Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users
An anonymous reader writes "As noted previously, Max Schrems of Europe Versus Facebook has filed numerous complaints about Facebook's data collection practices. One complaint that has failed to draw much scrutiny regards Facebook's creation of Shadow Profiles. 'This is done by different functions that encourage users to hand personal data of other users and non-users to Facebook... (e.g. synchronizing mobile phones, importing personal data from
e-mail providers, importing personal information from instant messaging services, sending invitations
to friends or saving search queries when users search for other people on facebook.com). This means that even if you don't use it, you may already have a profile on Facebook.'"
Who's data is it? While it may be your phone number and your birthday, it is really just the data of the user who entered it. You gave it to the person without restrictions.
Your data is already here...
I seriously doubt they have much of a shadow profile on me.
I use a pseudonym and only friend people who I trust enough not to to stupid overly exposing shit.
Even if you ARE being tracked and aware of it, an easy solution is to intentionally feed bad or misleading information into the system. Noisy data isn't very useful.
Remember - information about individuals is worthless. It's the large-scale aggregate data that has value.
I wonder what implications this may have for registered sex offenders? Not to mention those prohibited by terms of probation or their laws (see Illinois in the USA) from having a profile on social networks or Facebook specifically. This could technically be a transgression of the law and these people prosecuted in a very awkward, usual-judge-knows-nothing-about-the-tech kind of way that would at the very least waste these people's time, money, employment, and reputation.
Just a thought.
See this is why I don't use facebook..... er...damn it!
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Good to see this is getting some wider exposure! They used to send a courtesy mail to tell you they had your information and suggest you get an account so you can see it. Do they not still do that?
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Even if I let people know my data, I never licensed it for resale like fb is doing. Couldn't this create legal issues for fb?
So, sign up and have some control of the details they hold (maybe that should be illusion of control) or don't sign up and have no control of the details they hold on you.
What is unfortunate, Facebook might be willing to sell this data to 3rd parties without your consent... as your friends/coworkers/family have already consented to releasing the contact information for you. Even without Facebook selling it, it's only a data breach away from some the unscrupulous hands.
greed@All_Evils:~#
...you were out, they pull you back in.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Google's problem is that search engines can be easily fooled. Since the user indexes his or her own data by what is published to the web page, people tend to list all sorts of keywords which in turn create false results. Google's solution was PageRank, or picking the most popular sites. This doesn't work because all language is contextual, and as a result, a search term can mean many things.
What both Google and Facebook have realized is that unless they figure out who the user is, and what types of things they are looking for, there is no way to impose a type or context to the search. Without typed searching, search results become more irrelevant with the number of pages published to the web.
Both of them have hit on the same solution. Users aren't going to log in to a search engine, but they will log in to Gmail or Facebook, and that allows these companies to keep track of who you are (Google Plus is more an extension of Gmail than a separate app). Why else do you think both of them are manic about trying to get you to "validate" your account with a phone number?
It is absolutely false to say that my client is building "shadow profiles" on "non-users". They are doing no such thing.
Admittedly, a simple abundance of caution does require the prudent stewardship of shareholder value in the form of compiling dossiers on non-aligned-persons; but that is an entirely distinct matter.
So, when I finally bit the bullet and joined FB this year, I had a bunch of pending friend requests that I'd previously ignored waiting for me. How else would this have been accomplished if not for the so-called shadow profile? It struck me as a no-brainer at the time.
Who uses adblock/noscript yet doesn't block those pointless facebook and twitter buttons?
Even if you don't care about the privacy angle, it really cuts down on useless traffic.
Here's a new one you may not have got around to adding yet: apis.google.com/js/plusone.js
In Soviet Russia, Facebook has profile on YOU.
Go on various people search websites, like Spokeo, and search for yourself. Go ahead, I'll wait.
You're probably already on the web. And tracking companies like DoubleClick already know all about your browsing habits. If you're paranoid about privacy, then you better stay off of the internet, don't use cellphones, credit/debit cards, shopper discount cards, etc, because profiling you is what makes companies extra money nowadays.
If you think they're going to pass up the opportunity to make money just for the sake of your privacy, when there's no law to stop it, you're sadly mistaken.
Facebook is becoming the new Microsoft to me.
As a former Facebooker, I already block all Facebook domains to keep the stupid Like buttons and other debris off of the websites I do visit. This is just another reason to do so.
It's amazing how much faster it is to load pages when there are no calls to Facebook.com or their content delivery domains.
What about FB compiling information about people who do not have FB accounts is it that you do not understand?
It's going to get to the point where Facebook users (and non-users) won't even have to do anything to add information about themselves. Data mining techniques can suss out each user's personal information from the internet and aggregate it on the profile page. People with smartphones will have their locations and current activities automatically updated to their news feeds. Camera phones will automatically snap pictures and upload them to Facebook where people in them will be tagged via facial recognition algorithms.
At this point, why even bother allowing Facebook users to modify their own information? Why even bother with accounts and logins?
It's about non-users who HAVE NEVER USED THE DAMN THING and yet are being profiled and harrassed by FB. (like "Hey, these guys are on FB, we know they're your friends, why don't you join ? Oh, and we know where you live and what school your kids go to. Just saying.")
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
then don't give your information to anyone. you giving me your name, address and phone means i can share it with anyone i wish
I figured they'd been doing this for years, I was just waiting to see when they'd start setting up visible profiles automatically and saying "Join up to claim your profile now! Or let the information continue to flow completely uncontrolled..."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You seem to be missing the point. The problem is that people who are not using Facebook, and have never accepted any agreement with them, are having their data gathered by Facebook
As for actually reading the book-length terms, that's not exactly likely, though admittedly you do sign over any rights you thought you had when you tick that box. But regardless, that's not the problem being discussed here. This is all happening without any terms being accepted.
I had a weird notification this morning. Facebook wanted me to confirm that someone else said my hometown was X city. So now if you don't list this information, they're asking others to rat you out, despite your best efforts to keep that information off of the web. I'm not sure you can opt out of other people's disclosures in the same way you can opt out of listing your city/state/employer etc.
moox. for a new generation.
It's official.
How is this not a violation of the data protection act? I quote from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998)
1. Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, shall not be processed unless- [...]
Personal data should only be processed fairly and lawfully. In order for data to be classed as 'fairly processed', at least one of these six conditions must be applicable to that data (Schedule 2).
The data subject (the person whose data is stored) has consented ("given their permission") to the processing;
Processing is necessary for the performance of, or commencing, a contract;
Processing is required under a legal obligation (other than one stated in the contract);
Processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject;
Processing is necessary to carry out any public functions;
Processing is necessary in order to pursue the legitimate interests of the "data controller" or "third parties" (unless it could unjustifiably prejudice the interests of the data subject).[8]
Is any of the above true? I certainly did not consent for my data to be processed when I am not on Facebook. Also note, it is not important who has given the data to Facebook, the DPA talks about the data subject -> The person the data is about.
Unless, of course, it is given to you on the understanding that you're not supposed to give it out (ie. here's my phone number, but it isn't listed, so don't give it out). In which case you're in breach of contract if Facebook gets their hands on it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I already a searchable stub of my name and places I had worked. I guess they mined corporate websites and mailing lists over the years.
I read the comments on this article, go back to main page, and "Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook" pops up as the dialogue next to the ./ logo.
Irony.
4-5 years ago, my friends were always asking me to stop inviting them to facebook, because they were already members. It was funny because I wasn't even a member myself. Yet, somehow they were getting invited by me to join. Cut to a few years later, I joined facebook only because I wanted to see how well integrated it worked with my palm pre. It integrated really well. A few days into my membership, I got an friend request from a college buddy. There was a shadow profile, but I had figured that he hadn't filled his profile out yet. So I accepted. The next day he told me he said f*ck it and joined on my invitation. So, he wasn't a member and hadn't done a friend request. I felt so stupid for falling for it. My acceptance of his friend request generated an invite to join FB from me. I should have known better. Needless to say, I researched how to delete my account. Funny enough, there's still a shadow profile of me naturally. My buddy, on the other hand, lives on the site. I guess he can blame me once he wakes up from his FB daze.
Where's my sock? There it is...
This is one of the times I'm glad I don't have friends.
Sign up for facebook and fill it with lies. Soon their information won't be worth jack shit.
I very carefully avoid giving Facebook information [like my cell phone numbers and most of my email addresses, etc] that I don't want them to have [or by subsequent TOS change, share with the world]. But I can't prevent my gullible sister-in-law from uploading it all to them anyway through her careless use of Facebook's iPhone app or her blithe acceptance of having her address book vacuumed up in the alleged search for alleged friends. So even if I don't give it to them, it's too late. They have it already. And as we all know, once they have it they are never deleting it. Facebook can't be the only one guilty of this, Google and Microsoft must do it as well. Unfortunately, it would seem that if you’ve ever told anyone anything about yourself that they might have put in their address book [and that includes the note field] it is probably on the cloud now.
How do we destroy Facebook, in its entirety?
This should be the dedicated calling of our younger generation. Complete data-loss.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
For heaven's sake, get it into your head: You do not "own" facts about yourself. You never did. It has never been, and will never be, illegal for someone to look at you in the bus queue and observe what clothes you're wearing, what your height is, what your hair colour is, or what number bus you're queuing for. Nor is it illegal for someone to listen to you chatting to your friend and hear your name or where you live.
Even before the widespread use of computers, people were compiling databases about individuals. In the Victorian and Edwardian era there were still card indexes of potential customers' names and addresses.
What is different here is the *interconnectedness* . I don't mind people complaining about interconnectedness - I mean, it's pointless and they've missed the boat by at over 20 years, but it is at least a valid argument. The ability of this information to spread at lightning speed between billions of people using thousands of databases, yes, that is relatively new. But complaining about somebody else knowing facts about you, that's dumb.
In England we've had this for well over 950 years, since the Domesday Book in 1089AD which listed every landowner in the country. Most likely the Roman empire kept a similar directory over two thousand years ago.
If you visit a company's website and they record the facts of your visit, that is NOT illegal. It's not even immoral. It only becomes controversial when they pass this information on to an entity which was not otherwise involved with your visit.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I note that many of the people loudly complaining about Facebook in this matter have Gmail addresses. What do you think Google does with all those contacts they scrape from your messages and that you enter into your Android phone? Especially when correlated with what OTHER people put into their Google Contacts?
Whether you actively participate in the "graph" (FB, Goog, any entry point) or not, you have a node representing you. Even if your node has some wrong information, most of it is probably accurate. Heck, I could write some dumb scripts, spawn a bunch of EC2 instances and scrape a social graph from all the public info that's out there. So could anyone else.
Short of changing your name and starting over while studiously avoiding big centralized services, there is nothing you can do about this.
And if it paid as well as not caring, i'd be all in.
Last weekend I when logged in FB it tried to friend every contact from my huge hotmail contact list it could match in its profiles. Fortantely I was able to halt this before it happened. Scary.
you create a service that does the exact same thing to facebook that they are doing to you.
ROFL!
Let's see how long it would take them to sue you for using their data. That would be an interesting case.
Not in polite society no.
I trust my friends to not give my phone number to that crazy person at the end of the street.
I trust my friends not to use the information about my address and DOB to perform ID theft and get credit cards in my name.
I trust my friends not to burgle my house when they know I'll be on holiday.
If I get a friend's phone number or they tell me in the pub that they are about to go on holiday i do not then share that information with anybody because that would be inviting trouble for my friend. In fact in polite society you don't pass on information you've been given to just anybody otherwise we'd all have crazy ex-girlfriends after us.
If you would share your friends information with anyone and everyone i worry for your friends.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Surely someone better at programming than myself has either produced or is working on a simple set of software that will fill these databases with false information, rendering the whole thing unreliable. This actually seems like an appropriate task for an organization which refers to itself as anonymous .
Even if human interaction is needed (or better at than software) to create the accounts (answer captchas), once the couple million accounts are up and running they could randomly friend and unfriend each other, get involved in various groups, produce believable profiles, and become pollutants in the databases of companies such as Google and Facebook. Before long there rises the question, "is this profile real or fake? can't answer that? can't consider it real". The fakes could even base their profile on real profiles, altering things like school graduation year, and selecting a subset of contacts from various 'friends' of the real profile. With just a few 'friends' on Facebook an account rapidly begins receiving suggestions from Facebook itself on who might also be a known friend. It would be self propagating.
This may already be in action. I've had a few people/accounts that I did not know on Facebook send me a friend request, but were friends with several of my friends. Before accepting I asked our mutual friends if they knew who this person was. More often than not my friends said they didn't know them but since we went to high school together they didn't want to be rude. NO THANKS! Just as easily as this could be a data pollutant account it could also be a 3rd party mining Facebook for private information. Social engineering has always been a more powerful method than security hacking.
Anyway, I just think that rather than fighting for privacy the better approach is to corrupt their data through their own system. It seems more wicked.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
When both users are registered, Facebook is able to extract relationship data from somewhere. I have received friendship suggestions for people who once sent a single email to an alternate email account I used years ago, which I never put on Facebook. Even assuming all these people are fucking idiots who gave Facebook access to their email accounts, this shows Facebook harvests far more data than it lets on.
In this case, it firstly stores your email contact lists even if you decline to manually send these people contact requests. It secondly is able to form (from other sources, maybe other people's email accounts) a link between different email addresses you have used.
Solution - spam facebook with fake accounts and fake friends and fake information. Disinformation is good. We need a fake friends networks :)
Don't have friends.
You can't sue Facebook for that...but you can sue the friend. But then, I'm doubtful you had your friend sign a non-disclosure agreement to the data you gave to them...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I just didn't expect to be "proven" correct so quickly. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2456514&cid=37586174
you're an idiot.
LOL!
I don't think you're qualified to make that judgement, I was more or less agreeing with you.
People tend to be scared to post things to facebook because of the negative ways that your family/friends/employer might take the content... but since facebook is now making you an optional participant in filling out your own profile, it takes a lot of accountability away from the person who is scared of accountability. So next time someone fires someone else for having a political view or some random information that their company doesn't like, they can conveniently point to facebook's data mining process and there is the reasonable doubt that you may or may not have put that there personally. I like this idea. The less accountability placed on me based on my online personality, the better.
I was waiting for someone to point this out. Very true, sir. This has nothing to do with computers specifically. What Facebook is doing is called 'asking around' about you. That would have been the way you found out about someone before computers, or even writing, had existed - you went around and asked people about him.
Like 'Hey, I'm looking for this guy, I hear he's living in this village, could you point me to his house? Is he at his home right now, do you know?' and so on. The fact is, you're not the only one who knows about you. There are people who know about you, and they can give information about you just as good as you can.
Unfortunately for all of us our privacy is in great danger. There are ethical ways to market to clients and customers using the internet, however just like sit coms have force fed a lot of junk to the public, social networking sites are designed to make people let their guard down.
...you will be assimilated.
Isn't this the same as Mormons creating large genealogy trees so that they might convert as many dead people as possible? Perhaps we can all be saved by religious worship at Facebook too :-)
Facebook wouldn't allow such an application. To export the data, you'd need a Facebook application. To make a Facebook application, you have to agree to their Terms of Service (Facebook likes to call it a "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities").
3. Safety ...
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:
3.2. You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
Believe me, it's been tried. Facebook is quick to respond and threaten a lawsuit if you continue.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
LinkedIn must be doing this, because a few months ago I got a notice that "Person X" has joined LinkedIn. Since this was a friend of mine, I sent him an invitation to connect, only to get a (somewhat annoyed) email from the person saying that he hadn't joined LinkedIn and wanted nothing to do with it. Embarrassing.
Perhaps he thinks you are an idiot for agreeing with him? But apparently he just ends all his replies with "You're an idiot."
Good thing you don't live in Canada or Germany. Because use of personal information like this, is illegal. In both countries.
So it appears. Every single one of his posts is modded to -1. And I agreed with him?
oops.
I was waiting for someone to point this out. Very true, sir. This has nothing to do with computers specifically. What Facebook is doing is called 'asking around' about you. That would have been the way you found out about someone before computers, or even writing, had existed - you went around and asked people about him.
Like 'Hey, I'm looking for this guy, I hear he's living in this village, could you point me to his house? Is he at his home right now, do you know?' and so on. The fact is, you're not the only one who knows about you. There are people who know about you, and they can give information about you just as good as you can.
The troublesome part is that this is aggregating knowledge about you from essentially everyone who ever met you or knew about you. It's not asking one person who knew of you, it's asking everyone who knew of you simultaneously and instantaneously. One person can only give a few small fragments but a collective can paint an entire picture of your life, inside and out.
Many inferences can now be made about people that were not possible when information was incomplete (finding and asking everyone about you in person or via email would be impossible).
Any minute now one of these shadow accounts is going to ask me to donate a virtual cow or something.
-Dave
In England we've had this for well over 950 years . . . Most likely the Roman empire kept a similar directory over two thousand years ago.
I read a story about that somewhere . . .
I am not a crackpot.
Sorry to disappoint you, but collecting personal information on an database without user consent is not allowed under the European Data Protection Directive. You might not like it, but your personal image is in the category of personal information. Facebook having your personal information without your consent is quite against said directive. So please stop spreading misinformation.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Facebook
Yes, Facebook has found a way for automating the process, unfortunately.
It is all about context as well though. What happens if your name and information appears on some dating site even though you are married? Take it a step further, you are going through a divorce and a lawyer finds this, you think you won't pay for that little tidbit of data that was mined and entered autonomously? Now we have the police using databses to get pre-event information forecasts for fighting crime. How do you stop all of this information from getting cross posted to various databases where next thing you know you have the cops coming looking for you, yet you never signed up for a service or committed any illegal act.
At some point the data becomes so flawed that it is useless. I guess a real quick way to make the data useless is for everyone to change their name to Mike Smith and Jane Smith. So there is a difference between informational lists and users of services for which they never signed up. The real problem is that this data is used by employers, insurance companies, credit card companies, loan companies, debt collectors, etc to make certain decisions based on what they think they know about you. However, they have no real way of knowing anything other than the data, so how can it be objective if the data is incorrect?
So informational lists are fine, even expected. But now people are not only putting context to me that may not be true, but are making decisions about me based on data that is at best questionable. So where does it stop? Where do my rights as me begin? Am I paying more for car insurance because so other person that shares my name posts every time he breaks speed limits on twitter or Facebook? Or because people that are my 'friends' on Facebook have photos with them drinking at a party so I am more likely to drink and drive, so my insurance company gets out in front of that even though I personally don't drink? What about my credit score, how is that affected by all of the 'information'? So again, if they have the right to use the data, I have every right to see the formula for how that data is being used so I can dispute any claims made against me based on the data collected about me. At least that is how it should be.
The major probablem is one of assumption. And the assumption is that the data collected is correct and valid, which is a terrible assumption.
/etc/hosts (and its MS equivalent): 127.0.0.1 facebook.com
I've gotten fed up with going to a site and opening a tab in the background, only to have it open ANOTHER tab in the foreground for facebook--which I despise. F*** 'em.
You do not "own" facts about yourself. You never did. It has never been, and will never be, illegal for someone to look at you in the bus queue and observe what clothes you're wearing, what your height is, what your hair colour is, or what number bus you're queuing for.
Yes, but it's also true that if a creepy man staked out a bus stop for months on end recording data about people, the police could get him to "move along sir". And if that creepy man was following you around all day, day in and day out, you could get a restraining order against him. Somehow I think getting a restraining order against FaceBook, Google, etc. will be a little more difficult despite the fact that they are stalking the entire world. What's needed is for the legislature to come to the rescue.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
IANAL, so let me just ask a simple question:
Can stalking laws be applied to this non-user profiling? Facebook isn't the government after all, so what right do they have to collect this info without your consent (you never signed up for an account to agree to anything whatsoever)?
A quick scan of the Wikipedia article on stalking would suggest it probably is not technically stalking (just collecting info is allowed?), but I don't know. It still feels a bit like stalking in my opinion.
i didn't end this reply with "You're an idiot."
that is proof by contradiction, moron.
Knowing or observing facts about people is not illegal. To systematically collect and organize these facts into a database (or paper records) without consent is illegal in many countries (e.g. EU) unless it is made for a purpose clearly permitted by the law.
It may not be illegal for someone to listen to you chatting to your friend and hear your name or where you live...
But it probably is illegal for the owner of whatever location you are in, chatting, to get other people to disclose information about you as part of the payment for delivery of services.
I don't give a shit if Sandra from accounting is a dirty, skanky slut and wants to post all about it on Facebook. Its quite a different story when Sandra's dirty fingers start filling in everybody else's facebook profiles for them. There is a reason a profile is user editable. That reason pretty much excludes other users being able to edit your profile in any universe remotely close to sane. Which this isn't. But goddamn, some of us would like it to be. Or at least try.
Minor second point.. if I don't own facts about me, Facebook sure as hell doesn't. In which case, they have nothing to sell. But they do sell information about people, which is an implicit claim to ownership. Now.. if they can own information about people, for fucking sure the people whose information they claim to own can own that information.
You can fear it or embrace it, but like the future, it is inevitable.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I was always wondering when this was going to come up... For starters, I am the ONLY person with my name, first and surname combination; in the world(I know, hard to believe but true nonetheless) I have never had a facebook account(and never will), but *yet* for some odd reason there is a faux profile of me(I shit thee not) is listed on it with some odd similarities including but not limited to race, sex, location, and activities that I'm into(again I shit you not). I have seen this profile and it has a picture of some loser getting high or doing whatever the hell he's doing WITH MY NAME. Now let's say for example, that I'm looking for a job and the potential employer does a Facebook search which I believe is SOP these days in the job market and that profile pops up. What then is the chance of me being looked at as suitable candidate?! Or let's say for another example I am contracting and the client wants to do some background research on me(which I feel is reasonable) and then again, THAT SHIT POPS UP All I'm saying is that this "feature" has the potential to do a lot of irreparable, long lasting, "digital" damage(i.e. the wayback machine) to a person that has never, nor has any intent, of being on "The Facebook". Sooo, is the only way I(or anyone else with this problem) can protect myself is to sign-up with a real profile in an attempt to set the digital record straight?! Truthfully, if I never get a job or contract again after a background check I fully and indelibly have no one but Facebook to blame...
You are obviously unfamiliar with the privacy laws and the concept of privacy of various countries.
Being from the UK that is understandable.
There is no claim that people own facts about themselves.
There are however laws and regulations regarding organizations collecting, storing, and using these facts in their businesses practices.
The solution is that everyone should have a Facebook profile, simply enter as much erroneous and false information as possible. Become Facebook friends with strangers, and upload doctored pictures that are a collage of various unrelated things.
Twinstiq, game news
I am much less concerned about FB than experian et al. I wish I could put a block on any request for my credit info without my prior authorization. The only way it appears I can do anything but a tempoary block is to have already been the victim of a crime.
.. addresses these issues exactly.. its this week in Mountain View.. been going for years now..
without our permission.
That's the scary part.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
You misunderstand the Data Protection Act. While it would not be illegal for someone to observe you at the bus stop, they actually can't record that information in a way that identifies you without permission. The bus company could, because you were doing business with them.
What Facebook are doing would be illegal in the UK because the data is not coming from the person it identifies. They can record all the information they like about people who sign up, as they've agreed to the data being held.
Logging your visits to a website would not be illegal as they're merely recording their interaction with you.
Government records like the Domesday book and the modern census are specific exemptions, and cannot be released for 100 years and a day.
I've lived in a few different cities and I know a few people I'd like to keep in contact with. I think I could probably reconnect with others from college and so on.
I keep reading about new privacy problems with FB every week either on /. or some other site. FB also changes rules or way that info is used (like this).
I can see tremendous (or possible) benefits of using FB. But I'm creeped it by the sort of stuff I'm reading about here.
My other concern is there is someone with the same name as me (and my real name is not common) who had some fairly serious criminal charges. I would hope having a good FB profile would at least help me separate myself from this person.
And I know without digging around much there's quite a bit of stuff (all positive) about me in FB. Just from hanging out with friends all who are active on FB.
I just wonder .... is it worth it anymore? Has anyone felt more benefits than negatives?
I'd agree. I might even consider bringing up a case with the Canadian Privacy Minister.
They've fought with FB on several occasions and I think FB had to change their ways not just for Canadians but the impact was global or North America wide or similar.
I have a facebook account, which I rarely use, (mostly to keep track of far off relatives). From the day I signed up, Facebook recommends someone I did a project with in school. I have never told facebook that I went to school, or even what city I'm from.
The law is not as black and white as you make it seem. Courts are perfectly comfortable operating around the fuzzy line that separates "unreasonable" or "egregious" acts from philosophically similar acts that are permissible.
To take your bus queue example, it is conceivable that a law permits a person listening and observing people in a queue, while it prohibits systematic monitoring of the same bus queue. Though one can make a convincing argument that the act of watching and observing is objectively the same in both cases, the law can and does separate what is legal from what is not on subjective terms such as "reasonable" or "unjustified".
I remember a case recently, I think it was in the US, where attaching tracking devices to cars without a warrant was ruled illegal. The police argued that anyone could see a person's car travel anywhere on any public road, and in fact they could have a policeman tail the car and learn the same information. All the same, it was ruled that unattended wholesale monitoring of vehicle movement was a violation of privacy, even though the only thing different between manually tailing and attaching a device is the ease with which the police can track the cars.
So you see, the courts are happy to make a distinction about the reasonability of keeping particular pieces of data about visitors. They can happily decide that keeping performance data and region statistics based on the IP and browser you use to visit a site is within the bounds of legality, while keeping profiles for the names that people search for in the friend finder is unethical and illegal.
I hate to get all tinfoil but isn't all the contact information the hundreds of millions of Android users enter into their contact list daily far more factual than what Facebook is inferring? Obviously that contact information is more concrete i.e. name, number, address as opposed to relationship, e.g. JoeBob and MikeJim went to school together and graduated in the same class, oh also GeorgeFrank went to that same school but graduated a year later there is a 78.4528361% chance that all three know each other barf on the mutual friends they have, and the 3rd degree friends we have aggregated for those friend spokes.
All it takes to get a Facebook account going is an email address.
If you think that a couple of dozen Facebook police are able to enforce using "real" information on 500 million accounts ...
Okay, good. Now you don't think that.
Corporations are people too. Stick it to the man.
With a restraining order, it would be fun to walk by one of the facebook data centers and force them to move the servers X number of feet away.
As a licensed private investigator, I can tell you - no matter what you do, you leave data all over the place. The question is not "how do you stop this"... it's "how do you stop caring". This horse bolted YEARS ago, and the fact that people are only now noticing that the gate is open is hilarious to those of us in the know.
The solution is to lie about everything in your Facebook profile. Wrong home town, wrong school (use ACME High School or something like that obviously not true). No one at Facebook has the time to check whether the information is correct, but if you leave it blank they can get it elsewhere.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Somehow I think getting a restraining order against FaceBook, Google, etc. will be a little more difficult despite the fact that they are stalking the entire world.
No need for an order against Google. Go look at Google's privacy tools page (there's a link on the bottom of the search page). You can see everything Google is tracking about you and Google provides ways to opt out of all tracking and even tools to ensure that your opt-outs don't get lost. Try it. You'll see that you start seeing more generic advertising and your search result quality will decline a little.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It only becomes controversial when they pass this information on to an entity which was not otherwise involved with your visit.
Then WTF is your rant about. This is exactly what is discussed in TFA.
This is done by different functions that encourage users to hand personal data of other users and non-users to Facebook...
I don't want other people to disclose where I live, who my kids are, and what I do for a living. And especially when it's a rat bastard evil fucking "social" media company that runs off with the profits.
For heaven's sake, get it into your head: You do not "own" facts about yourself. You never did. It has never been, and will never be, illegal for someone to look at you in the bus queue and observe what clothes you're wearing, what your height is, what your hair colour is, or what number bus you're queuing for. Nor is it illegal for someone to listen to you chatting to your friend and hear your name or where you live.
Even before the widespread use of computers, people were compiling databases about individuals. In the Victorian and Edwardian era there were still card indexes of potential customers' names and addresses.
What is different here is the *interconnectedness* . I don't mind people complaining about interconnectedness - I mean, it's pointless and they've missed the boat by at over 20 years, but it is at least a valid argument. The ability of this information to spread at lightning speed between billions of people using thousands of databases, yes, that is relatively new. But complaining about somebody else knowing facts about you, that's dumb.
In England we've had this for well over 950 years, since the Domesday Book in 1089AD which listed every landowner in the country. Most likely the Roman empire kept a similar directory over two thousand years ago.
If you visit a company's website and they record the facts of your visit, that is NOT illegal. It's not even immoral. It only becomes controversial when they pass this information on to an entity which was not otherwise involved with your visit.
Point well made.
Facebook locked me out of my account. Demanded a phone number to validate it with. I don't HAVE a phone, cell or fixed, and told them so.
They responded by demanding I send them a scanned or digitally photographed copy of a government-issued ID, eg. license or passport.
I don't think they liked my answer, when I told them I own neither a scanner, nor digital camera either. They just reiterated demands for government-issued ID.
So... I created this. http://www.fecesbook.com.nu/
Seems to me this sort of thing leaves FB vunerable to the creation of massive amounts of bogus information. Might a flood of the right inputs overflow their databases with erroneous info on non-existent people, imaginary interests, etc. I started seeing those "you might be interested in" links to stuff, and just as a thougt experiment started having conversations with a friend full of nonsense words, thinking that it might be possible to fool Facebooks intelligence into thinking some of the nonsense are up and coming items of interest that it might start offering to others. One might be able to confuse it further by referring to legit websites but treating random phrases found on the site as if they were people's names, in order to get FB to think the website is referring to an individual when it's talking about something else-- "I'm going over to Crude Oil's house today. Crude has a new motorcycle I want to check out.". And now, every website talking about crude oil in existance can be used as further verification that a person named "Crude Oil" exists and is involved in lots of stuff...
In 2007, when I signed up for Facebook, I had a dozen or so of friends already on my friend list. Currently my location is Tokyo, Japan (I'm in Africa) so my ads are in Japanese and look nice and unreadable. All information on my profile is fake. Anyone who knows me enough to be important enough that I care about him / her knowing my personal details, already knows them.