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Facebook To Overhaul Data Use Policy

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-your-data-are-belong-to-us dept.

dryriver writes "The new Facebook advertising policy: 'Our goal is to deliver advertising and other commercial or sponsored content that is valuable to our users and advertisers. In order to help us do that, you agree to the following: You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.' — Facebook also made it clear that the company can use photo recognition software to correctly identify people on the network. It said: 'We are able to suggest that your friend tag you in a picture by scanning and comparing your friend's pictures to information we've put together from your profile pictures and the other photos in which you've been tagged.' — It [Facebook] said it was also clarifying that some of that information reveals details about the device itself such as an IP address, operating system or – surprisingly – a mobile phone number. The Register has asked Facebook to clarify this point as it's not clear from the revised policy wording if a mobile number is scooped up without an individual's knowledge or as a result of it being previously submitted by that person to access some of the company's services. Importantly, Facebookers are not required to cough up their mobile phone number upon registering with the service. At time of writing, Facebook was yet to respond with comment."

26 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. A relevant link: by twjordan · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-site-governance/section-by-section-summary-of-updates/10153200989785301

    The post is pretty bad without a link to the actual updates. ./ has fallen a bit.

    1. Re:A relevant link: by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      What a huge surprise.

      Their existing data use policy is too restrictive.

      It would be simpler to just have:

      We promise not to use your data in the following ways:

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:A relevant link: by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They've repeated lied in the past and will continue to lie in the future.

      Understand if you post on Facebook, you have no privacy.
      Even if other people post about you on facebook, your privacy is going to be impaired.

      Understand *you are the product being sold*.

      It's a challenge for me. I finally withdrew from facebook. It's taken a while for people to start emailing me. At first they were annoyed that I needed special handling and they couldn't just set the event up on facebook. But now there are more of us avoiding facebook so email is coming back.

      I wouldn't have withdrawn if they hadn't been such weasels about privacy settings.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    3. Re:A relevant link: by davester666 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Whoosh it was an empty list

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    4. Re: A relevant link: by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have, for years, been WRONG!

      My Slashdot replies have been unwittingly posted in a masturbation forum called "Point Stroke".

      It seems to have been taken over by armchair satirists and political screed-writers.

      Oh, What? That is Slashdot? You don't say!

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
  2. Re:ha! by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hi, Mark Fucking Zuckerberg here. I own you're fucking asses, you pathetic like pukes. If I want to sell your left fucking kidney, I can do it because I'm Mark Fucking Zuckerberg and you're pathetic addicts.

    No, he can't do that because it would be a HIPAA violation, but just about anything else would be correct.

  3. /etc/hosts jokes aside by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a real excerpt from my /etc/hosts file, saves me no end of trouble:

    0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com
    0.0.0.0 facebook.com
    0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
    0.0.0.0 static.ak.fbcdn.net
    0.0.0.0 www.login.facebook.com
    0.0.0.0 login.facebook.com
    0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.net
    0.0.0.0 fbcdn.net
    0.0.0.0 www.fbcdn.com
    0.0.0.0 fbcdn.com
    0.0.0.0 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
    0.0.0.0 static.ak.connect.facebook.com

    1. Re:/etc/hosts jokes aside by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Informative

      0.0.0.0 is invalid, so should cause an immediate fail without attempting to connect. If you run a webserver on your computer, a loopback address may actually hit the webserver and require a response.

  4. What The Fuck? by wrackspurt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've never used Facebook exactly because of shit like this. I just don't get how it got so big and stays so big. Genetics? Like a different genetic strain of our species which makes hundreds of millions willing victims just as long as they get noticed and pretend friends.

    Anthropology suggests each of us normally has about half a dozen close friends at any one time. About that many friends make sense when you consider the emotional and temporal investments and returns. Facebook just makes no sense. It's like people so pathetic just getting noticed no matter the reason or the cost is some twisted form of self validation.

    1. Re:What The Fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've never used Facebook exactly because of shit like this. I just don't get how it got so big and stays so big.

      Your confusion, as you express above, can be alleviated simply by remembering that average I.Q. is 100.
      That average is found at the peak of the "bell curve" which represents the distribution of I.Q. scores in
      a population.

      What you need to remember is this : half the population has an I.Q. of 100 or lower. This means that half the
      population is not very smart, to express it in charitable terms. A lot of behavior which doesn't seem to "make
      sense" can be therefore explained by the fact that a very large number of people are just plain idiots. And idiots
      do idiotic things ( as Gomer Pyle might have said : "Shazam !" ).

      Facebook is milking idiots. Facebook is used by idiots. That's really all there is to it. Well, except for this :

      I own a smallish ( non Fortune 500 ) company. Part of the hiring process at my company involves finding out
      if a prospective new hire uses Facebook. If they do use Facebook, they are not hired. Of course they are never
      told that the reason they weren't hired is that they use Facebook, but there you have it. I have discovered too many
      employees using Facebook on company time, and this is unacceptable. All such employees have been "weeded out"
      ( fired ) and we don't take on any new people of this sort.

      ~

    2. Re:What The Fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That sounds like a really stupid policy. Instead of trying to weasel around the issue simply ban non-work related sites on company time and tell people interviewing that that's your policy. Employees violating company policy are instantly fired. There's no reason to be sneaky about it.

      There are valid uses for FB. Not everyone knows how to setup custom RSS feeds for their favorite news sites. Follow what you want and you get all their stores in one place. No need to go visit multiple websites. Sadly it's still the easiest way to share pictures among a group of semi-related people who all went on a hiking trip. The discussion coming up with the trip's time, location, drivers, etc.. and it's results (pictures, videos, etc...) are all right there in one place. Sharing baby photos with grandparents, siblings, and a few friends is still easiest on FB. Almost all email providers limit email sizes. Most people don't know how to setup personal server space to share photos. FB makes it easy. It's original purpose of letting old buddies get back in touch with you is still valid. Not everyone with a FB account uses it to constantly spam the world with their self delusions.

    3. Re:What The Fuck? by Tippler · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You seem to be postulating that the use of Facebook is indicative of low intelligence. As a recent graduate of a top 20 medical school, I can confidently say that greater than 80 percent of my peers use Facebook. The percentage is similar in my residency program. Are you saying that hundreds of at least moderately intelligent people with the motivation to go through four years of college, four years of medical school, and 3 or more years of residency are not candidates for your company because we choose to occasionally interact via an electronic medium with which you are not comfortable? If your hiring practices are subject to such idiotic generalizations, then you will stay "smallish" or go bankrupt very quickly.

    4. Re:What The Fuck? by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like a wise choice. I know Facebook isn't the only app employees might waste your time on, with their phones. Every time I see someone's employee fiddling with their phone -- usually while not providing customer service, but always while stealing paid time -- I wonder how they manage to remain employed.

      Flexibility runs both ways - if you're going to be a dick and prevent employees from taking the occasional 5 minute break (because it's "stealing" from you) then they're not going to be inclined to do anything over and above their contract either. Don't expect someone to stay late to clear up some problem (because that would be you "stealing" from them) if you're never going to return the favour.

      FWIW, an old employer of mine started doing the kind of shit you're suggesting - I got a massive bollocking for ending up 5 minutes late due to traffic one morning... the previous night I had stayed 2 hours late to finish some work. Needless to say, I never stayed late again, and left the company relatively soon afterwards... in fact, most of my colleagues also got pissed off with them and quit - they lost 75% of their technical staff in a 2 month period.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  5. Re:ha! by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, he can't do that because it would be a HIPAA violation, but just about anything else would be correct.

    Nonsense.

    It *might* be a HIPAA violation for him to tell everyone he sold your kidney, but HIPAA has nothing at all to do with the waiver you signed allowing his doctors to swoop in and *take* your kidney.

    HIPAA is about health information privacy and has nothing to do with the fact you clicked through a Kidney Sales Agreement form...

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  6. Re:Thanks by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nobody forced your friends to use it either, but no one is stopping them from using it either, and by some of their possible actions, you're using it whether you want to or not....

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  7. Re:ha! by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 3, Informative

    The shadow profile stuff came out much longer than several weeks ago. Provided is a slashdot link to a story almost 2 years old:

    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-building-shadow-profiles-of-non-users

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  8. That's not entirely accurate... by runeghost · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Facebook users beware. Nobody forced you to use it.

    That's the end of USEFUL discussion.

    Facebook is reported to have been creating profiles for peoplel who have never signed up. http://www.zdnet.com/anger-mounts-after-facebooks-shadow-profiles-leak-in-bug-7000017167/

  9. Re:Thanks by fermion · · Score: 3, Insightful
    12-24 year old define themselves with peer groups. At one time that meant smoking, even though no one forced anyone to smoke. It is just what one did. Before that you went to the malt shop.

    Facebook for most people was a phase.I see more kids get over it earlier as their parents spend more time on it. Now companies are using it to try to reach a generation that is not on tv, and it me moving from a phase to a cost of doing business. No one forces you to cut out coupons to buy name brand products, but we do. It could be that facebook ends up being the broker of the kind of relationships that some people like to have with retail brands, in which case value will be added for some people. And the kids who like the freedom that facebooks gives them will not go away, just like when we smoked ciggarettes.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  10. And that is also not entirely accurate... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thanks for the (interesting and scary) link - but that isn't quite what that article says. According to that article, Facebook is compiling shadow profiles of signed-up users to accumulate information they expressly did not add to their public profile, such as phone numbers and email addresses. (And who knows what else...)

    Another reason not to do Facebook, though, so I won't. I do maintain an interest, however, because my wife is an active FB user, on the grounds that she says she never posts anything that could be useful for any kind of miscreant. She is not a techie, though, and I have trouble explaining to her that it isn't as simple as that.

  11. Lovely arrogance there... by denzacar · · Score: 5, Informative

    What you need to remember is this : half the population has an I.Q. of 100 or lower. This means that half the population is not very smart, to express it in charitable terms. A lot of behavior which doesn't seem to "make sense" can be therefore explained by the fact that a very large number of people are just plain idiots.

    Your understanding of IQ, social interactions and your purported hiring practices match up really well.

    First off... That 100 average IQ is a normalized value.
    It will never change, no matter how many "stupid" people or geniuses are out there. 100 will always be average.
    Now, thing with bell-shaped curves is, they have this nasty habit of being evenly distributed on both sides.
    Also, there's this thing of them having 95% of all values within 2 sigma - which are in this case conveniently situated around that 100 IQ average.

    What that means in real life is that 95% of people in the world fall within 2 sigma from 100 IQ.
    I.e. Almost everyone is within IQ 70 and IQ 130.
    Leaving ~2.5% people with IQ over 130, and just as much of those with the IQ of under 70.

    Now here's the fun part. It's a bit counter intuitive, so try to keep up.
    First of all, those with IQ below 70 don't really count. We're talking "definite feeble-mindedness" there.
    Those people are not what you can in any way call active members of the society.

    Then comes that second sigma - those falling in that group between 70 and 85.
    Within those 15 IQ points falls 14.591% of humanity. And guess what? Most of those don't count either!
    Cause those ranging from 70 to 85 IQ points are what we call "borderline deficient", "borderline impaired or delayed", "well below average" or "borderline mentally retarded".
    Again... this being the place on the scale where those number really count, about two thirds of those people are closer to retarded than to plain old "stupid".
    You're pretty much not interacting with them online, and very likely not in real life either.

    Which leaves us with 95 - 9.7 - 47.5 = 37.5% of humanity that falls within 80 - 100 IQ range, which you might call "stupid people".
    In all fairness, actual number of "stupid people" is closer to 30%, as the closer you get to that average of 100 IQ, the more people there are and there is a greater chance that many of them are closer to 100 than measured.

    Now, one third of humanity MAY seem like a "very large number of people" - but they are actually a MINORITY compared to the 50% of humans who are of ABOVE AVERAGE intelligence.

    So... umm... yeah... Your "arguments" about all those idiots? More like arrogance.
    And that's more dangerous than plain old low intelligence cause it masquerades as wisdom creating that warm feeling of being right - even when you're completely clueless.
    BTW, love the way you managed to weave in a (completely meaningless and valueless) comparison of YOUR company with those on F500 list though nobody asked for it AND though you're posting anonymously.

    Arrogance will also leave you safely inside your cocoon of cluelessness regarding human interactions beyond those that you can hire out or were born into.
    Or you would have figured out or guessed by know that people tend to have these groups of people called families, friends, acquaintances, school friends etc.
    None of whose IQ or personal preferences or simply lack of paranoia regarding privacy they can't control nor can they just cut out those persons from their life or ignore them when they reappear in their life.
    And many of those people just happen to find social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc. as highly useful/entertaining/practical/fun.

    And if you're really limiting your own pool of potential talent by adding such an arbitrary limitation as you say you do - you might as well be chucking out all people who's favorite color is blue.
    Or green. Or whatever.

    But hey... Do keep up with that.
    I'm certain your competition has nothing against the idea of you limiting your own options.
    I sure love it.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  12. Re:Thanks by SGT+CAPSLOCK · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's sadly the case...

    One of my friends has a wife who decided it'd be cute to post pictures of me on her Facebook account despite my telling her plainly that I didn't want that to happen. I got the pleasure of sitting and watching her do it, and giggle about it throughout my protests.

    Nothing can be done to stop it. It's not like I'm going to steal her camera and delete her pictures. So, I'm in their system, despite being really well known as the paranoid "they're out to get me" guy to pretty much everyone who knows me.

    No matter how careful we are individually, the ignorance of others certainly can affect us strongly these days...

  13. Re:ha! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm talking about the more recent revelations that came out this past June - regarding how the "friend finder" was slurping up information like your friends cell phone numbers etc. and storing that in shadow profiles (which got exposed because of the Facebook bug in their profile download tool).

    The existence of Facebook and Google+ shadow profiles has indeed been known for a while.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  14. Battle of the forms by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    Read up on the legal issue of a "battle of the forms".

  15. Re:Thanks by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, I'm in their system, despite being really well known as the paranoid "they're out to get me" guy to pretty much everyone who knows me.

    And this is why privacy/data protection laws need to be updated to have far more teeth than they have today. When you have an organisation as influential as Facebook and it is actively encouraging other people to do things like providing your picture or your phone number with or without your knowledge or consent, any argument that some use of that data about you is permitted under their ToS has no weight if you're not a Facebook user yourself, but it seems clear that they're storing the data anyway. Actually, I'm not sure how that's not already illegal, at least within the EU, but the regulators don't seem in any hurry to take action and even if they do the penalties are little more than the change in Zuckerberg's pocket.

    FWIW, I am similar to you, being well known among my friends as someone who doesn't want to share his personal details with Facebook. I feel sufficiently strongly about this that in the situation you described I would have made it very clear to my "friend" and his wife that I would no longer consider them friends if they thought it was funny to violate my privacy in that way, but then again I'm also confident that I would never have to go that far with anyone I consider a friend in the first place. I'm sorry if you're not always in such a happy position with the company you keep.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  16. Re:Thanks by cas2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ask her how she'd feel if you took a photo of her, printed it with her name, address, phone number, email address and any other personal information you can think of, and then posted hundreds of copies of it on bus shelters, lamp posts, walls, bulletin boards, etc all over town.

    then tell her that that is exactly what she's done to you.

    if you're feeling really pissed off, don't pose it as a question, just go ahead and do it.

  17. Re:Thanks by Omestes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It depends. I had a party at my house once, and someone posted photos to Facebook from their phone, tagging my house as a location. I have never been able to remove this. Even flagging the photos doesn't remove the "check in" as my house as a public location. Trying to complain doesn't work, since my house isn't actually associated with me, according to Facebook, I am not the owner of this "venue". So, despite me never telling facebook my address, and removing all location data from everything I share, Facebook now can associate me with an address.

    The problem with things like Facebook, is that you have no power over what others can do with your information. You can abstain from using it, or use it as responsibly as possible, and it doesn't matter once someone posts something about you.

    --
    A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey