Facebook, Others Giving User Private Data To Advertisers 154
superapecommando sends along a Wall Street Journal report that indicates that Facebook's privacy troubles may be just beginning. "Facebook, MySpace, and several other social networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent. The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code. ... Several large advertising companies ... including Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it. ... The sites may have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards. ... Those policies have been put forward by advertising and Internet companies in arguments against the need for government regulation."
Double click (Score:2, Informative)
How quaint. The domain every geek has blocked since 1996.
With all this facebook detritus littering the web, are there some facebook domains and subdomains that need to be blocked, because they are being used for tracking?
Referrer URL is the issue (Score:5, Informative)
My reading of the WSJ article is that the sites were (perhaps inevitably) passing a referrer URL along when the user clicked the ad. This URL is, naturally, one of the user's pages, and will explicitly or implicitly identify the user. The advertiser can then identify the user's page on the social networking site and retrieve any public information there. The WSJ makes it clear that the information is not passed on directly, which goes some way to explaining why the advertisers claim never to have used it.
Re:surprise, surprise (Score:2, Informative)
How to do it if your curious:
http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
Re:Double click (Score:4, Informative)
The sharing only happens when you actually click on an ad, because it's an issue with referral URLs.
Advertisements pay their bills (Score:1, Informative)
So you join a Free Social Networking site, that is maintained and updated all the time. How do you think this shit is paid for? Advertisements! How best to make Advertisements work then to target them to the audience. Of course they're sharing this data, the Ad Agencies want it and are willing to pay for it. The Privacy concerns are the issues for Facebook, not the Ad Agencies. The only way to go after them is if they bought data that was illegal to sell or share. As much as I'm not a fan of this reality, there is nothing private on the internet.
XMPP (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe privacy exists really anymore
That is the same as "privacy is dead", making you one of the asshats that AC was talking about.
Are your facebook friends so lazy that they wouldn't reply, if you sent them a good old fashioned email? I hope not, but just in case, there is a secret weapon.
Federated XMPP. Your backdoor into facebook's walled garden, without actually having to give in and be their bitch.
Join "Adblock Plus" fan page on Facebook (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unused (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unused (Score:4, Informative)
While I've "closed" my Facebook (seriously, why there isn't a true close account option?)
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account [facebook.com]
Re:Unused (Score:0, Informative)
How would Facebook/MySpace find out that you're pro-gun unless you tell them?
Re:Unused (Score:4, Informative)
They'll find out when the gun sites you visit tell facebook, remember the bacon fiasco? One must be careful it doesn't happen again, mainly by complaining about it.
Re:Cue (Score:5, Informative)
Yes I'm sure
No. That's impossible.
Are you vetting every photo any of your friends or family has every taken? Monitoring their online activies? Are you vetting all photos taken by other people at, say, social events (weddings, etc)? Are you vetting their online activities? No? Then you can *never* be sure if someone isn't posting information about you, somewhere. Well, unless you just hide in a basement with no friends or family to speak of, in which case privacy is the least of your problems.