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."
If it's on Facebook.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm shocked! SHOCKED! (Score:5, Interesting)
So Facebook and MySpace were just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, not making any extra money from Google & Yahoo?
Re:Cue (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes I never understood those asshats. It's like a false "monochotomy".
I don't have a facebook account, and I don't have any idiot farmville playing friends, that would violate my privacy. Therefore I have opted out of facebook. Hey, that wasn't hard.
Oh and I'm using the friend 1.0 definition, ie: people I know with mutual trust, as opposed to the friend 2.0 definition of linked social networking profiles who have poked and bitten each other in the last 6 months.
I noticed my old myspace appeared after years... (Score:5, Interesting)
I often search for my name in a futile attempt to remove myself from the internet. I just checked the other day and noticed some person search company, intellius or something has aquired my myspace profile, pics of my friends etc. I have had myspace account closed for at least 3 years if not longer. When I attempted to figure out what was going on by logging into myspace I couldn't even get in... my account was closed. All I know is I'm giving my kids a helping hand when it comes to their first entrance onto the web. Bunch of information vampires out there.
Re:Unused (Score:4, Interesting)
While I've "closed" my Facebook (seriously, why there isn't a true close account option?) for privacy reasons, lets look at it on technical terms. It's a problem with the referrer field being sent by browsers, nothing intentional on Facebook's part. If you have referrer sending disabled you aren't affected by this.
It's a bad combination of browsers sending referrer, Facebook using real names for everything and Facebook not providing enough privacy options to hide your profile, and Facebook not using https or iframing the ad box (in that case referrer would just show something like http://www.facebook.com/ads/ [facebook.com] ).
I guess those ad networks don't actually have something that gets the personal info for clicks, but it's a possibility and I bet the referrer is saved, at least in logs and statistics.
Of course, majority of people don't care so business will continue as usual.
Government Regulations (Score:2, Interesting)
That final quote is clearly implying that this evidence is proof that we need government intervention. We should strenuously oppose this, and we need to be aware of the subtle messages to try to persuade us to change our minds. Don't give into the manipulation!
In fact, this entire episode is strong and conclusive evidence that we do not need government regulations in this area. The private sector exposed the problem and the companies made the appropriate changes. This is how it should be done. If we don't like a product or service, then we should take our business elsewhere. Facebook is not a right. It is not an entitlement. It is a website, people, and you are free to go and use a different website if you choose. Perhaps if more people did, Facebook would clean up their act. We need to regulate the Internet not the government. I would rather keep the government as far from the Internet as possible for my own peace of mind. They have enough power to be corrupted without giving them more.
How can putting a corrupt and greedy government in charge of regulating the Internet possibly be a good thing?
Re:surprise, surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
There are better alternatives. First alternative work hard at undermining the popularity of the social networking site that hhad all you data, mined all your associations and monitored all your clicks. Do a good enough job and the revenue drops squeezing down hard on the costs of hoarding all that private data, eventually shutting them down, of course all that data then gets sold at the bankruptcy auction forcing you to repeat the exercise until companies decide all that privacy invasion ain't really all that profitable.
Second alternative, seek changes to the law, force stricter privacy requirements, what information companies can keep on private individuals, stricter protections for minors, deletion of information requirements, data correction requirements, data mining restrictions and, random privacy audits with criminal penalties for invasions of privacy.
I personally prefer the regulation and prosecution route, although I can protect my privacy as much as I choose to, I am still concerned about the current younger generation getting caught out with long term psycho analysis, known marketing vulnerabilities, known subconscious triggers and permanent limitations upon future career opportunities.
Re:If it's on Facebook.. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's also the open source privacy scanner:
http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook [reclaimprivacy.org]
Forget Advertisers, Dummy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Think politicians!
People will soon be polled with questions that are specifically targeted to THEM!
Voters will become infinitely more manipulable--to the politicians backed by rich people.
Not pretty.