable, and no, you probably aren't entitled to it. If you don't want them building models of you, don't submit your information.
Under EU privacy laws they must, upon request, provide you with all the information they have about you. And upon request they must also delete any personal information.
If there's really anything to this story (and facebook doesn't back down), I think facebook will loose in court...
That is true for companies with which you have a contract that involves sending them personal information.
No, it's true for all companies that hold personal information. See the ICO for more details (for the UK).
They are not from a EU country
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
The website under www.facebook.com and the services on these pages are being offered to you by:
Facebook Ireland Limited
Hanover Reach, 5-7 Hanover Quay, Dublin 2 Ireland
In the European Union personal data is protected by the Data Protection Directive, principle 6 which provides a legally guaranteed "access to private personal data" held by any third party.
This exchange could have gone either -1 Offtopic or +5 Funny. Not quite as classic as this bad boy, but pretty funny nonetheless.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Despite the Data Protection Act in the UK which generally requires disclosure and correction of personal information, financial institutions routinely refuse to give out information on things like decisions to turn down credit applications on the grounds that the proprietary algorithms they use to crunch your data are trade secrets. This even extends to the data sources they have consulted in addition to the personal information you provided them.
I was on one occasion turned down for a credit card because of suspected fraud. The financial institution concerned refused to divulge the information that led them to that conclusion and the Information Commissioner sided with them because disclosing the source of the information would permit other people to circumvent their fraud checking in future and disclose part of the "proprietary algorithm" used for credit checking. Not only am I unable to correct the apparently erroneous information they have on file, but since it relates to suspected fraud, they're free to share that incorrect information with other financial institutions without telling me what it is.
The more critical the personal information someone has about you, the less likely you are to get your hands on it...
Dropped FB last year.
Haven't missed it.
Your friends are already doing it for you. They're tagging you in pictures, and writing about what you did with them, who you're with, who your friends are, and certain other details about your personal life.
Twinstiq, game news
If you post it to the Internet, it is there for anyone and everyone to see, even if you don't want it to be. This includes ALL websites. There is no privacy on the Internet. The sooner you realize this and forget your delusions about "Privacy on Public Web Servers" the better off you will be.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
... since they are planning to build a datacenter here in sweden... And according to Swedish law you can request any and all data any company might have stored on you... =)
not using facebook is not a good idea either... since even if you don't have an account they keep information about you... Only way to at least manage some of the privacy stuff is to have a account just to once a month go in and re-select the most private settings in the profile..
Well, lets just put:
By having opened this letter you agree that all previous agreements are null and void until a new contract, signed by both parties, has been established between us.
All personal data relating to me on your system shall be deleted within 1 week of reception of this letter if no new agreement has been established. Failure to comply will result in a 500â/day rent-fee for all my personal information.