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Facebook's Graph Search: Kiss Your Privacy Goodbye

Posted by timothy on from the no-longer-in-relationship-with-privacy dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Software developer Jeff Cogswell is back with an extensive under-the-hood breakdown of Facebook's Graph Search, trying to see if peoples' privacy concerns about the social network's search engine are entirely justified. His conclusion? 'Some of the news articles I've read talk about how Graph Search will start small and slowly grow as it accumulates more information. This is wrong—Graph Search has been accumulating information since the day Facebook opened and the first connections were made in the internal graph structure,' he writes. 'People were nervous about Google storing their history, but it pales in comparison to the information Facebook already has on you, me, and roughly a billion other people.' There's much more at the link, including a handy breakdown of graph theory."

9 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. I was under the impression... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    the minute you logged into FB you had to kiss your privacy goodbye?

  2. Garbage in, garbage out by tipo159 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have been peppering my FB check-ins with places that I have been to, noting events that never took place, mixed in with real check-ins. I have set my "Lives in" city to somewhere different every day this year. Unless you know me, good luck figuring out what on my FB page is real and what isn't.

    1. Re:Garbage in, garbage out by Old97 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Timmy, is that you?

      --
      Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
    2. Re:Garbage in, garbage out by Stele · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sounds like you have a lot of free time on your hands. Like most Facebook users.

  3. Re:Yeah, right by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    As soon as I wrote that I was CEO of Shell Oil, owner of the US Treasury and as a imigrant from Jupiter, I lost all privacy. It is they who are cursed, not I.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Re:Yeah, right by TwineLogic · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is why the only Like buttons I see are hosted on the web site I am viewing:

    $ cat /etc/hosts
    [...]
    127.0.0.30 outbrain.com
    127.0.0.30 facebook.com

  5. Re:Yeah, right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm not even on facebook!

    And I'm scr****ed.

    scrAMBLed?!?

  6. Re:Yeah, right by treeves · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm not even on facebook!

    And I'm scr****ed.

    scrAMBLed?!?

    scrOTUMed.

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
  7. Re:Yeah, right by ArsonSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not me because I don't want to be put on a list of "hiding something because they don't use facebook like everyone else." Instead I have a script that finds the most common likes that average people click and it automatically likes them by me as well. My profile fits pretty much right in the middle.

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.