EPIC Files FTC Complaint Over Facebook's New Privacy Policy 103
An anonymous reader writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) today filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking the agency to investigate the recent changes made by Facebook to the privacy settings of Facebook users. The complaint discusses the sharing of user information with third-party developers and the new, widely-opposed 'Everyone' setting, which allows certain user information, such as name, profile picture, and friends lists, to be publicly available. EPIC also urges the FTC to compel Facebook to restore privacy safeguards. The complaint was signed by nine privacy and consumer organizations."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I honestly don't get why third parties would be getting involved in it. Sure, the privacy settings might not be to everyone's wishes but third parties complaining to the government to get them to interfere is just layering stupidity on top of stupidity.
Re:Oh teh Noes! (Score:4, Interesting)
Because, let's be honest, people are too stupid for their own good.
Most people couldn't foresee this move (of course many /.ers did) so we have to sue and regulate on their behalf. Maybe they shouldn't even be allowed to vote, voting should require an IQ test, and a proficiency test in politics and public matters, throw in commerce too.
Or maybe not, I'm exaggerating, but really, what is the logic in not letting people smoke whatever they want but allowing them to sell their life in facebook? On many states prostitution and gambling are banned, adulthood for drinking and sex is based on an arbitrary number with no analysis supporting it and we don't even let people build their homes however they want, we don't even let people eat wherever they want regardless of the hygiene of the places they go.
But not on facebook, on facebook we are to believe every user is intelligent, informed and fully aware of the consequences of their actions.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The difference between the strawmen that you've thrown up and Facebook is that unlike homes and eateries, people can do without Facebook. As a society we have to develop health codes so that we can continue to live together and not all die of disease. The same thing goes with building codes. We can't have our neighbors building unstable structures that will collapse... or running gas pipes that will leak and explode... or water pipes that will burst and flood the neighborhood.
On the other hand, you can t
Re: (Score:2)
Too much of a wimp to say it eh ?
Unlike prostitution and gambling, people can do without Facebook.
Homes and eateries are just places you go when you run out of money enjoying the former activities.
Re:Oh teh Noes! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll grant the point about construction codes because of the gas pipes although as a IT person it sounds like securing a network WAN by controlling every node what kind of boggled architecture is that?
But I don't buy it about restaurants, nothing should prevent clients to get into the kitchen and asses for themselves the quality of the food, further more that says nothing about prohibitions on gambling, prostitution, marijuana, crack, heroine, cocaine, etc. And not only are many things prohibited to under-aged people, the states prevents me from supplying them with alcohol or the like, effectively telling me how I can raise my children.
I'm not saying this things are good, what I'm saying is that we do accept having the government tell us what we can't do for our own good, so there is nothing funtamentaly wrong about a non profit suing facebook and having the government enforce better privacy controls.
facebook is not a startup in some kid's garage. it's a huge billionaire corporation, it collects more information than the NSA for the FSM's sake! Let the government regulate the hell out of it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
nothing should prevent clients to get into the kitchen and asses for themselves the quality of the food
Keep your dirty, coughing, sneezing, unwashed masses out of the kitchens, you biohazard.
Re: (Score:2)
clients to get into the kitchen and asses for themselves the quality of the food
I'm no doctor; I have no idea what the "recommended temperature" is for e.g. a hamburger (equivalent to well done I think?). I have no idea how to tell whether a given piece of food is safe to eat (there are some obvious signs for "no, it's not remotely safe", but nothing to indicate "yes, it is safe").
Re: (Score:2)
So it's much better than the government tells you? And doesn't just tell you forces you to follow their opinions on the risk/reward by not allowing a restaurant to serve things they deem unsafe.
As opposed to say being able to get a report from any of many competing restaurant rating providers who just tell you their opinion on the risk/reward, leaving you free to do what you want.
Re: (Score:2)
...we don't even let people eat wherever they want regardless of the hygiene of the places they go.
That's not quite accurate. You CAN eat anywhere you want. You're fighting for a restaraunt owner's "right" to sell me poison food. I have no way of knowing how clean or filthy an establishment's kitchen is. If you're going to have the right to sell me a hamburger with e-coli on it, then I want the right to burn your restaraunt down when I can get off the toilet long enough.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not arguing for that right, I'm arguing for personal responsibility of lack of it in the general public. We have lots of laws preventing people to hurt themselves for their lack of responsibility, I mean, we put warnings about items getting hot in the oven.
Considering that facebook collects more information about the population than a government agency I think it is completely reasonable to put restrictions on what they do with that data, even if the sheeple themselves aren't aware they need such restri
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Considering that facebook collects more information about the population than a government agency I think it is completely reasonable to put restrictions on what they do with that data
I agree 100%. It should be illegal for a company to sell your data in any case.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. With as much personal identification as Facebook has, they should be taking a cautionary, responsible approach with how that information is collected, shared, used, and deleted.
If they can't, then, yes, they need oversight.
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't have any information that the users haven't entered of their own free will.
Yes changing privacy behind the user's back is a bad move and one would hope would be against the terms of service - if it isn't then sure it's not nice but that's what the user agreed to. If it is against the TOS then the users can chase up facebook about it themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha. You think the ToS grants ANY benefits to users?
The point isn't that it's information people gave willingly, it's that there's a lot and, altogether, paints a much clearer picture of their lives. I know, I know. This is where stalkers, exs, black helicopters, marketers, fundamentalist christian bosses, and boogie-men are trotted out but there evidence of such abuses.
Now, I don't mean to make it all nanny state. If someone wants to post this stuff, that's their call. If a social networking company ro
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt the TOS includes anything favourable to the user, but then it's the user's fault for uploading any data they didn't want facebook to do anything they felt like doing with (like making it public).
Default settings should be whatever the hell facebook wants them to be. Again users don't have to use the stupid site.
Facebook has never been private (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, some information is IIRC forced public (like your name and picture).
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be real - this is, what, the fourth or fifth time this sort of thing has happened and every time it does, Facebook changes their policy by tightening "here" while loosening "there". This will be no different.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Pun-ters (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
aw man! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:aw man! (Score:5, Funny)
I was trying to do the same sort of thing with assbook.com where users can exchange photos of their asses. I'm guessing the FTC won't give a shit.
Re: (Score:2)
I was trying to do the same sort of thing with assbook.com where users can exchange photos of their asses.
This website is brought toyou by "Booty Sweat!" energy drink!
Decisions, decisions. (Score:1)
Lawsuit it is!
Friends list (Score:4, Insightful)
Please tell me how I can make it so that my name, profile picture, and friends list would not be publicly available (short of quitting facebook).
kthnxbye
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
So why exactly did you sign up in the first place ? Having an AC account on Facebook seems kind of pointless ... and by that I mean even more pointless than the whole premise of knowing when your cousin last took a dump (some people post their entire daily routine online), or when your auntie last fed her virtual fish or cooking in her virtual cafe.
Re: (Score:2)
some people post their entire daily routine online
That's mostly Twitter.
Re:Friends list (Score:4, Insightful)
As I've posted many times, I think it's a bit absurd to expect info you put on FB to be private in anything more than a "lock to keep your siblings out of your diary" sense. However, I do get sick of them making changes that loosen the privacy settings of existing users who probably had things set the way they wanted them for a reason.
And more on point, I'm tired of people making demonstrably false arguments, even if they are trying to support arguably reasonable conclusions, which brings me to parent's post.
Facebook is useless unless you publish your picture and friends list to everyone? Not seeing that one. I never published my friends list or picture; I could still be found. Even if I hid my name, I could still use FB to communicate with people I chose to communicate with.
If you think the only use for Facebook is to make it easy for people to find you, then you're not really using the majority of FB's functionality.
Re: (Score:2)
Seeing how you don't seem to mind having an openly accessible friends list on Slashdot and whatever you put into your profile picture is completely up to you, I'll stick to the other points. Hide your name by entering a fake name on registration. The name you tell facebook is your handle. Expecting a site to hide your handle is about as dumb as heading to /b/ for serious discussions. Even better, /b/ will hide your name, too, so that might be more along the lines of what you're looking for.
Moving on, what y
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see, we can either sue somebody, or use the helpful selection screen to change our privacy settings back to the way they were.
Facebook has removed the ability for users to opt out of publicly sharing certain information, including their profile photo, networks, and sex. I have every privacy setting set to "Friends Only" or "Friends of Friends," but those things are still publicly viewable in my profile.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm. Given that when they take you to the new settings, they're on least stringent settings, is it intentional how obscure it is to remove stuff from the internal index?
I didn't even know about it and the first thing I do with any program or account is to check out the settings. How does one get there?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"index" == robots.txt [robotstxt.org].
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I know this is off topic, but why would you want to opt out of sex?
Ohh, this IS Slashdot...
(Laugh, it's a joke)
Re:Decisions, decisions. (Score:5, Informative)
The point is that you CAN'T change your privacy settings back to how they were.
For example, you can no longer have your Profile Pic show up for friends only, and you can't hide your friends list from non-friends anymore either, along with a few other items on the profile page.
Adding new privacy settings is good - eliminating existing privacy features is not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On the Profile page, go to the "Friends" box on the left-hand side and click on the pencil. "Show friend list to everyone" is a checkbox.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't trust that one. A few days ago, on the day Mark Zuckerberg published a bunch of pictures, I could check out his whole friends list through http://facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck [facebook.com] even though the list was hidden from his profile. Right now, the same query forwards to the profile page, but that might be some kind of temporary fluke or an admin perk.
What would you want to hide your friends list for, though? Being able to quickly search through A's (whom you are friends with on facebook) friends for B's (who
Re: (Score:2)
Well maybe you're a college student and you don't want e.g. your mom seeing e.g. your (boy|girl)friend.
Re: (Score:2)
Privacy settings -> Profile information -> Family and relationship -> "custom" -> Hide this from: Mom.
There's some 200 to 500 people in an average friend's list. Even if you made the mistake of mentioning the SO's first name in front of whomever you're keeping h(im|er) a secret from; chances are there's more than one J(ohn|ane) amongst them. Your friends list doesn't give away who your SO is; "in a relationship with [...]" does.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You can go in and set almost anything to what groups of people you want. All my photo albums are set to friends & networks. If I log out and goto my www.facebook.com/mynamehere address, my photo doesn't show up. Nothing shows up.
Sounds like people don't know how to actually use the new privacy settings.
Re: (Score:2)
GP wrote: "you can no longer have your Profile Pic show up for friends only". The GP was correct. From the new privacy policy [facebook.com]:
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a difference? Plenty of trolls deliberately post things which are wrong, but try to make people believe they are real. Anyway, slashdot doesn't have a -1 Stupid mod.
As for the contents of the post: I thought if you log out of Facebook, it doesn't show you anything. It doesn't matter what the user put for privacy settings. Am I wrong?
Many trolls love to live in the area where something may be technically true, but gives a false impression.
Re: (Score:2)
What is the deal? (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
They don't put them on the internet.
No one is FORCING you to do this.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:What is the deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been numerous reports of people being fired for relatively innocuous facebook pictures which didn't really have much to do with their work. One particular case had a Quebec woman lose her disability insurance for depression, because she had a facebook picture of her going to the beach. These may be an exception, but it demonstrates how an employer or the government can get into your private life in a way that wasn't previously possible.
I have a facebook profile but I rarely post and when I do I make sure it is information that could never harm me in any way.
Re: (Score:2)
Said gov't is stupid: "going to the beach" != "cured of depression"
Re: (Score:2)
"EPIC Fails?" (Score:1)
Practice what you do not preach ? (Score:2)
Why the FTC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
A private public website with partially public private and semi-private information. Any confusion now?
Re: (Score:1)
What do you mean, "what control or influence do they have"? They're an arm of the federal government, which has lots of guns. They even have a Constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, so it's nice and legal for them to point their guns around.
This is exactly what the Federal Trade Commission exists for: consumer protection.
EPIC FILE! (Score:3, Funny)
EPIC FILE!
I think this is an improvement (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever since I, somewhat reluctantly, started using Facebook, I have followed the simple policy of making everything I post as public as possible, while simply not posting anything I don't want any random web surfer to see. If this change will make more people snap out of their false sense of Facebook privacy, all the better, I say.
Re: (Score:2)
Same idea here. After all, if people got sacked or lose insurance BEFORE the privacy policy changes, these new changes reinforce the fact that Facebook isn't, well, private.
Facebook
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry - government will regulate the shit out of it and then everyone will be happily protected from actually running their own lives.
Re: (Score:2)
And hoping that Facebook won't be hacked.
I think you just identified the most expedient way to dispel FB's aura of trust/"not google"ness.
Re: (Score:2)
Not good enough. Consider the same policy as when talking with cops since everything you say/write/photograph will be timestamped and stored at a location you cannot get to.
Stuff you say in public, you can whisper. You can have reasonable expectation that someone isn't right behind you, listening and recording the whole time.
And then, there's everyone else. Even if your policy works better than what doom&gloom
Re: (Score:2)
Failbook is a public website, there is no expectation of privacy in a public place and expecting it on a public website is retarded at best. Someone could be following you around recording what you say, and as long as you're saying it aloud, they're within their legal rights unless it crosses into the realm of harassment. You're held responsible for what you say in a public place already, so you're attempting to draw a distinction which does not exist.
As for what your friends have to say, they can say it wh
Re: (Score:2)
I know. I'm saying Facebook is worse than simply speaking publicly. The potential audience is far larger and recorded by a 3rd party.
Re: (Score:2)
I know. I'm saying Facebook is worse than simply speaking publicly. The potential audience is far larger and recorded by a 3rd party.
Ubiquitous surveillance is coming, like it or not; it's simply getting cheaper and easier all the time to snoop on people. I assume that going outside means I could be recorded. I'm not so paranoid that I assume going aside means I am recorded, mind you. But I assume that if I'm not in a private place, I have no privacy. Most people in the world, however, don't seem to have a handle on this, judging solely by how people will pick their nose on the freeway and then give you a dirty look when they notice you
Epic??? (Score:2)
Headshot!
M-m-m-m-Monster Kill!
Oh, not that Epic. I feel so embarrassed. Does anyone else know how to get blood out of your Facebook profile?
Target on their forehead. (Score:2)
The only dumb move, and I mean really dumb move, is that facebook didn't default all privacy settings to "no one" upon adding their new feature. Users need to opt in to things like this, not be forced to opt out. They opened a huge can of worms. Literally.
Am I the only one who thinks the new facebook is buggy as hell?
AJAX + unresponsive backend = awkward moment
Re: (Score:2)
Am I the only one who thinks the new facebook is buggy as hell?
No, but why does this surprise you? The old one was buggy as hell too.
Re: (Score:2)
They opened a huge can of worms. Literally.
They literally [wisegeek.com] opened a metal container filled with annelids?
Leg to stand on? (Score:2, Insightful)
If users don't like certain privacy policies, they can restore their privacy by leaving the privately owned site whose policy(ies) they disagree with.
Can someone sue because facebook allows photos to be right-clicked and saved? What if they started with some flash based photo system that didn't allow "easy" saving and later transitioned to one that did? Would that warrant a complaint to the FTC?
Formal review of changes would benefit everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
On the whole, we're still in the middle of a huge transition in the ways we communicate with each other, and the degrees to which we trust third parties with information that rightfully belongs to us. Facebook is no more accountable to its users than any other service; and no matter how much we might bitch and moan about changes in their privacy policies, the fact is that they are going to use our information in as many ways as they can to make money. Sharing information directly with third parties is the most obvious, but there are plenty of indirect means.
Now that we can't hide ourselves, we're bound to attract more friends. Every one of those relationships is a potential revenue stream, either directly or indirectly. Folks at MIT recently demonstrated that they can determine to a high probability who on Facebook is gay without knowing anything about them except their friends. I'm sure the same technique applies to religion, various types of hobbies, and a number of other things we don't always give as much thought to, like criminals, terrorists and the like. These affiliations and attributes have to be a gold mine for someone, and the policy changes are a new mother lode.
I'm glad that EPIC, FTC, etc., are interested in our privacy, as they can exert pressure to change things in ways that we as users cannot. What I'd really like to see out of all this might be some kind of formal privacy impact review before changes to social networking policies are made. Any change that degrades privacy would need to be identified by third parties, justified or mitigated by the social network, then reviewed again until it's clear that users will be better off after the change than they were before. I think that expecting users to flee a service following troublesome changes is unrealistic. The users are caught between a rock and a hard place, and Facebook will continue twisting their arms as long as the users are paying more attention to their friends and apps than they are to their privacy.
It will be sad, yet very interesting at the same time, to see what happens when lost privacy demonstrably results in crimes of various sorts. Facebook may find that its greed has a higher human price than it might ever have realized.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I think that expecting users to flee a service following troublesome changes is unrealistic.
I disagree, think of Friendster, or even Myspace...the social networking crowd can be fickle, if facebook screws up that leaves a market opening for a competitor (ie. Google, Microsoft etc)
Re: (Score:1)
There are always going to be churn and minor movements of users among services, but I think people who have a lot invested in a network, e.g. home pages, relevant postings, active participation in groups, many photos, lots of friends they actually do interact with, etc., probably aren't going to pick up and leave en masse unless there's some grossly distasteful change in the policies or terms of service. If you're providing the service, you don't make those grossly distasteful changes at once, you progress
The problem with acronyms (Score:2)
Jurisdiction? (Score:2)