MySpace To Sell User Data 199
OnlyJedi writes "Hot on the news of Netflix canceling its latest contest over privacy concerns, news has spread that MySpace is going in the opposite direction. Apparently, the one-time leading social network is now selling user data to third party collection firms. From the article, the data that InfoChimps has listed includes 'user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes.' InfoChimps is a reseller that deals with individuals and groups, from academic researchers to marketers and industry analysts. So if you're worried about your data on MySpace being sold off to anybody with a few hundred dollars, now's the time to delete that little-used account."
What's in the data? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I see that it includes playlists and crap like that.
So what's the level of detail? Can I see an individual user, or just summaries at some predetermined granularity? If I can see individual users, can I see their name? If I buy a location-based dataset, can I see the exact GPS coordinates of a data point, or just ZIP code clusters, or what?
TFS is definitely worded to spread fear. As much as I dislike companies taking liberties with data they've collected - especially with no accountable opt-out for people who've already handed their data over with no expectation of this sort of behavior - I'd still like to know more about what's actually gonig on before jumping on the FUD bandwagon.
Oh, and seriously... if they are up to no good, do you really think deleting your account is going to make a difference? We're talking about the Internet; once you put something in, you can't take it back out.
Re:Deleting does no good (Score:2, Interesting)
However; deleting your account will keep them from gathering any further data. Be sure to explain, in graphic detail in their "reason why" box why you are deleting your account.
If their account #s drop by a third, they should get the message, whether we already "Agreed" to let them sell this info or not.
I Still Use It... (Score:4, Interesting)
I will have to re-read the new Myspace ToS before I decide whether or not to cancel my account, but if they go the way of Facebook's "We can re-license your personal photographs to whomever we want" terms then I will certainly be leaving Myspace as well. Where will I go? Who knows, perhaps it's time for me to clean the dust off of my personal domain.
It is the death sigh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Circuit City did the same thing when it went bankrupt. It sold all of its user data to other companies. This is just another sign that MySpace is dying.
(I went to Microcenter (AMAZING STORE! Better than Newegg!) and bought something. They already had my information and informed me that they bought it from Circuit City. I don't really mind, but it was still strange.)
ARE YOU SURE? (Score:1, Interesting)
Now comes the part you have no control over. You need to let the account sit for months if not years. Over time they (Myspace or Facebook) will need to purge older backups and can only keep current relevant information. So now the older backups are over-written and being written into the system is your current BS profile, but this can take months to years to do and that depends on how much Myspace/Facebook or any social site is willing to retain.
Are you sure that's how it works?
I don't think you comprehend how goddamn cheap storage is these days, and how minimal the amount of data per user actually is.
Even if we assume they have 1 billion users, with each having roughly 100 MB of info/wall posts/photos/etc. (in reality, most users probably have a small fraction of that, less than 1 MB), that still comes to only 1x10^17 bytes of data. That's not even an exabyte of data. It's only about 91,000 TB, and that's without using any sort of compression.
Modern tape drives from IBM can store up to 1 TB of data uncompressed. Using a good algorithm, one can typically achieve 80% (and usually better) compression ratios for textual data. Even assuming we can only achieve a conservative 75% compression ratio, that still drops the storage requirements by a quarter or so.
They could probably store that data for less than $10 million, even if they weren't getting bulk discounts on their hardware and storage media. That's not a lot of money in the whole scheme of things. They could quite easily and comparatively cheaply store everything they know about every user, including a full history.
Re:So you think its really that easy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which begs another question which should probably be under Ask Slashdot. How many users here create accounts using real information, aside from sites like PayPal or where it would be required for your activities. I'm talking like email accounts, MySpace, Facebook, or even
Releasing info on minors is probably prohibited (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So you think its really that easy? (Score:4, Interesting)