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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.'"
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.
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).
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.
Dont put personal shit on the internet, ever.
unless you are ok with it getting out, because that is inevitable.
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 ]
She didn't tell Facebook anything related to her sexual preferences. And she still got outed. That's the whole point of the article.
What, exactly, is the "American Atheist Association"? No such organization exists. If you're going to make up accusations, at least make them up about a group that isn't imaginary.
Huh?
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.
Look, I'm not sure you realize how it works. If someone sends you an invite to a group, you are added to the group. There is no "friending" involved, and there is no control by the recipient of the invite to the group.
How do I know that? Well a few weeks ago, someone sent me an invite to a group. I received the email, but had no interest. In fact I replied to the person's personal email and said "thanks, but no thanks. I don't Facebook, I log in to my account maybe 1 time a week to see the page and what relatives were up to. Two days later, I happened to log in to facebook, and low and behold I'm being spammed by this group on my wall. I never agreed, never "friended" anyone, I was simply notified that I was invited. Magically I'm in that group without any action on my part, and had to remove myself from the group without ever joining.
These teens had the same thing happen. This is a Facebook security issue and has nothing to do with those two teens. In fact, I hope it opens up a nice fat class action case against them and marks the piece of shit that is facebook.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I assume its these guys:
http://www.atheists.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Atheists
Not using FB doesn't fix the problem, because anyone can post anything to Facebook about anyone. Better you DO have a FB account, as at least there is some chance you'll get notified when someone chooses to post something undesirable (to you) about you. If you don't have a FB account, you won't even know that there's a doctored photo of you having sex with a donkey posted with your name on it.