Facebook Throws Privacy Advocates a Bone 126
sarysa writes "In response to a week-long assault by privacy advocates, and following a well publicized all-hands meeting, Facebook has introduced two new security features in response to privacy concerns. One feature allows users to whitelist devices associated with a Facebook account, and the other allows users who verify their identity to view previous logins. While both are useful features, they do nothing to address the recent privacy complaints."
Get Out The Lube (Score:2, Funny)
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Throws them "a bone" or "the bone?"
More like, as in beastiality, "give a dog a bone."
What??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a bone.. its not even scraps, its more like the leftover grease from a Macdonalds happy meal.
Red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
is an idiomatic expression the purpose of which is to divert the audience from the truth or an item of significance. For example, in mystery fiction, an innocent party may be purposefully cast as highly suspicious through emphasis or descriptive techniques; attention is drawn away from the true guilty party.
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How is this any different than my bank forcing me to get an 'authorization code' via Text every time I login with a computer that doesn't have their cookie set?
The ninth highest search on Google is "delete facebook account [sophos.com]"
Looks like the house of cards is starting to crumble. I know it's stupid, but maybe if they kept it simple like back in the day.... (Although I love the API for batch uploading photos [github.com])
Non Sequitur (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Non Sequitur (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Non Sequitur (Score:4, Interesting)
The "$100 Walmart Gift Cards" have been around as long as I can remember. They fall under the same category as the "Free iPods" thing that went around the internet in 2003-2005.*
Facebook is now a popular website, so of course advertisers are going to target them. If you really want to see how targeted they can make ads, go create your own on facebook. [facebook.com] I'm using it to recruit for our Rugby team. I can target gender, age, interests, geographical area (and radius), etc.
*My first 'nice' camera was a Canon SD 550 that I got for free, I got one for my girlfriend at the time. I got 8 iPods for free (used one and sold off the rest). My parents have a MacMini I got for free. My main TV is a 37" 720p Samsung I got for free. I've gotten the $100 Walmart gift cards before.
You just have to read ALL the fine print and make sure you follow the rules/directions to the letter. Cancel any offers you set up (or use a disposable credit card number like I did).
Even MORE information for them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Security, not privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The fundamental problem remains: facebook's founder and corporate elite have a specific interpretation of privacy, identity and self. Their service is built around this interpretation and so their users are forced to share it, operationally. That is the problem which eats away at the core of facebook. Small feature changes only shore up the edges.
Re:Security, not privacy (Score:4, Informative)
I actually find this good news as I was worried there for a minute that Facebook was actually 'getting it' finally and was going to revamp its privacy policies in wake of all of the nasty criticism and high profile people leaving the site. Projects like Diaspora* http://joindiaspora.com/ [joindiaspora.com] can hopefully fill in the gaps that Facebook seems oblivious to. I have heard the criticisms that Diaspora* will be only for the technically adept - but I can see companies popping up to fill in the gaps if the market arises.
"The Network Effect" makes FB place incredibly useful and of course power users can wade through everything and get some decent privacy from the service - but I long for the day when that site is clearly in a myspace-esqe death spin as normal users start fleeing for better alternatives. It is the net; everything dies, so it goes. No juggernaut (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Napster, Myspace....) has been able to tame it. Facebook will be no different - and all the faster with their current disregard for their userbase.
Re:Security, not privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Diaspora's main faults.
1) The name. MySpace. FaceBook. LinkedIn. Diaspora. Orkut. Which two don't belong?
2) They don't have a product. All they did was raise capital. The least they should have done would be to make a mockup or a working website.
All they really need, from me, to be a success is an easy way to upload photos, a way to tag people in photos and a way to share photos with people not on diaspora.
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Call me when Diaspora has released something. They claim to have code, but they've forgotten that open source means "release early, release often" in Romulan. Skip that, even if they release code, still don't call me if it's P2P (as I understand is their plan) since
I asked the devs over at OneSocialWeb (which have an actual, working product) if they had tried to conta
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No normal person wants to set up a node on his computer; and
Social networks need to have access to information even when your computer is off.
And that's exactly why they're creating a hosting service ala wordpress.com as well.
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So ... Diaspora is opposed to S2S and going to be P2P, but they offer hosting. Hmm. I don't get it. Good luck to them, though.
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What's not to get? If I don't want run my own node, so I get them to run it for me. If I want to run my own node, I can. The nodes talk to each other in a P2P fashion. In the degenerate case, all the nodes talk to each other on the same physical machine.
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"Eats away at the core?" What specifically is the core and what is it that's getting eaten away? Privacy? The whole notion of Facebook is that you share information about yourself with other people. It is by its nature an collectivized exercise in voluntary and controlled loss of privacy. The question marks are the "voluntary" and the "controlled," but not really because you always have the choice _not to use Facebook_ or in the alt
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Social vulnerabilities don't have to be 'interesting' for them to be worth manipulating. Embarassing revelations don't have to be 'interesting' for them to be embarassing.
What's with the monospace font?
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If you can think of a way to "manipulate" or embarrass me because I like Into Thin Air and How to Train Your Dragon, then go nuts. You could maybe tell my DGS about the children's movie but he'll probably just ask me if his kids will like it. You know how nine year-olds are (the kids, not the DGS).
Your world is paranoid, hostile, and generally malevolent. That tells me a lot more about you than your Facebook profile would have.
Font was a screwup (selected Extrans by mistake).
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The core of Facebook is its userbase. GP claims people are leaving as a result of the loss of privacy.
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As for the solutions you mention, sure. You can leave facebook just like you can leave google. But I'm not interes
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Sure, if by "documented" and "proven" you mean "a judge literally laughed the plaintiffs out of court." But please, don't let the facts get in the way of your emotional outbursts.
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Apparently, Zuck ended up paying $65M [informationweek.com], so I don't think getting laughed out of court is accurate.
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I agree -- FB making some big hoopla about a couple of 'security' issues they're implementing is just smoke and mirrors. Security and Privacy can be interrelated but they are most definitely not interchangeable. It's sad when tech media writers cannot distinguish between the two and so easily fall into such an obvious ploy.
Aren't those security concerns, not privacy? (Score:1)
Re:BFD (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sick of this extreme form of pointing and laughing.
No, no one is literally forcing you to use Facebook. You can gladly stay off of it.
Problem.
If any of your friends use Facebook, they can easily tag you in a photo without your ass ever knowing it. If any relatives use Facebook, they can easily mark your birthday as an event. If a boyfriend/girlfriend uses Facebook, they can boast about where you ate dinner.
If you ever joined Facebook, even if you joined back when they had the promise of privacy for those who sought it, you are permanently in their system, even if you try to delete your account.
If you stay off of Facebook, your friends and colleagues assume it's because of some anti-social horrible problem with you and treat you very differently.
But, you're right. No one is literally trying to kill you, so Facebook should be allowed to rape and pillage privacy rights.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the most important aspects of friendship is trust. A friend is not defined by by clicking the "friend" button on a website, a friend is someone that you share a bond of mutual understanding and respect with. Friends have always had privileged access to embarrassing information, stories and photos because they're the people that you trust information like that with and sharing it strengthens those bonds.
Facebook doesn't change the nature of friendship, it just provides new ways of communicating. Providing people that you don't trust with information about your personal life is a poor idea, as it has always been. "Friending" someone changes the access that that person has to your personal information and such access should be granted on the basis of trust and respect. People need to be aware of the access privileges that they provide to different groups of peers. Facebook is a useful tool and can be almost a necessity for remaining in touch, but nobody is forcing you to change who you trust your information with.
One thing that I think would be a good idea for Facebook to implement would be rule-based access privileges for different groups that you can define. The groups shouldn't be visible to anyone other than yourself, of course; the last thing you'd need would be for "friends" to see that they weren't "good friends."
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The point is that you can't absolutely control everything that other people do. No matter how much you trust people, unless a specific group is THE ONLY people you ever talk to, you can't guarantee anything.
Example: some of your friends have a party. Chances are that it's not going to just be the six of you there. There's going to be many people you don't really know that well. Those people can take pictures of the party and post them to Facebook; if you get tagged in there, that could be bad for you.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, as Zuck made it obvious on the 13th, he's got all of your info and doesn't give a damn who gets it.
Facebook changed the nature of friendship. It gave people who don't care about privacy the ability to share private information about their friends with complete strangers, without ever getting consent from the friend.
One more thing (Score:2, Informative)
It actually goes one step further than that: It gave people who don't know every single detail of the TOS and all the other agreements the ability to share private information about their friends with complete strangers, without either friend's even knowing they've done so.
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"One thing that I think would be a good idea for Facebook to implement would be rule-based access privileges for different groups that you can define. The groups shouldn't be visible to anyone other than yourself, of course; the last thing you'd need would be for "friends" to see that they weren't "good friends.""
Facebook actually already has this. I use it all the time. Grouped my co-workers into a group, and I can exclude them from seeing certain posts (of a more personal nature, not things about them.)
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One thing that I think would be a good idea for Facebook to implement would be rule-based access privileges for different groups that you can define. The groups shouldn't be visible to anyone other than yourself, of course; the last thing you'd need would be for "friends" to see that they weren't "good friends."
Use the "Friend lists" feature. You can make as many lists as you like, based around whichever criteria you like (work, hobbies, trust level).
When you post pictures/status updates/links, click the little privacy 'lock' icon and select 'custom'. It'll allow you to show your post to named individuals or lists. It'll also allow you to block it from named individuals or lists.
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If you stay off of Facebook, your friends and colleagues assume it's because of some anti-social horrible problem with you and treat you very differently.
Really? Mine don't seem to, they just remember to email me with announcements for things, as well as posting them on Facebook. It probably helps that I run a mailing list that my friends use for announcing parties and so on, and have done since before most of them put their faces in the book. Most of my interaction with my friends doesn't go via the Internet at all though, so maybe I'm unusual and surrounded by other unusual people. It's hard to dance online.
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The snarky, yet 'insightful', AC comment claiming that I need new friends (as if I was using my own circle of friends as an example, ha) is a beautiful dream. In the end, the average human being is stupi
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We don't care what a boyfriend/girlfriend does on facebook.
Now if they were ours, that would be different - but let's not get into extreme "what if" scenarios here.
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And I'm not sure what this strange fascination is with ACs and
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Anybody could put a picture of your on a blog or a personal website, or on a telephone pole. You worried about that? If you are worried about people taking pictures of you doing stupid things, then maybe you shouldn't do stupid things. Even without cameras, people could still tell other people about what you did. It's not as though people in the pre-internet days had no idea what you were up to ever.
And even if the picture is on Facebook, it's really not personally identifying in any structured way exce
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If you stay off of Facebook, your friends and colleagues assume it's because of some anti-social horrible problem with you and treat you very differently.
Is this called the Lemming syndrome? It sounds like you sheeple need to turn off the stupid box and get out more often.
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If any of your friends use Facebook, they can easily tag you in a photo without your ass ever knowing it. If any relatives use Facebook, they can easily mark your birthday as an event. If a boyfriend/girlfriend uses Facebook, they can boast about where you ate dinner.
I don't see how this changes much. The same information was/is still acquired without facebook. People take out the family album all the time and people (especially parents) are happy to tell the world about children's birthdays called "birthday parties". Your girlfriend also probably tells her friends about where you went for your dinner. People are also known to spread random facts and lies about you. They're called rumors.
If you stay off of Facebook, your friends and colleagues assume it's because of some anti-social horrible problem with you and treat you very differently.
Perhaps the younger generations do this but I don't think anything of it. I do know
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If any of your friends use Facebook, they can easily tag you in a photo without your ass ever knowing it. If any relatives use Facebook, they can easily mark your birthday as an event. If a boyfriend/girlfriend uses Facebook, they can boast about where you ate dinner.
All of this information could be aggregated anyway. The problem with facebook is centralization. And if you don't have a facebook account, then while people can tag stuff with your name, it's not linked to your identity in any other way. If it's not linked to a facebook account, a tagging isn't a link at all, it's just an annotation.
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Then maybe the problem is with your friends/family/etc... and their lack of respect for your privacy? But it's easier to blame Facebook for not providing an expensive system for free that manages the data freely provided to it in the exact fashion you want it managed so you can interact with any and everyone, but only how and when you want to.
Not to pick on you in particular. Just all the people like you.
The internet and the apps it supports make all kinds of data more readily available to anyone. Not ju
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so Facebook should be allowed to rape and pillage privacy rights.
You don't have any privacy rights with regards to other peoples' photos, or facts (your birthday).
Don't conflate privacy rights and personal preferences towards privacy.
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If any of your friends use Facebook, they can easily tag you in a photo without your ass ever knowing it. If any relatives use Facebook, they can easily mark your birthday as an event. If a boyfriend/girlfriend uses Facebook, they can boast about where you ate dinner.
Yes, why, if it wasn't for Facebook, there'd be no danger of friends or acquaintances revealing things you wish they hadn't.
On a completely unrelated note, I hope my friend Tom Emanekaf wises up and stops cheating on his wife, or he's going to lose her!
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I can't find the comment I pulled that example from. If you really want to discredit my entire post because you're fixated on it being my boo-hoo miserable life, then I guess I can go find it for you. If you just want to step back, breathe, and just relax, we can do that too. All depends on how petty you are.
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It's just an AC troll. Let it go.
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"Said the poster under a fake name..."
said the Anonymous Coward.
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That should read, anonymous COWARD, as the COWARD part is the relevant part.
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It saddens me deeply that the only way to protect one's privacy from idiocy is to sue.
wha? (Score:1, Troll)
Facebook is so 3 years ago. People still use it?
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What do you use instead?
Re:wha? (Score:5, Insightful)
Email, a blog and - if just for photos - Picasa; all freely available from Google...
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At least Google is only using that data themselves rather than selling it to anyone and everyone. (at least for now)
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And really, we should all be able to just use any blog with syndication for this purpose. Just give your URL to anyone who you want to 'follow' you. Protect it if that's not everyone. Perhaps what we need is some sort of standard for mixing RSS and certificate authentication?
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Friendster
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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I love puppies...and only 140 calories per serving.
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I have recently decided to leave FB partially due to privacy reasons and partially because I'm bored of my inbox being full of messages from people on Facebook asking why I haven't been on Facebook in a week or so. So I updated my status saying that I would soon be leaving permanently. I don't like Facebook and I wish I could just stop using it but friends use it to invite me to partys and nights ou,t so is if I don't use it I will end up sitting at home a
Is Facebook toast? (Score:4, Interesting)
The morning drive-time radio DJ I listen to (Rod Ryan in Houston) did a segment yesterday on how people were fleeing Facebook due to privacy concerns. He interviewed his own interns who all said the same thing "I've shut down my Facebook account. I'm not going back there." (or words to that effect).
When it breaks to the mainstream press that Facebook is bleeding subscribers, when even the morning DJ runs a long segment on the problems with Facebook and talking about how to go about leaving Facebook, then I'm prompted to ask - Is Facebook toast?
More down to earth - Was that DJ right? Is Facebook losing huge numbers? Is there any way to know for sure?
Re:Is Facebook toast? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a lot of people are angry. At this point a lot of people are revolting by using fake names, or putting less info in their profile. But you can't really leave it yet because the social connections it provides are useful even if you hate it. I think that people are just waiting for something better to come along, and when that thing comes, it will give Facebook a run for its money and force them to either change their ways or lose the battle. Remember when Facebook took over myspace? The same can happen again.
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This. I nuked pretty much everything but friend lists and an email address, but one does not turn away from a total monopoly overnight. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who don't have facebook (and consider that unlike most situations, the set of people I know is actually quite relevant here)
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a lot of people are revolting
I agree entirely.
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If you're on Facebook, there's a really easy way to tell: Have any of your friends dropped off?
I can say that none of my friends or family have, and every single one of them is aware of the privacy issues that have been talked about. It's in the mainstream news, after all.
Until there's an easy way for them to migrate to another service - and when I say easy, I mean an easy way to move all thei
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When the number 1 search on google is "How Do I delete my facebook account" you know that facebook is hurting.
You can test this by typing "How Do I" on google.
I'd say that these privacy concerns are hurting them, especially since the whole point of facebook was originally privacy. The bait and switch just doesn't work these days.
I'm glad I never opened a facebook account...
Really? (Score:2)
Did they claim that these two *security* features were in response to the privacy concerns? Or did speculation make that connection? I agree that there are privacy problems, but unless they claim that this is in response to those concerns, don't assume that they are.
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As far as I can tell, this is just speculation on the part of the article author. I don't see any mention of privacy on the Facebook blog post. I didn't hear anything about privacy when I first heard this story on NPR yesterday either.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In response to concerns about its exploding car engines, a major car manufacturer has added additional cup holders to its vehicles.
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I don't see anywhere where facebook claims that these new features were a response to the privacy concerns.
Privacy != Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems like an attempt at misdirection to me.
Diaspora (Score:2)
One of my friends showed me this project. It looks promising. http://www.joindiaspora.com/ [joindiaspora.com]
Essentially, a peer to peer open source social network
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Is it going to be usable by people who don't leave their computers on 24/7? And I noticed the phrase "pgp" in the description. While I agree this is the right way to do it in abstract, I question if it will be too complex for the average person to care enoug hto bother with.
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The sad thing about Diaspora is that --right now-- they come across as so incredibly geeky. The only 'salespitch' that's accessible to general users is that startup venture pitch, which isn't exacly aimed at normal would-be users.
I just hope they can get this thing off the ground while, so to speak, staying under the radar until they have something that's presentable. Otherwise they'll scare folk away instead of attracting them.
Good luck, guys!
Completely Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't "quit"[*] because I was afraid my data was being leaked to my phone. I "quit" because it was being leaked across the whole goddamn Internet. This move is beyond worthless, and shows just how Zuck doesn't get it.
[*] No one really quits. They just "deactivate," while facebook keeps all your data. Remember when Facebook said that users owned their own data [facebook.com], yet never provided a way to completely delete it, nor export it [acm.org]? Talk is cheap. Platitudes even cheaper. Code is law [harvardmagazine.com].
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Oh, he get's it all right. He's just of a different opinion than most of us here.
They don't get it (Score:1, Insightful)
"It's clear that despite our efforts, we are not doing a good-enough job [of] communicating the changes that we're making," Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook said to the New York Times.
No. You're not getting it.
If people disagree with what you're doing, it's not a question of your needing to communicate better.
Is every minute detail of Facebook news worthy? (Score:2)
This is not a "bone for privacy advocates." It's a tiny, insignificant little thing that changes nothing and barely warrants an update on the Facebook site. So why do all these trivial little details become Slashdot news worthy?
Don't get me wrong, I am glad that Slashdot does keep me up to date with the more critical Facebook changes, but I find it a bit pathetic that Slashdot users feel the need to use the news literaly as a changelog for Facebook.
Register this computer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hah, so i just tried to log in to Facebook to tell my friends about this, and now Facebook requires me to "Register this computer" in order to continue. No option to do otherwise. All you can do is click on the facebook logo, which then asks for your password again. SO now I can't use facebook at all unless I "register my computer".
Zuckerberg is a Bitch.
And whats with verifying your identity? I mean, aren't my 100 friends enough verification? Who needs my verification?
Selling the opposite... (Score:2)
So essentially they are selling one feature to lower your privacy, and one to guarantee uniqueness (veeery useful for advertisers) as “more privacy”.
That is spin doctor masters’ class stuff right there.
Unfortunately they are not actual masters, as it’s in-you-face obvious that it’s fucked up.
Should have asked the MAFIAA instead of Glenn Beck for advice. ^^
McNeally was right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at Google's recent scanning of Wireless networks from the Streetview cars. Supposedly this was an accident. Oh LOL. But if they do it again in a few years maybe by then people won't mind. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/13/2898947.htm?section=business [abc.net.au] In most countries we even accept Google peeping over our fences, literally! When this news broke I remember some people (who presumably weren't employed by Google) vigorously defending Google's rights to do this: the public screaming for less privacy. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/google-to-reshoot-japanese-street-view-images-20090615-c9f1.html [smh.com.au]
We shot the messenger when Scott McNeally said we had no privacy - get over it, but he knew what we didn't: Never stand between a corporation and a pot of money.
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Hit the nail on the head my friend.
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The whole wifi-snarfing things is overblown. You're broadcasting on public airwaves, anyone can collect your encrypted or unencrypted data. Also streets are public, anyone can walk down them and take a picture. People are concerned over the massive scale that Google does it on. Never the less, it's public data and who know how this public data might be useful on a massive scale. It's not as though Google is barging into your home to street map it, nor does it appear they were running massively parallel crac
Spy harder (Score:2)
No one ever said what Google was doing is illegal. They're too bright for that, and the law hasn't caught up with them. Two hundred years ago if you wanted a private conversation you went behind the barn. These days there are snooping and roving eyes, ears and message drops everywhere. The same law that says nothing about Google snooping at your Wifi, would throw the book at them if they tapped your cellular (GoogleConversation(TM)! Hear what people are saying on their phone! Now in Beta!) The difference th
In prison... (Score:2)
I had more privacy than Facebook.
Glad I wiped my FB.
Jumping on the anti-Facebook bandwagon (Score:1)
I was browsing my Facebook settings just last night. I believed that I had already handled this chore, but this time I paid more attention to the section with application settings obscurely nestled four clicks into the mess they call privacy settings. For some reason you can't actually tell what's going on at a single glance as I previously thought, and need to switch among views like 'authorized' and 'allowed to post' (whatever the difference is, I do not know) to actually see what's going on. That's wh
Facebook addicts (Score:2)
There are two things I don't understand:
1) people who are addicted to Facebook, and feel the need to post every single one of their inane thoughts on FB
2) how those inane thoughts have any marketing value and/or how it affects the users "privacy".
I understand the PII (Personally Indentifying Information) issues like birthday, hometown, etc, but does ANYONE really care that one of my friends from High School (whom I haven't spoken to in over 18 years but 'friended via FB) is proud that his daughter scored he
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Maybe this girl [theage.com.au] thought posting that she wanted to work with animals was innocuous...
Corporate concerns (Score:2)
In the past few months, my employer has issued this directive:
"Employees that use social media that also discloses their employment with the company are directed and required to report that to HR, or to remove references to their employment with (redacted). If you disclose your employment, all postings must meet professional guidelines as defined in the employee handbook. Directives to edit or remove postings as directed by HR or Communications are non discretionary as long as the site identifies your empl
Re: Facebook & privacy (Score:1)
I think its time.... (Score:1)