Facebook: The End of Privacy

In the past few years, social media has integrated into the lives of millions across the globe. The website Facebook has gathered the data of millions of use...

A bug that has been in Facebook's network for about a year has exposed private information on about 6 million of its users to other users during that period. This has revived concern that the company maintains a database of shadow profiles of members and their friends, even if the latter are non-members. Facebook has found and squashed the bug, but the news has angered some users.

Facebook has been secretly compiling 'shadow profiles' of all users

Eight hundred million users are not enough. Facebook, the world's biggest social network, is now building profiles of non-users who haven't even signed up, an international privacy watchdog charges.

An anonymous reader writes "As noted previously, Max Schrems of Europe Versus Facebook has filed numerous complaints about Facebook's data collection practices. One complaint that has failed to draw much scrutiny regards Facebook's creation of Shadow Profiles. 'This is done by different functions th...

Facebook said Friday it fixed a bug that exposed contact info for over six million accounts. The admission revealed its 'shadow profile' data collection activities, and users are furious. UPDATED.

From the blog The Right Click: Last week, Facebook confirmed that it had leaked the private information of six million of its users. You may have thought to yourself, “ha! That’s not me! I don’t give any of my personal information to Facebook!” Unfortunately, thanks to … Continue reading →

A couple of handy new tools let you see what Facebook is really telling the world about you -- and about everyone else. Get ready to blush.

Consumer Reports, a longtime trusted name in product ratings and reviews, has today released their annual

04-02-10:
Yesterday, Facebook unleashed a giant mess called Facebook Community Pages, thereby ensuring that users and small businesses will forever live in a state of confusion over what the hell page they should create. Say you really like Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (best Easter candy ever, BTW) and want to talk about them – do you create a Facebook Page, a Group or an unofficial Community Page? What’s the Facebook-approved way to start a conversation? If you weren’t sure before, you definitely don’t have a damn clue now. And you have Facebook to thank for that.

Mashable 03-31-10Facebook experienced a hiccup during an update to the site's code that publicly exposed members' private e-mail addresses.

CNN 03-29-10:
A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.

Oh, "South Park." How you so accurately comment on the ridiculous goings on of this pop culture-crazed, social-networking obsessed world, we don't know.

In the last few days, we’ve uncovered some major new features that Facebook is going to announce at its f8 developer conference, including its plan to offer a Like button for the entire Internet and a creepy auto-Connect feature that will share your data with sites you never signed up for. Now we’ve heard from multiple sources about a third major product the company plans to unveil: a persistent Facebook toolbar that third-party sites can integrate that sounds a whole lot like the Meebo Bar.

03-29-10:
The social networking site will store your payment account data without asking first and will be more liberal in sharing data about you with third parties.

- by Marshall Kirkpatrick 03-26-10 RWW

Imagine visiting a website and finding that it already knows who you are, where you live, how old you are and who your Facebook friends are, without your ...

03-28-10

A new set of changes toFacebook privacy system is being proposed. Jason Kincaid at Techcrunch zooms into the most questionable change: Facebook shifted a few months ago into making 'everyone' the default sharing option (see Facebook Wants To Be Twitter). Now, they are shifting the definition of 'everyone' to include third party apps that you haven't explicitly opted into.

03-30-10:
More fine print to Facebook’s privacy policy
Recent revisions to the Facebook privacy policy, announced March 26, 2010, on the Facebook blog in the article Another Step In Open Site Governance, are of similar ilk.

The post’s title implies they’re being transparent. However, if the revised policy is written so that it’s difficult for users to determine the true implications, then it’s the digital equivalent of fine print.

TechCrunch 03-26-10: In anticipation of a slew of new features that will be launching at f8, today Facebook announced that it was once again making changes to its privacy policy (you can see our post outlining these changes here). One of the biggest changes that Facebook is making involves applications and third-party websites. We’ve been hearing whispers from multiple sources about these changes, and the announcement all but confirms what Facebook is planning to do. In short, it sounds like Facebook is going to be automatically opting users into a reduced form of Facebook Connect on certain third party sites — a bold change that may well unnerve users

03-27-10: If you thought cookies reveal alot about your identity over the internet, probably you need to rethink. A new type of tracking is now considered to be way more powerful, and yet you don’t have a clue about it.

The method grabs a large amount of data about your browser, such as plug-ins, system fonts, and your operating system, screen resolution, etc. Each one when considered alone, they don’t identify you. But when collaborated, they’re a digital fingerprint: A Digital replica of you identity on the web.

NYT 03-26-10: A service released earlier this week by Teneros, an online communication services company, makes it much easier for companies to keep tabs on their employees’ social networking activities.

The software, called Social Sentry, will automatically monitor Facebook and Twitter accounts for between $2 and $8 an employee, depending on the size of the company and the level of activity being monitored.

03-25-10: When the “Please Rob Me” site launched last month, I wouldn’t have guessed that under a month later, there would be an actual burglary resulting from a status update. Unfortunately for Keri McMullen, $10,000 of items were stolen thanks to a status update that tipped off burglars that she would be away from her house. Minutes after Keri left for a concert, one of her “friends” that she hadn’t spoken to in a long-time robbed her house

03-23-10:
March 23rd, 2010
Social Networks, Privacy and The New Obscurity

Very briefly here are a few things I learned at this year’s SXSWi Conference – 1. SXSWi may have already jumped the shark. This year the conference appeared to be packed with people who felt that they had to be there or that the idea of a once-a-year party was too much to pass up. No other reason. 2. Many panelists forgot that being on a panel requires being prepared and that they are there to share their wisdom, or at the very least entertain us. [The NYT columnist David Carr also mentioned this lack of sparkle.] 3. The biggest buzz was which new platform would be this year’s Twitter. I mean c’mon people… 4. Geeks live in a bubble and SXSWi provides the biggest bubble of all. 5. Judging by the overuse of Foursquare and Gowalla, conference attendees do not have any privacy concerns, or perhaps they are happy with the idea that “privacy is dead.”

The L.A. Times 03-24-10: Swiss and German privacy authorities are examining whether Facebook infringes personal rights by allowing users to post content, including photos and e-mail addresses, of others who haven't signed up for the site.

EFF 08-09

THINK before you post! Tips on what NOT to do.

Researchers demonstrate that they can scan and compile lists of social networking group members, and combine that with a browsing history hijack to obtain the identity of nearly half of the network's members.