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Facebook's Graph Search: Kiss Your Privacy Goodbye
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."
You kissed your privacy goodbye when you signed up for a social network.
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.
Do not enter your real name on a social network, use a Psuedonym, call yourself something else like you would on IRC, AIM, YIM, etc. Only friend people who you know on their Psuedonym. People. Quit. Putting. Your. Real. Name. On. Accounts.
Yes people let us live in fear. Fear the bogeyman. Hide your truth. Isn't it obvious this is the path to a brighter future.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Too bad. They know exactly who you really are, and your current, (and probably all past) addresses. Your spouse and family log in from the same public facing IP addresses, you all visit the same restaurants together with your portable devices. Your friends have your pictures, and facial recognition will peg you.
You are fooling no one but yourself.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If a foreign government agency had spent years gathering data, and was mining it for undisclosed (possibly nefarious) purposes, It would be known as a dangerous spy network, would be subjected to infiltration/corruption and possible attack. I completely fail to understand why people tell FB anything about themselves ever, and don't request immediate deletion of all the data held about them. When governments try and spy on someone, they get all upset about it, when FB does it, and freely allows the data to be sold to the highest bidder/anyone who cares to look, people think its really cool and useful. what does it take for people to say enough is enough? Is it too late now, since the data is already gathered? why do I fail to see the upside of FB and its data gathering ilk?
I don't think its their own posts most folks are worried about, or object to Facebook using,referencing,indexing etc.
All but the dumbest among us (seems there are lots of really dumb folks though) know not to put anything on Facebook we'd be upset about someone reprinting on a billboard next to the interstate with attribution.
The issue is really all the other photos people post and tag, the fact they can tag you when you don't even have an account. The fact that they are using facial recognition and what really are some pretty smart algorithms to know when someone mentions John Smith, just exactly which one they are talking about. Coupled with the location information attached to much of these things as meta data Facebook likely has a better idea of where you are at this very moment than many of our intelligence agency do and probably could figure it out faster too. That is what people have problems with.
Now this search feature is going to make the last part more and more available to well anyone who happens to be interested and is willing to endure viewing an ad for "attractive singles in their area".
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
People who post pictures of themself drunk, passed out pants round their ankles in the street are concerned with privacy.
Check how unique your browser is:
http://panopticlick.eff.org/
This will show you that logged in FB or not, your browser signs your unique presence for you. No really, you don't even need to have an account on FB to be known by FB. Now add the data collected by other sites and I'm quite sure that FB could automatically fill in your first name field and last name field for you during the account creation.
I wrote this a while ago but I will continue to post it as long as stupid people exist: You Do Not Have A Facebook Page!. Facebook has a page on you.
I signed up to Facebook and occasionally update Facebook's page on me, I find the service quite useful for keeping in touch with people, but I am under no illusions as to why Facebook provides this service. Anyone who uses Facebook with anything they expect to keep private has seriously misunderstood their relationship with the company.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
The real problem, As I see it, is that in the not too distant future:
everyone in the US will essentially be forced to have a Social Network account to be able to function in modern society.
More and more I see all manner of business and government entities handing responsibility over to FB for all sorts of things. It's actually quite disgusting, but not surprising given the (d)evolution of our database driven society. A centralized system of user accounts that almost everything done digitally can use?
When I first saw the subtle changes taking place with FB, things like not being able to contact my local PBS television station unless I used FB , or not being able to enter a contest to see one of my favorite bands unless I used FB I knew it would be only a matter of time until everyone will be forced to have an account.
Currently I don't have one, and never have. However I am part of a group that has an account, and my name and image are located there, so I'm "in the system" as it were.
Once everyone is forced to have an account, then the next step will be for society in general to force those with accounts to update those accounts. There will come a time when via our smartphones those accounts will be updated automatically.
It's almost at that point now:
Who you've talked to.
What you said.
Where you went.
What you bought.
What you listened to.
What you read.
What you think.
Disgusting, reprehensible, wrong
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I believe that by "standard browser" he means any browser which does any of the following:
- Javascript
- Cookies
- Flash
If your browser does any of those, you are being tracked every time you open it. You don't even need a facebook account and you don't need to use google. If you wish to stop being tracked, you will have the install at least the following extensions for your browser:
- NoScript (for malicious javascript)
- Ghostery (for cross-site tracking)
- CS lite (for flexible cookie management)
- BetterPrivacy (for Flash-based cookies)
- AdBlockPlus (for more tracking)
- https anywhere (for man-in-the-middle snooping)
- FireGloves (for browser fingerprinting)
and configure all of them to only use a whitelist, and explicitly disable Facebook, Google, Twitter and anything similar. Then you'll need to restart your browser at regular intervals to deter session cookies. You'll also need to reconnect to your ISP regularly to thwart IP-based tracking.
Yes, there used to be a time when using the web was easy. Now Facebook and Google have turned it into THIS.
Try using your small business account to order up a Choicepoint profile of one Richard Cheney and see how far that theory takes you. If privacy is such an unimportant illusion why does every high-ranking corporate and government official have access to their records not only blocked but set up for immediate counterattack on access?
sPh