Slashdot Mirror
How Facebook Can Out Your Most Personal Secrets
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook revealed the sexual preferences of users despite those users have chosen 'privacy lock-down' settings on Facebook. The article describes two students who were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users: 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
this is a tragedy... I'm truly sorry for the students who were violated. No snark from me today...
let's have a conversation! let me know what you think.
Privacy concerns part of it.
Requiring that I provide a legitimate phone number for each of my farmville bot accounts was most of it. But farmville was the main reason I was logging on in the first place. I would have never given them any legitimate information after the first half dozen privacy dumps.
Plus- it just sucked the way they kept colliding and smashing up different groups of friends and different groups of relatives and causing me grief in my personal life.
So I cut them loose. And haven't missed them since.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Privacy will soon be the most sought-after world commodity, and unfortunately we can't get in the middle east.
I'm shocked!
- Malory, f, 27
That they like to be f*cked by corporate champions?
Well I could've told you that.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
I preferred the title given to the Facebook spokesman in the summary originally written by the submitter:
Facebook spokesprick Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users ...
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users: 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
Facebook management is correct: it is the students fault for not better understanding "privacy" on Facebook.
If these students were intelligent they would have never signed up with Facebook in the first place. It's their own fault. Doing what everybody else does just encourages stupidity.
Just curious, do you expect your bank to publish your SSN online too, just because you posted it on their public website to open your account?
RTFA/RTFS, if you are wondering what this has to do with the topic at hand.
I wonder how fast they'll fix this issue after major political figures start getting added to "Gay Studs" and "Scouting for Sex" groups?
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
It's not that one of them "handed it over" it's that she got added to a group (Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined) whose name alone exposed what she was hiding from her father (among others).
... tells you that everything you post on the FREE service is PUBLIC.
Not using facebook nor using iDevices == Not Gay
Offcourse it also means no interaction with other humans.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if the loophole here is that you can be added to a group without your involvement or active consent, then surely that gives you an out when your ignorant homophobe of a father sees that you're associated with a queer choir group - say it was a case of mistaken identity or a prank or a troll or anything else you like.
That said, I don't think it's a non-issue when group membership can leak actual or apparent private information; ought to be a simple fix to make it ask before you're added to any group and then the whole problem goes away without anyone getting interrogated about groups they're attached to. The existence of potential deniability doesn't remove the issue, just provides at least some way of coping with problems casued until it's actually fixed.
If you tell someone your secret, it can get out.
If you tell Facebook your secret, it's not a secret anymore and you're a moron for thinking it would be.
Did it really take this long for The Journal to figure this out?
'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
How about instead of giving them some false sympathies deep fried and battered in guilt, served with a side of buzzwords, you put your money where your mouth is? You people don't have a heart to speak of, so it's not going out anywhere -- so why not send them something you actually value, like the cash you earned in extra publicity and selling of their personal data after you outed them?
Your entire business model is built on invasive marketing, selling people's personal data to the highest bidder, and despite numerous high-profile security and privacy failings, including pictures that don't get deleted off servers and remain publicly accessible for years after they've been pulled from user profiles and indefinate storage of all data ever submitted to facebook, even after it has been deleted and the profile removed, you people still have the gumption to say you have "robust" privacy controls? Screw you. Give the kids some money, then maybe I'll believe you actually give a damn.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Sexual orientation is becoming less important, especially to the younger generation. Unfortunately, there are still people, even parents, to whom it matters. Those people are the problem, not Facebook. Facebook is just one more avenue for a person's orientation to be revealed.
The best defense against your parents finding out about your sexual orientation from someone else will always be to tell them yourself, from whatever distance is safe.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
this is informative but facebook success is because it is viral and viral needs to be voilating privacy and user's right
The person didn't reveal the information themselves. Facebook allowed someone else to do so. That's the whole point of the article.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
I don't have anything marked under "interested in", and I get a lot of gay related ads. I'm not sure what other items on my (also very restricted) profile cause this (liking Torchwood and equality campaigns?). I can't open Facebook on a campus computer without risking someone seeing some crazy ad. The worst thus far was one for HIV positive online dating. That one was wrong on oh-so-many levels. Something should be done about the evasiveness of these advertisements too.
... IT DOES (just not with the exact words).
At first I thought it was "Interest in" becoming public information. If that was the case the easy solution is to leave it empty, but it wasn't.
The "loophole" allowed someone to add them to "Queer Chorus" discussion group.
I laugh at the talking head that talked about "robust privacy controls". I locked up my account so that no one except friends can see anything. Or so I thought. Sometime recently (changeover to timeline?) all new posts started becoming public, and I had to re-lock it down. As I notice searching people on Facebook, it seems there's lots of people who previously intended to keep their profile private now have public timelines. These sure are robust controls!
My heart goes out to these students and their intolerant environment.
We all know about how much facebook can know about you, it starts with what you tell them. Your facebook page isn't really yours but a profile of yourself which you volunteer information. It's basically a wiki with your information, and this is CLEARLY stated in the TOS/PP. You don't really own anything that's on facebook, facebook owns that information which is why they can rightfully sell your personal info, gather it, and make assumptions. The free market is a brilliant thing, but there aren't many brilliant people in this world. They should have by now, learned to read what they get themselves into (it's not small / fine print) and blatantly obvious. You can also control a lot of the privacy settings. I don't care much about facebook but I do think that people is the problem, not facebook, just as Google is not the problem, people are. If you have information to hide, write in a diary because the internet is the last place where your information is safe.
To this statement I say: Rubbish!
It's just standard boilerplate rhetoric. It's sad, sad indeed. But can one please remind me of what I am losing by intentionally refusing to join Facebook?
I should add that even without Facebook, I am doing pretty good so far. What am I missing?
I am getting tired of people seemingly surprised when facebook does something not in their best interest - especially privacy wise...
That's what they are in business for. To get and aggregate as much info about you as possible. Security, loopholes, and privacy are secondary. In fact privacy is a dirty word in facebook land. If you give you secrets and info on face book and think only the people you want to know - know, Your nuts. You have told the world. If you want privacy, then don't join the facebook privacy abomination. It's funny that people (like my aunt) think face book is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, bringing people together,.. Nothing is further from the truth..
Don't try to un-friend me since i'm not there.. ever..
I'm sure you have interesting little foibles that you might not want revealed to all and sundry, despite using privacy settings correctly. Don't be such a sanctimonious prick. It could be you next time!
You'd think Slashdot wouldn't make users visit the HuffPo for a link to the entire article, but you'd think wrong.
If one user gets it wrong - sure, that's a dumb user.
Ten? Yeah.
100? Probably still that, considering how many users FaceBook has.
But they should really take a clue from Coursera - in Daphne Koller's TED talk on Coursera she touches on something very similar, namely students having misconceptions on a subject, and how they instead sort of blame the course material, and help correct the students' misconceptions.
This, by the way, is something we see entirely too little of in many types of development.
Not just software - the Stockholm Metro system has automatic gates that open and close to let you through, if you have a valid electronic ticket. And people get hit by those gates and in some cases hurt or stuck.
The company's response? Educate the users on how to use a fucking automatic door!
Honestly, when I read that, I felt like hitting the spokes person in the face and telling him that he obviously needs to be educated in the use of my fist.
...seems to have become the default corporate answer.
Never mind that their "privacy controls" model is completely broken, obviously the user needs to be "empowered" and "educated".
It's too bad this happened, but perhaps it will convince some people to simply not use Facebook. Facebook's habit of raping users' privacy shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who uses a computer - they've done it many times, and it's been big news.
Users don't pay Facebook any money, so they have no reasonable expectation of ANY standard of privacy, service, or redress, and Facebook has no 'duty of care' obligations. So it's really quite simple - don't use Facebook, and if you DO insist on using it, then A), don't post anything from which your secrets might even be deduced, and B), prepare to suffer the consequences when, (not if), your secrets are revealed.
It's been said before, and it bears repeating: when you aren't paying for a service, then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. If you don't want to be treated as a product, don't use the service.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
My heart goes out to these students and their intolerant environment.
I don't want to pay to read the article, but I wonder why she added her father at all. It seems a very high risk to trust a company with such a crap reputation.
In a world a complicated as it is today Ignorance is a defence.
When it comes to online banking or credit card security, ignorance is my only defence. The system are closed, I can verify anything, and even if I could the systems are so overly complicated that it would take me weeks.
Ignorance is a defence, and when you fail to live up to your users expectations, it's a security break or fraud (if intentional). And that's regardless of what legal bullshit the users agreed to.
Sure, courts aren't always good at acknowledging this. But outside the US it actually happens...
Those "robust security policies" are nothing but paper walls, that can be slid back or removed entirely at the whim of your host, whose house you're visiting.
And your esteemed and generous host is a businessman who's stated quite clearly that your privacy is for sale for his own profit, and that you are a complete fool for trusting him.
Maybe at some point in the future, people will wise up and stop visiting.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
"Facebook spokesprick Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users..."
Well played. Sry it got modded to oblivion.
/. editors actually editing a post before publishing to homepage?
... If you want something to be a secret, don't tell anybody, least of all a relational database!
Can be easily found with a google search for When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook scribd (I didn't link directly to the copypasta'd article because of copyright, I did not post the content to scribd, just googled so I could read the damn thing, yadda yadda yadda)
In essence, Facebook is defaulting to permit when they should be defaulting to deny.
They are robust for facebook's purpose. They are robust against your attempts to use them to secure your privacy!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
But the problem these persons got don't have to do with facebook but more with sharing information with others which might get to the wrong people eventually. Facebook was the willing assistent, though.
I think it's just incredibly lousy of people threatening family members because of sexual preference. It's lousy to harass other people as well, but family is even worse.
cb
"Robust" or just overly complicated and obtuse. While I can appreciate what FB might be trying to accomplish, I sometimes wonder they fail to consider the diverse audience they are working with. At the same time, I also understand that FB is in the business of collecting data -- data mining and information mangling (can someone say Google?). It's in their best interest to encourage you contribute as much as possible for their analytics (and who knows where that goes or who else is behind it). Until there are some laws and standards set in to place to which they must adhere, I fear this is just going to get worse.
Facebook asked me "to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls." That's a great idea. Let me educate you: Facebook has no privacy controls whatsoever. Everything you ever post to Facebook will be exposed for money. That didn't take so long. I think we should all do as Facebook says and educate as many people as possible.
Our security controls at fb are robust enough to f.k the fb user in his/her group ass w/o his/her concent I.e. in a robust way
The things I post on the Internet are not private?
Oh, shii....
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Kind of low of Facebook to turn it around and somehow blame the users for their incompetence.
Roy from I.T. Crowd said it best: "People. What a bunch of bastards."
That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships,
He then went back to spanking his monkey to the lesbian porn DVD he had been watching before all of this happened.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
A secret known by more than one person is not a secret.
I have had "friends" spill the beans about various things I would rather have kept secret in my life and it didn't require Facebook or any other technology to facilitate it. When I was in college we didn't actually have Facebook (we barely had the net and then just for the comp sci/engineering departments) and yet people still outed other people or blabbed shit they shouldn't have that wasn't their place to do things.
The problem is thoughtless assholes, not shitty privacy functionality.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
"you should never post". Get a clue - it may not be you doing the posting.
Here's the problem. They didn't post. They, in fact, used what little privacy controls they had to shield off any posts and activities that would let on their sexual orientation to friends and the public at large.
Who did post, was the then-president of a choir group called Queer Chorus. He added these two individuals to their facebook group. He did so while the group was set public (an 'open' group).
facebook, in turn, notified all the 'friends' of these two individuals that they had joined the group, because that's just how facebook - in all its "privacy? what privacy?" ways - works.
The only time these two individuals ever did anything related to the chain of events was when they friended, or accepted a friend request, from this choir group in the first place. If you're saying that they shouldn't have done that unless they were 'ready and willing' to own, that's fine.
I suppose if they had never befriended the choir on facebook only dealt with them in person, and the then-president had merely mentioned them in passing in a wall post and somebody who knew them had stumbled on that, and posted about it publicly, then they should simply not have dealt with the choir in person.
Maybe you believe that if they weren't 'ready and willing' to own to being gay, they should just have kept up appearances of being straight through all aspects of life.
Rather dangerously close to an "if you have nothing to hide"-argument, I'd say.
Personally, while I agree that anything you post online should be considered a matter of public record, just like picking your nose from the sanctity of your home doesn't mean people won't talk about it the next day if they happened to look through your windows. But then, I have curtains, and I feel that I can reasonably expect that nobody is going to peer through a small slit in those curtains - just as I feel that I should be able to reasonably expect that if I set facebook settings to hide practically everything about me, that they then don't betray that effort by opening up another vector to third parties that is public by design. Naive in both cases, perhaps, but I certainly wouldn't say that it boils down to blaming the users. It's just not that simple.
Put a paywall in front of every article in your Facebook timeline. Only the nosiest will ever know....
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Don't give information you want to keep secret to a public social networking site. There, problem solved. You don't need "privacy controls" if you stop telling every friggin' site on the Internet the most intimate details of your life.
Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. They don't say that for nothing. If you give your secrets to someone else, they are not within your control anymore, period.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"robust privacy controls"
laughing...too hard...make coherent...post...hang on a sec
I dont want to expose my personal details in ways that I may not be aware of (because of what someone else did, because of what Facebook did, because of what hackers did etc)
If you tell Facebook your secret, it's not a secret anymore and you're a moron for thinking it would be.
The problem isn't what they told to Facebook. The problems is that the girls got added to some queer-themed group. group-adding on facebook doesn't require user confirmation nor anything.
A 3rd party just clicked on a group button while the girls were online, and their homophobic parents saw "Girl1 and Girl2 joined group 'lesbian chorus singers' " and freaked out. Without the girls ever needing to do anything, they didn't even need to write their preferences into their profile, and in fact their account could even have been dormant.
The biggest problem is not only that clueless users could mess their own privacy online, but morons can mess other people's privacy as well (and in a few cases including privacy of people who aren't even on facebook themselves).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Pay to read? What strange things are you encountering? I didn't see any paywall.
She helped him set up his facebook account.
You know how that goes.. you set it up for them.. get asked if you're on facebook, tell them that you are and log in to show it to them, and oh my gosh they never saw those pictures of the newborn/dog/car/whatever, how can they get them, well by adding as a friend of course they'll see them pop up in their facebook account automatically and hey presto.
What? Would you be so heartless as to deny your parents photos of their grandchildren/your dog/car (okay, car's not a good example - deal with it)? Why would you not want to be facebook friends with your parents?
The pressure can be overwhelming.
( Anecdotal - not personal, just seen it happen. Didn't have any trouble with it, but they did cut down on posting 'meme' pictures right after that. )
There is no privacy on the internet. None.
Why do so many people find this so hard to understand?
Not read the article?
Actually, she didn't need to post anything about her sexual preferences on Facebook. But someone of her friend added her to a Queer Choir group, which then showed up in her profile, visible to all her friends, including her parents.
Those seem to be separate issues.
I could start mailing you flyers for the KKK, but that doesn't mean you're a member or a supporter. If you get asked about it you just say 'ya, this crazy guy I know keeps sending them to me, I asked to stop but I can't do anything about it'.
Don't get me wrong, it's a problem that you can be added to a group without your consent, but it's about on the level of being able to get unsolicited mail - because everyone else is in the same boat.
The timeline stuff becoming public thing is stranger. But then, it's facebook, don't post anything on facebook you wouldn't want to be public. The 'settings' are irrelevant. Treat it as your public blog website with your name and photo on the top.
No fucking shit...facebook and privacy have no business going in the same sentence together.
The pressure can be overwhelming.
Simple solution: Keep more than one Facebook account. I have one for friends, another for family, another for work, and a fourth for people I don't like very much, which I also use for testing plugins and FB apps.
The kinds of people who have accounts with these outfits don't care if everyone knows every little thing about them and their lives, because it's the whole point of having an account with these outfits. Celebrity is its own reward, so sacrificing your privacy to that end is actually no sacrifice at all.
Internet 101: anything you post will eventually become public; if you you want to keep it a secret, don't post it in the first place. The fact that these two individuals thought that they could mantain two different public personas and keep one of them a secret is simply a testement to their ignorance.
Facebook's stock will finish tanking and they just go away.
"As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents."
"Sophisticated" and "Facebook" don't go together, unless you're an information-harvesting bot.
Keeping info private on Facebook is like living in a dorm with no locks on the doors that go from the hallway to the rooms, and you are only allowed to lock or unlock your own windows.
You can bar your dorm room window, wall it up with bricks, etc. But every so often an RA comes around and quietly unlocks it again without saying anything. On top of that, your lazy neighbors dont bother locking THEIR windows. EVER.
What happens is eventually some prick climbs through either your window you THOUGHT was locked, or even worse, your neighbor's window. Next thing you know your "stuff" is missing because the burglar just went from the neighbor's unlocked window, through his room, and through your interior door.
Dont like it? then move out of the dorm. thats the only answer to security. Sure you dont get a cool place to hang out with your freinds, keep in touch, etc. but your "stuff" is safe.
Yeah and according to various pundits, I'm suspicious because I have the foresight, circumspection and enough emotional development to resist peer pressure to refuse to turn over the most intimate personal details of my personal life to perfect strangers who's STATED and ONLY motivation is to make a buck off me by selling those same details to other perfect strangers all the while displaying a reckless disregard for whatever real life ramifications doing so may have on me.
Yeah. Right.
1. 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
Um, so Facebook is trying to blame those users for not knowing about their privacy controls, when those users DID know about them and it was a Facebook bug that exposed their information???
2. If those users didn't want anyone to know their sexual prefs, why bother to fill it out on Facebook?
One of the nice things about having a PC is that you can set your privacy level as you see fit. If you do not want to be on Facebook, you can...not be on Facebook. If you want to encrypt your email such that your email provider cannot read it, that's within your power. You can even browse the web anonymously if you want.
Now, all bets are off when you lose control of your computing. How would you like a cell phone that required a Facebook account to use?
Palm trees and 8
Someone needs to add the candidates (Obama, Romney, Ryan) to The Westboro Baptist Church supporters groups. Then add them to the KKK and neo nazi groups. Then add Romney and Ryan to the Pro Abortion groups and the pro Gay Rights and Gay Marriage groups. Then we will see some VERY quick changes to how that works WRT not being able to approve groups.... :-)
..."both students were sophisticated users" Please define "sophisticated Facebook user"... I'm at a loss...
Sent from my ENIAC
FaceBook can only out your most personal secrets if you tell it your most personal secrets. I recommend keeping your most personal secrets to yourself and using FaceBook for its intended purpose: seeing who from high school got fat.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
But their joining that choir wasn't online.. it wasn't posted by them. The only thing they did wrong was either pursueing their interests by joining the choir or being like everybody else by having a Facebook account. Since science has taught us that everyone who doesn't use Facebook is a horrible murderer-to-be, the latter can't be ruled out-... so they weren't supposed to join that choir?
Tell them to not use facebook.
Seriously, your privacy is in the hands of your friends of friends. Can anyone guarantee that all his friends of friends are "sophisticated" users?
No matter how hard you try, people with a camera will take shots of you and tag you or will talk about you. No settings will save you from that (I believe you can now deactivate tagging of your name, right?)
Facebook privacy model is broken. Quite possibly by design. If you want privacy about tour friends, your opinions, your sexuality, DO. NOT. USE. FACEBOOK.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Why are you still using Facebook?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is not just about what you do online, it is about what you and all the people you associate with do online. I am not on Facebook, yet Facebook still manages to collect information about me (and spread it around): people "tag" me in photos, sometimes people invite me to join Facebook, and people might mention me in messages they send to each other on Facebook (including public messages). So despite the fact that I have no Facebook account, at least part of my personal life is being collected by that system.
That is the point of TFA. These people did not announce their sexual orientation on Facebook, someone else did, without their permission.
Palm trees and 8
One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties.
The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.
Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.
The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the choir's Facebook group. The president didn't know the software would automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members of the chorus.
The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents.
"Our hearts go out to these young people," says Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. "Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls."
In the era of social networks like Facebook and Google Inc.'s Google+, companies that catalog people's activities for a profit routinely share, store and broadcast everyday details of people's lives. This creates a challenge for individuals navigating the personal-data economy: how to keep anything private in an era when it is difficult to predict where your information will end up.
Many people have been stung by accidentally revealing secrets online that were easier kept in the past. In Quebec, Canada, in 2009, Nathalie Blanchard lost her disability-insurance benefits for depression after she posted photos on Facebook showing her having fun at the beach and at a nightclub with male exotic dancers. After seeing the photos, her insurer, Manulife Financial, hired a private investigator and asked a doctor to re-evaluate her diagnosis, according to Ms. Blanchard's lawyer.
Ms. Blanchard didn't realize her photos were visible to the public, according to the lawyer, who added that depressed people often try to disguise their illness to family and friends. Ms. Blanchard sued to have her benefits reinstated. The matter was settled out of court.
A Manulife spokeswoman declined to discuss the case, saying "we would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."
Losing control online is more than a technology problem—it's a sociological turning point. For much of human history, personal information spread slowly, person-to-person if at all.
The Facebook era, however, makes it possible to disclose private matters to wide populations, intentionally or not. Personal worlds that previously could be partitioned—work, family, friendships, matters of sexuality—become harder to keep apart. One solution, staying off Facebook, has become harder to do as it reaches a billion people around the world.
Facebook is committed to the principle of one identity for its users. It has shut down accounts of people who use pseudonyms and multiple accounts, including those of dissidents and protesters in China and Egypt. The company says its commitment to "real names" makes the site safer for users. It is also at the core of the service they sell to advertisers, namely, access to the real you.
Closeted gays and lesbians face particular challenges in controlling their images online, given that friends, family and enemies have the ability to expose them.
In Austin, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick, 2
They don't care to keep secrets, they want to use every last bit
of your info to make money.
Screw me over twice, shame on ME.
Those who are too young to know better than to use Facebook can and should be
excused for becoming victims. Those who are old enough to know better deserve
no sympathy whatsoever.
Facebook is for sheep. Facebook is for idiots. Facebook is owned by a greedy twit who thinks
the users are idiots who walked into his barn of their own free will to be milked. And what is very
sad is that for the most part he is correct.
If you use Facebook you deserve what you get.
Now, I wonder how much Slashdot gets for publishing articles about Facebook ?
Hmmmm ?
After all, as Hollywood people know well, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
The real issue is that people in my generation, lets say 20-30 years of age, are too trusting of big tech firms like Goog, AAPL and FB, and not skeptical and cynical enough! My parents (and my grandparents to a greater extent) have a great cynicism of this stuff, they use it and are tech savvy, but they don't trust the companies that run it, that is a key difference, sadly too many young people trust these companies. previous generations understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch, my generation has come of age in a world ful of ad supported "freebees" so we don't really have the same concept of the no free lunch principal.
I do feel empathy for them, it did cause pain and all, and that sucks, but I do not have any sympathy for them as they set themselves up for us.
Telegraph, Telephone, Telephasebook!
I do not have a Facebook account, therefore your assertion that everyone has a Facebook account is false. I do not have an account because I cannot be bothered to jump through privacy setting hoops to keep control of information that is mine in the first place. Nothing you put on the Internet is private; put nothing there that you would not announce to a room of friends, family, and coworkers, and future employers. I can never think of anything that I would want to say to all these people at once, so I don't use Facebook.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There is a privacy setting so you can't be added to groups without your permission which undercuts the claim that they were 'sophisticated users'. To be fair I think Facebook set this to false by default when they added the feature.
This is half a social problem, there are no 'robust privacy controls' for that. The girl was exposed by her friend essentially tagging her as gay. A similar thing could happen if one of her friend's mispoke while at her house in hearing of her father. Perhaps then we could blame the lock on the loungeroom door?
Facebook resets your privacy controls on a regular basis it seems. Can't imagine why. Only on purpose...
You're not sophisticated.
Cause and effect didn't work in either your analogy, or the facts of what happened.
It's also not on the order of spam, which is far blinder on a good day, and a "blindfolded shotgun" on a bad day.
For these individuals, something quite ghastly happened. See what happens if/when you get added to a group that you don't want to be identified with for whatever reasons. A false accusation is tough enough to deny and stand-down from, let alone one that you didn't want revealed because it puts you into an awkward position that's untenable. Got Cancer? Here, let's tell your insurance company.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Read The Fucking Article - she didn't put the information on there, someone else did (and Facebook's extremely poor privacy controls allowed it). That was kind of the point:
Do you understand what this is about? Facebook allows other people to add you to groups - in other words, your 'friends' can basically edit an aspect of your profile. It's bizarrely stupid, and has been a common complaint for a long time, and this wouldn't have happened if Facebook didn't do this, but Facebook defends this practice.
And the fourth one has more friends than the other three combined, right?
Facebook's privacy policies basically amount to "you only have as much privacy on our site as we feel like giving you". Anyone who still chooses to use the site after that and is surprised by a privacy breach clearly does need to go back and get educated on how privacy on Facebook works.
On the other hand, this is a matter of other people who know secrets essentially posting them online. This is nothing new.
He said you are a murderer to be. Me too! If only there was some website we could use to keep in contact, maybe share a list of future victims and tips on keep people alive for a long lone time.
Here is my list:
1. Dekker3D
2. Everyone else
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Robust security policies are nothing by glory holes that facebook can strap your ass to, to allow unknown entities to sodomize you without being seen. They are there to protect facebook, not you. They use the term 'robust security policies' openly knowing that the general public actually believes that it refers to how facebook protects them, when it means nothing of the sort.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It's clear that thought went into the spokeman's statement.
Isn't it anyone's job to make sure it doesn't make him sound like a complete douche nozzle?
People kind of doubt the sincerity of your compassion when you immediately turn around and implicitly blame the victims for bringing it on themselves.
Correction: only friends can add you to groups but you cannot stop them, only leave when you receive the notification. I thought I saw this setting somewhere but it's either gone or more likely I confused it with another setting.
I guess this system does a lot to encourage group membership. In the same way people wouldn't bother joining they won't bother leaving. Hence Facebook gains a valuable/insidious source of user data typing.
I'm not a murderer, honest!
.
Choose your Facebook friends wisely.
If you are hiding it, you SHOULDN'T have joined such a group.
If you don't want to hide, then why were you hiding it?
You can't hide things from only some people, these days. Take it to your grave, or it will become "general knowledge."
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I think the AC's point still stands. She told the choir she was gay by joining. They could have set up their own choir web page listing the members and her father could have found it with a Google search on his daughter.
The mundane story is that the internet makes communication more effective. It's somewhat a lame move by Facebook to prioritise their information gathering over controls most users probably want, but the easy propagation of information is modern reality and not the responsibility of Facebook. When it comes to things like governments trying to control file sharing through technological means the general consensus is against it. Here it's not even the government but a private business. Perhaps here the solution is also for society to naturally adapt.
I do not have a Facebook account
Do you have any friends that use Facebook on their smartphone? Uploaded photos and tagged you? Mentioned you in a wall post? If so, then Facebook already has an account for you, you just haven't set a password on it yet.
IOW, Facebook has enough users that they can identify gaps in the social graph corresponding to people who don't use Facebook. It's naive to think they don't do anything with this information.
If your employer types your name in a search engine, is he only going to find the account for colleagues? I'm not on Facebook so I have no idea, but I'm wondering, aren't you required to use your real identity?
Also, is it not annoying to log in four times every day?
This is an education problem. People need to learn not to post anything to the internet that they don't want everyone to read. Privacy doesn't really exist.
That doesn't sound simple. Sounds like a PITA. Also a violation of the TOS.
This is why Facebook is evil and must be completely, and utterly destroyed, through a war of attrition.
Challenge accepted.
There is a privacy setting so you can't be added to groups without your permission which undercuts the claim that they were 'sophisticated users'. To be fair I think Facebook set this to false by default when they added the feature.
This is exactly the problem. These geeks are always swapping shit around and changing things. Every time I go into the Privacy settings menu it's different somehow, and guaranteed if I look hard enough I will find some option that I do NOT want enabled, but which has been added in the interim and given a default setting which leaves the info wide open to everyone.
OK I'm an optimist, humor me......
if the evidence of FB's proactive privacy mismanagement is so overwhelming, what is the solution? is there one?
They obviously have no incentive to clean up their disgraceful neglect, and users apparently refuse to believe that FB is anything but a benevolent hook-up place.
I'd like to believe that informed people can make some kind of change here - but what??
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Regularly.
So like, maybe get a clue?
The person mentioned in TFA is 22 year old Bobbi Duncan... That means she's a grown woman and her father has absolutely nothing to say about how she lives her life, including her sexual preferences.
Why does he even care?
Why does he check her profile for things like that?
He's clearly a pervert and needs to be outed as such. Perhaps we should start a campaign...
Also, why does she care? - If her father is that prejudiced and retarded in his world view, lose him. Tell him - quite publicly - that if he doesn't approve, he should keep his mouth shut or go fuck himself. That will of course not improve family relations but it will show that she means business and that she is not going to take any bullshit from such narrow-minded people.
If he was any kind of man and father, he'd be concerned wth her happiness and well-being, not her sexual preferences and similar. He's obviously also a bad father.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
There is a privacy setting so you can't be added to groups without your permission which undercuts the claim that they were 'sophisticated users'. To be fair I think Facebook set this to false by default when they added the feature.
And you have to be a Facebook user to apply that setting. And then you must repeatedly find and re-apply it when Facebook rearranges its privacy settings and resets them to default (usually undesirable) values. Even a brief period with the setting the wrong way could be disastrous, if the tagging (and consequent promulgation of the tagging) occur during that time.
Those of us who are not Facebook users can apparently be added/tagged/whatever entirely without permission. For all I know, I've been named and tagged in all sorts of photos/groups in malicious ways. That's a nasty problem for some folks, which will likely remain unresolved until it is regulated in some way. By avoiding and actively denying decent self-regulation, Facebook is almost demanding that its actions be limited by legislation. I have no idea what happens to tags or suchlike applied to Facebook users who subsequently renounce/cancel their Facebook accounts. Potentially yet another divisive issue.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If you are hiding it, you SHOULDN'T have joined such a group.
Of course I haven't RTFA, but from the summary:
...a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval.
So they didn't join the group; a 'friend' added them
Whatever happened to, "just say no".
If your friends jumped of a bridge, would you?
Facebook is a privacy nightmare, always has been always will be. Its entire setup is to share your data with others. Not just advertisers but other users. That is its role. It is like saying something into a megaphone and then being surprised others can hear it.
What is its role again? Friend Finder? That is not the role of email. An email service allows to people who know each other already to communicate. Facebook allows you to find people you don't know (or rather that facebook doesn't know you might know or not) and the only way to do that is by sharing data of people who don't know you, with you.
THAT is the privacy hole right there and if you signup to facebook, you signed up to that huge drainage hole of privacy.
People that got things to hide shouldn't join facebook, end of story. And when you are in the closet, you don't join Queer Choirs. Why do you think gays don't want to be forced to stay in the closet? Because they don't want to constantly have to hide their true selfs from everyone and always be afraid of being found out.
Sadly bigoted fathers and others will always be there but sooner or later things would have come out. Or were the girls planning to marry a guy just to keep up appearances? Can't stay in the closet forever.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think he was meaning that they should not have joined the real-world group, an action that resulted in them being added by one of their contacts to the facebook group about the real world group.
...) like they do when you are tagged in an image - though that may be clunky for many users so they'd just turn it off and still be exposed to the problem.
The problem is people can associate you with things on fb and other people will believe it without question. In this case it was something true that people did not want announced at this time, in other cases it could be something fictitious but potentially damaging if people who see it do not see it for the lie/joke/what-ever that it is ("asdf is a member of I Fucking Love Rape Porn"). In the case of true information that people are being careful about distributing, like in this case, fb privacy issues are potentially affecting their real life choices not just online behaviour.
"If you don't want it know, don't post it" doesn't work when others can effectively post "it" to all your contacts for you. The obvious technical solution is for fb to verify all/em> links to you (in comments and responses, additions to groups,
is like expecting McDonald's to protect the lives of beef cattle.
This space available.
Simple solution : don't have friend either . :-P
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Pay to read? What strange things are you encountering? I didn't see any paywall.
I do not have a Facebook account, therefore your assertion that everyone has a Facebook account is false. I do not have an account because I cannot be bothered to jump through privacy setting hoops to keep control of information that is mine in the first place.
An alternative is to have multiple accounts for different interest groups. Set them all so only friends can view information and the only way that they can know it belongs to you is if you accept a request. If someone requests the "wrong" one reject it with an "I don't know you" and they will probably mention it in email. I have not done this but I think it would be feasible.
When I was at Uni I knew a number of jokers who would have signed people up to all sorts. It was pre-Facebook days but I remember getting signed up at my parents address to things ranging from "the Watch Tower" to "Latex interest group". Surely she could have said something like "I'll kill that , I'm going to find a way to sign them up to the "friends of westboro" group - and nobody would be the wiser
I do not have a Facebook account, therefore your assertion that everyone has a Facebook account is false.
Do you browse the net and see those facebook like buttons now and then? Whenever you see such a button, facebook registers your IP-address and knows what website you were viewing. Only if you use addons like Ghostery you can avoid this, but many people don't know that.
You may not have a facebook account, but facebook is certainly trying to monitor what you do online. If you ever do register, they will soon enough be able to link you to that older data.
OK, I'm willing to do the cutting; who's willing to do the packing?
The simple answer I would have thought is a simple master switch which says "for new features I want the default behaviour to be" - default / private / disabled. It shouldn't be hard to implement but unless someone like the EU were to force such a thing (and likely it would only cover the EU), I don't see Facebook ever volunteering to do it.
"There is a privacy setting so you can't be added to groups without your permission "
So somebody else can be added to the group, that person will spill his guts.
It's terrible that people have to suffer just because they have a sexual preference. Unfortunately Facebook is built like a parasite, people adding you to groups, tagging your picture etc.
It's too bad that we have to have more cases like these to really start enforcing how a company like facebook can manipulate our information.
This is why I believe the only real alternative is for every person to have their own "wall" on their own microserver which allows them to control everything & has very restrictive policies set by default. De-centralized and strictly under the user's control.
This way there is no giant egg basket that everyone wants a piece of.
Facebook? I'm over it.
Or you could just convince everyone to jump to Google+
these security issues happen ALL THE TIME with facebook. Facebook has been violating users privacy, not handling pricacy issues, and releasing private informaiton, not to mention owning the rights to all your images posted since its inception.
Anyone with half a brain who is interested in this can search Facebook Privacy.. and see instances of their gross negligence.
The issue here is simple.. people use it. You feel pressured into using it.. you use it.
you know youre not safe, but you do it any way.. why? because you're not strong enough to bring them to a different network.
I made the jump to G+ as soon as it was available (I was lucky enough to get an early invite)
the privacy control is brilliant by default, I have my friends, family, coworkers and everyone in the one account and never worry about the wrong information going to the wrong people.
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..
..
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AccountKiller
Every time I do this, all the accounts get banned. I am glad you are having better luck with it though
It's a lot easier to use one account and the filter controls that have been there for years. I have certain friends who are otherwise cool but can get very sensitive about certain types of jokes so I might make a post visible to everyone but them. My sister sincerely believes that criticizing me with zero cleverness, wit, or irony is a valid form of humor and that everyone else gets it so I hide certain things from her too. Only takes a couple seconds and no one knows anything is being hidden.
Indeed. "both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents" - I'm sorry, but sophisticated users either don't use Facebook or accept that there will probably be a breach of their privacy at some point, trying to find a middle ground is just being naive.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I mean done... reallly.
There I am ensuring that facebook is consistent with my TOS.
have use... or sadly even know about e-mail!
And four Facebook accounts is somehow a "simple" solution? It's not even a reasonable solution, never mind a simple one.
If you have a setting that not allow search for your account, google won't show your account in the search. Also, facebook won't show your account in the list either unless you are a friend of the person who is doing the search.
@GP, even though multiple-account may help solving the issue, it is breaking the TOS of facebook. Right now they are not enforcing it, but it doesn't mean it is the right thing to do. If one wants to be on the Internet, the one should accept and prepare for any consequence. Internet has no privacy.
Given that this 'loophole' has existed for years - hell someone once added Zuckerberg to the NAMBLA group linky - and hasn't been fixed I'd say it's pretty much a feature at this point.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Facebook can publish 0% of the things I never type into Facebook in the first place.
What, you believe in an invisible friend, but don't like being lumped with the others that claim to believe in the same imaginary friend?
I believe in an invisible Creator but don't like being lumped in with people who claim to believe in the same invisible Creator but have made a habit of refusing to do what he says. As his son said: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." --Matthew 7:21, NIV.
Facebook breaks my terms of service too, so we're even!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I just gave up and took my ball home.
I should add that even without Facebook, I am doing pretty good so far. What am I missing?
You are missing Spotify and other Facebook-exclusive applications.
Good thing the ISP can't get away with it then isn't it? If they do it without the permission of their users, they could be sued.
The ISP would win such a lawsuit as soon as its counsel shows the judge out the signed terms of service in which the customer granted such permission. If both broadband ISPs that serve your area require such permission in order to begin service, good luck with your dial-up.
perhaps it will convince some people to simply not use Facebook
That or just remove all friends and keep only those parts of the account that are absolutely needed in order to use Spotify and other web applications that require Facebook Connect.
That's strange.. I'm from NL, didn't get it. Maybe AdBlock Plus is having an additional beneficial side-effect there..
Internet 101: anything you post will eventually become public
Which is why, even though I have a Facebook page, there is almost nothing in it.
I haven't even put my birthday in it. Only a few interests and where I went to school. It's not even hooked to my main email account. (Which helps me spot spam!)
And when Google suggested that I use my real name on YouTube instead of the username I chose, I turned that down too. If I wanted to use my real name, I would have, and in fact I do sometimes.
THINK! It's patriotic
It would be nice if all old people with insane religious beliefs would likewise avoid Facebook or have too hard of a time figuring out how to use it. That's the real issue here: there are too many "old" people with bigoted religious beliefs that unfortunately figure out how to get on Facebook.
Not having a facebook account could be just as risky for your privacy. Say one of your friends took a photo of you which you'd rather not have publicly broadcast say in a stripclub or whatever. He could put that photo on facebook, and you'd never be wise to it because you don't have a facebook account from which to view it. Then years down the road you're getting a divorce or something, and your wife's lawyer digs that photo up and finds evidence you cheated on her, so on.
Lies!
I saw it!
Well, videotaped it anyway.
THINK! It's patriotic
The real problem has to do with religion. Get rid of religion and you won't have this issue.
It would be much easier for the lawyer to find that picture if I were on Facebook, because it would be tagged to my account. If I were on Facebook I would have to make it my business to be aware of what links to me and confront people who put my pictures there which is another situation I don't want to get into. I have encountered people in my workplace who would do anything for an edge with the boss, including befriending someone who can see my less sanitized pictures. Anyone who does not understand the danger of Facebook clearly has not been in this situation.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
...and this, kids, is YET ANOTHER good reason to get the hell out of Facebook.
My personal farewell to Facebook came about 2 years ago, when they took group discussions public - including already posted discussions.
It's one thing to criticize various government figures in the privacy of a 20-member group, it's another thing altogether to have your real name + various tirades publicly posted - and forever Googlecached - for anyone to find. Thanks a lot, Facebook, for potentially damaging my chances for sensitive employment and/or government positions.
Google+, Diaspora, LinkedIn, whatever. Not going back to Facebook.
Opening it in a private tab still shows the paywall.
I worked out how to get round it though: Google search the URL, and the Google HTTP referrer means WSJ shows the full article.
I was just considering caving in to the relentless "get on Facebook" drumbeat I've been hearing from friends, relatives and people I do business with.
This article showed me why being on Facebook AT FUCKING ALL is a VERY BAD IDEA!
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
"The only winning move is not to play"
Not if I have facebook.com/fbcdn/www. variants in my /etc/hosts it doesn't.
I tell everyone if you don't want people to know it don't put it on the internet. Once posted on the internet in any form of media it can never be erased.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
"anything you post will eventually become public" Um. She didn't post it.
I use this solution.
Ya. Pretty much. I don't know why so many people here get so worked up about it. If you don't like it leave, I did. FWIW it's probably not a good idea to hide stuff from your parents, or your kids, wife, best friend etc. If it is a good idea to hide stuff from somebody that close to you, you um, need to put some distance between the two of you.
Some information, ya sure. How much of it? Well let's guess: ...
-how many/who my friends are? -If most of my friends are on FB, and post stuff about me (they probably don't) or tag me in pictures (not very often like never) then yes. In my case no probably not.
-how many siblings I have? -probably not. People can list their siblings, but mine aren't that stupid and most people are too lazy anyways.
-who my parents are? -probably not. They don't have accounts and probably don't even know what it is.
-what my hobbies are? -almost definitely not. Facebook probably isn't dumb enough to assume my interests are the same as my friends and any pictures I'm tagged in by them would be... incidental. So if I'm tagged in a picture skiing or at a location - maybe I only went once, how the hell are they supposed to know?
-what music, books, movies, games I like? -almost definitely not. There is almost no way for them to glean this information with any degree of accuracy. See above. Again even if I was tagged in something, it's just not very much information to go off of.
-my DOB? Nope.
-my address? Nope.
-my sex? If I was tagged in a picture, ya probably.
-my sexual orientation? Nope.
So FB knows I'm a white dude with [x] color hair. Ya, I feel so violated.
You get the picture. This all depends on whether your friends are narcissistic socialites that are more interested in using their smartphones as megaphones, in which case you probably deserve it and you would fit right in on that site anyways...
That there can be any legitimate debate about to whom one's sexual preferences are revealed once one posts them on a social media site designed for sharing personal information throttles my imagination.
There's this thing we had in my day called discretion. Apparently the kids think Facebook is now responsible for it.
Hooray for frictionless sharing.
Amazes me that the hipster groupthink has Google as the prime agent of privacy betrayal, not FB.
Got Cancer? Here, let's tell your insurance company.
If there is a situation where you need to rely on an insurance company for healthcare you should move.
Also, if people ask about why you're added to a group, make a group, Sir_sri's group of involuntary membership. And add people to it. Demonstration is key. There is enough 'being gay is funny' and gay as pejorative that you can always tell people your friends are assholes, or drunk, or both.
I don't agree with your arguments, but I don't agree with the moderation you got neither.
I'm not a boy. I'm a 42 year old fucking bastard that cannot sustain living with people like me. :-)
I'm already have enough of me on my life. Having friends (and some of them are truely friends) helps me to be a better person.
I can just hope to do the same for them, however I'm not sure.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org