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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."
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Facebook, Others Giving User Private Data To Advertisers

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  • Oh Shit (Score:5, Funny)

    by joepress99 ( 69729 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @08:53AM (#32291806)

    Guess the Journal forgot Rupert also owns MySpace.

  • Unused (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @08:54AM (#32291822)

    they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it

    Ahh, they didn't use it. Then it's all right.

    Nothing to see here.

    I wonder if TPB could use the same defense. "Wait what? You can SEE the downloaded movies? Whoa!"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      the article in now way says that the data not being used absolves Facebook, they're saying that to some degree, if true, it absolves DoubleClick and RightMedia, who can hardly be blamed for being sent data they were unaware of and didn't ask for.

    • Re:Unused (Score:5, Insightful)

      by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:22AM (#32292144) Journal

      Ha! Funnny.

      I honestly don't care if advertisers learn that I like collecting old computers and other hobbies. I'm more concerned about the info leaking to people with REAL power over me. Like a prospective employer (hmmm, he is pro-gun - don't wanna hire him), or the US government (this guy sold Final Fantasy 7 for $150 and didn't pay taxes).

      • Re:Unused (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2010 @10:46AM (#32293330)
        Don't you get it? You can't trust *anyone* with too much information. People say they don't care if marketers know all about them, but if it is allowed to get to the point that advertisers have complete profiles on people for marketing purposes (and things like facebook are very near to making that possible) then what stops them from sharing that info with the government, or selling it to employers checking on an employees private life, etc, etc. Do you think the advertisers would turn down the extra money? Do you think they would decline to do it because it's unethical? We're you born yesterday??
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Similar to Google's "accidental" sniffing of public wifi -- they didn't use it, so that makes it all right.

      Bloody criminals.

      • I don't think they'd argue that it was okay - the fact that they apologised speaks otherwise. However it's a mitigating factor. You would hardly argue that a company that did use data scraped this way was no worse.

      • Re:Unused (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @11:04AM (#32293564) Journal

        "Similar to Google's "accidental" sniffing of public wifi -- they didn't use it, so that makes it all right."

        I don't get this one. WHY is it wrong? Didn't we /.ers love the stories of wardriving years ago, when people posted the location of open WiFis so we could leach off them?

        Look, if you don't want Google Doing it, because they are "BIG CORP", then don't do it yourself. There is no difference between the idea of wardriving individually, and Google doing, except for scale.

        I don't have a problem with Google Wardriving. NONE.

        Also, Internet is NOT secure. There is no privacy on the internet. NONE. Everything that makes the internet useful to you, is a way to make it easier to track you.

        What you put up on the internet is there for everyone else to see, forever. Even if it "delete" it, it probably lives somewhere on some server or another.

        We might as well get used to this paradigm and either not do anything on the internet, or just learn to be careful knowing the whole time that we can't be careful enough.

        I'm not all that concerned with what is on my facebook, as it is all public info anyways. And I don't fear stalkers, they should fear me. ;)

  • Cue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2010 @08:55AM (#32291838)

    Cue the "privacy is dead" asshats, who for some reason are determined to purge the natural human desire for privacy that has existed since the dawn of human evolution.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sakdoctor ( 1087155 )

      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.

      • Re:Cue (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @10:52AM (#32293408) Homepage

        I don't have a facebook account, and I don't have any idiot farmville playing friends

        Are you sure? For all you know, right now, a friend or relative of yours is posting pictures of you on Facebook, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's a brave new world.

        • Yes I'm sure, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.

          Believe it or not, many non-geeks have an intuition for online privacy. Not everyone is a fucktard click-monkey, despite the existence of facebook proving that most people are.

          • Re:Cue (Score:5, Informative)

            by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @12:37PM (#32294804) Homepage

            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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      I don't believe privacy exists really anymore, but I wouldn't say that privacy is dead, it's more like it was just given away freely and irrevocably without a second thought as to the long term ramifications. I refused to use facebook for the longest time, but I've personally given up. My friends use it and it's their primary means of communication, above and beyond simpler and "better" things such as email. I just try to keep as much actual honest information about myself off there as possible and keep
      • I've never heard anyone outside of corporations and governments (hard to tell the difference anymore) saying that it is [a good thing].

        Fixed that for myself. Brain moves faster than the hands sometimes.

      • XMPP (Score:4, Informative)

        by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:48AM (#32292510) Homepage

        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.

        • Oh, they'd reply, if/when they checked actually their email. I did not realize that Facebook supported XMPP. Thanks for giving me something to go off of.
    • by siloko ( 1133863 )

      who for some reason are determined to purge the natural human desire for privacy that has existed since the dawn of human evolution

      mmm maybe privacy meant something different back then but I'm sure in all those 'caveman' films the dudes were walking around in the buff . . .

    • Re:Cue (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tpstigers ( 1075021 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @10:07AM (#32292792)
      Don't be stupid. Privacy isn't dead. It just that privacy is - and has always been - up to the individual. The issue we keep running into here is that people expect someone else to protect their privacy. If you want real privacy, it's up to you to secure it and maintain it.
    • by Jeng ( 926980 )

      I always thought it was pretty stupid to put all of your personal information online then complain about people being able to see all of your personal information.

      Of course privacy is dead, when you give your privacy away.

    • the natural human desire for privacy that has existed since the dawn of human evolution.

      Getting a funny mental image of Adam and Eve detagging all their facebook photos with naughty bits in them after eating the apple.

      News Feed:

      Eve and The Serpent are now friends
      Adam and Eve became fans of "Eating from the tree of knowledge" and "If one more person posts their cave drawings, I'll quit facebook"
      Adam "LOL, apples R so GOOD"
      Eve --> Adam: "where u at? Bring as many fig leafs as you can ASAP!"
      Eve changed her profile picture
      Adam and eve left "Garden of Eden" network.
      Adam is OMFG PAIN SUCKS!!! I

    • I am completely with you! If you want privacy now you have to work for it now which is definitely wrong. If you use FireFox then I recommend these extensions:

      - No Referrer - removes the referrer
      - NoScript - kill the scripts that are the source of vulnerabilities
      - Cs Lite - block the cookies that track you
      - Refresh Blocker - prevents annoying meta refreshes
      - Ad Hacker - shows what networks are being used for ads or tracking
      - Redirect Cleaner - cleans URLs with

  • ..it's not private. Came across this yesterday http://youropenbook.org/ [youropenbook.org], It made me laugh.
  • Double click (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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?

  • by orthancstone ( 665890 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @08:57AM (#32291860)
    People still click on ads?
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Bigbutt ( 65939 )

      Of course. Otherwise how would they get malware installed?

      I have been having fun clicking the 'x' on the Facebook ads to remove them. "Why are you deleting this ad? x Uninteresting"

      Yep, they're all uninteresting. :)

      [John]

      • by ElKry ( 1544795 )
        You know, I do that too - and so does my wife. Except I go for "Offensive" and she goes for "Repetitive". Team work, you know.
    • People still click on ads?

      People still *see* ads?

  • surprise, surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @08:59AM (#32291890) Homepage Journal

    Is anyone surprised? As soon as companies grow so big that consumers can not easily vote with their wallet anymore, or their offers are non-monetary for the end-user (who is the product, instead of the consumer), there's no reason they would take privacy seriously. I'm pretty sure the bad PR is the only reason they worry about it at all.

    In advertisement, all commercial participants conspire against the consumer.

    I'm not a friend of government (especially our current one here in Germany, a bunch of monkies could do a better job) - but I don't see which other organisation could regulate these commercial big players anymore. Certainly not the consumers, who despite Internet and all theoretical options of banding together simply have 1000 other things in their lives to worry about, so finding a sufficiently large group of people who care about this particular thing enough to make a difference is as hard as ever.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by CFBMoo1 ( 157453 )
      I didn't vote with a wallet per say but I did vote with an account delete on Facebook a few days ago. Assuming of course they honor my request.

      How to do it if your curious:
      http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by sakdoctor ( 1087155 )

        You missed the boat. There was a time when deleting your account would, more or less, delete your account.
        Now days it doesn't.

        Today you should disband and pollute your data over a matter of months, and delete your account.
        Then change your name, sex, nationality, and fake your own death.
        Then finally change your name, sex, and nationality again.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          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 t

          • > First alternative...
            > ...
            > Second alternative...
            > ...

            Zeroeth alternative: don't use it if you don't like it, or at least don't post your secrets.

            > ...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.

            Then tell them. If they choose to ignore you that's their right. If by "the current younger generation" yo

            • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              For those who are more aware of the consequences to ignore their knowledge and allow others to fall victim to those who would exploit them, makes them nearly but not quite as bad as the exploiters. The exploiters who make use of their knowledge and the lack of understanding of the less intellectually abled in order to deceive and exploit them, well tough, the karmic reward I (and of course many, many others) feel I gain from working to disrupt greed and deceit more than makes up for the presumed deflation

    • by AnonymousClown ( 1788472 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:13AM (#32292040)
      I think most people don't even think about it or don't think they have anything to hide - until their identity gets stolen or they get fired for a post on their Facebook page.

      Unfortunately, throughout the Western World, we have worried so much about government trampling our rights that we completely ignored the private sector.

      To head off the "well, just don't do business with them!" posts, I'd like to point out that Facebook stated in their policies that they wouldn't do this and secondly that every service, whether it's cell phones or internet sites, has a little statement buried in their terms that states they can change the terms anytime they want.

      I really hope Facebook gets sued over this a loses and a precedent is set over internet website policies - in the consumer's favor.

      • > ...a little statement buried in their terms that states they can change the > terms anytime they want.

        It's there, isn't it? And if you read the "TOS" you'd know about it. In any case, they cannot change the terms retroactively (not even if the TOS clains that they can). The terms that are in effect at the time you use the service are the ones that apply to that transaction.

    • simply have 1000 other things in their lives

      ONLY because of facebook! Sell your friends, write "cool story bro" on someone's wall, decline a bunch of people, post pics of yourself passed out drunk in the bath.

      Without facebook they would have nothing to do in their lives, and would therefore have time for political activism. And philosophy.

    • There's no conspiracy. RTFA: as difficult as it may be to get your slashbrain around it, the privacy issue is a technical accident.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        conspire != conspiracy

        In the literal meaning of the word, all the participants - the website you're visiting, the ad agency, the ad network, their customers - all work together against you. There's no reason to be dramatic, but it's a simple fact that they are all trying to coerce/convince/manipulate/whateveryouwanttocallit to split with some of your money into their direction, which then feeds them all.

        • A group colluding against someone is a reliable definition of a conspiracy.

          • by Tom ( 822 )

            I'm not a native english speaker, but in my conception, a conspiracy requires some temporal consistency, i.e. it should endure over some time. In this case, the members of the "conspiracy" are constantly changing, and everyone is colluding with everyone else. It doesn't fit the common definition of a conspiracy which is more like a small group of people giggling madly in the corner.

            But that's just words. Call it whatever you want.

    • by pooh666 ( 624584 )
      Yes, we need a bloodlyfingduh tag.
    • See, the basic business cycle of a social networking website goes like this:
      1. Site attracts core group of users with good privacy protection, features, and general usefulness that is superior to their competitors.
      2. Everyone who wasn't attracted in step 1 signs up to new site, because they want to be on the same network as their friends.
      3. Site locks the users in by having the user's social life revolve around the social networking site, rather than real life.
      4. Company that created the site "monetizes" th

  • by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:00AM (#32291908)
    I'm not shocked by the breach of posted privacy policies, but by:

    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

    So Facebook and MySpace were just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, not making any extra money from Google & Yahoo?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Sockatume ( 732728 )

      If you RTFA, they were doing it by simple technical accident. Unless the advertisers thought to scrape referrer URLs for usernames, they didn't get shit.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Yeah, I get that. Meanwhile, the user pages have already been spidered, so it's just a case of attaching one to the other.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) *

        Unless the advertisers thought to scrape referrer URLs for usernames, they didn't get shit.

        And we all know that advertisers would never do anything as underhanded as mine information from a data stream, because that would be wrong.

    • So Facebook and MySpace were just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts

      Or it could just be a bug.

      Don't attribute to malice what could easily be explained by sheer incompetence...

  • Topical.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zerak-Tul ( 1654309 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:02AM (#32291920)
    • Except ... that comic is compare two unrelating things like if doing one would have affected the other, which it wouldn't.

      The first 2 panes are spot on with a major 'geek' problem. People don't give a shit about nerd turf wars over document formats, what they have WORKS for them and everyone else, geeks included. No one has told everyone they aren't allowed to do what they want with their Word docs. When they do, then you can make this argument. Until then any format you propose is effectively the same

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Andorin ( 1624303 )

        Except ... that comic is compare two unrelating things like if doing one would have affected the other, which it wouldn't.

        You're missing the point. Beardy McNerdy is the sort of guy who reads Slashdot and worries about these sorts of things: open standards in the case of the .doc part, and 3vil social networking sites abusing their power and position. Sticky non Techie, on the other hand, is your average condescending person who sees all of it as pointless and just wants to read about the new iPhone release. The comparison is between two forms of 3vil perpetrated by a corporation: the former is Microsoft's strategy of locking

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:05AM (#32291962)

    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.

  • by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:06AM (#32291980)

    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.

    • Furthermore, the headline is inaccurate. Personal data is could potentially be retrieved by advertisers, but it is public data.

    • Public information? So why is this a problem?
      • The user's ad-clicking habits are identified, and correlated with their public information on that site (and possibly others by correlating other ones). It's an in-principle and not in-practice thing at this stage but it is a cause for concern.

  • Yeah right (Score:1, Troll)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 )

    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.

    So major online advertising companies, who make their living analyzing data from server logs, who at a moments notice can tell you the click-through rate of any ad they currently have in rotation, who study the eye movements of users while using computers to design more effective a

    • OK little modlets - lets try something. Go look the definition of 'sarcasm' and the Slashdot definition of 'troll'. (Actual work left as exercise to the reader). Then look up Venn Diagrams, the concept of 'null set'- think about it for a while and see if this helps with the quality of your moderation.
  • Oh, REALLY? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:07AM (#32291994)

    If this is true, then Facebook is committing fraud. Shut them down.

  • Hanlon's razor? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mcgrew ( 92797 ) * on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:19AM (#32292112) Homepage Journal

    Some people use it as an out; "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know!"

    Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetance? Yes, that applies, unless it crosses "never attribute to incompetence that which can be explained by greedy self-interest". That's the razor that applies here; if your "mistake" benefits you, only a fool will believe it's a mistake.

    Mr. Brin, I love your search engine, but please change your lying motto.

    • Except, this didn't benefit anyone. The ad providers would have to figure out that they were being given personally-identifying referrer URLs for clickthroughs, scrape the username part, and visit the user's (public) profile to retreive any personal information. From the sounds of things that conceptual leap didn't actually occur.

      • > The ad providers would have to figure out that they were being given
        > personally-identifying referrer URLs...

        In other words, they were being given this "personal" information by the user, not by Facebook. The referrer is recorded and handed over to the referred site by the browser, not by the referring site.

        > the user's (public) profile to retreive any personal information.

        No, to retrieve public information. It's a public profile, remember?

    • Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

  • Why would I want to use Facebook at all if I value my privacy? And a follow up which is probably more to the point, with all the shit Facebook has pulled, why are you bitching about it if you're still a user?
    • by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @10:44AM (#32293304)

      Why would I want to use Facebook at all if I value my privacy? And a follow up which is probably more to the point, with all the shit Facebook has pulled, why are you bitching about it if you're still a user?

      Maybe you do value your privacy with some (strangers, employers) more than with others (friends, family). I think that privacy, like intimacy is not a binary thing. There are people whose hand you wouldn't even shake, folks you would hug in public and people who've seen you naked, right? (I'm being rhetorical here, you don't need to answer that.)

      I take your point about facebook, though. They don't act trustworthy and do act too capriciously. Nevertheless, people would like to expose some of themselves, just not all of it and just not to everybody. Facebook happens to be extremely popular: many of your friends are there. Bitching about facebook's crap is actually quite reasonable. You'd like them to change to avoid the hassle of finding another alternative. They probably won't, given their history, but they certainly won't if no one says anything.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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 do

  • Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jvkjvk ( 102057 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:32AM (#32292266)

    Somehow, I don't buy it, and it makes me sad that Google has gone this far down the path of Corporatism.

    Now, they lie to us to our faces. I find it impossible to believe that Google did not know what was in the strings being sent to it.

    Google is trying to tell us that they are so incompetent that they did not realize what all that information in the strings that were sent to it actually signified.

    Right.

    Either their hiring practices scrape the bottom of the barrel (which we know is not true), or they knew exactly what information was in all those strings, since that's their job. Collecting and analyzing information (of which those URLs are a subset).

    Oh, I know. Since we are in a free market economy you can just not use Google at all! And any site that has adwords, or google analytics, or youtube, or refuse email of anyone that sends you email from a gmail address, or...

    If enough people do this, we can show Google the error their ways. /sarcasm

  • About time my alma mater got some recognition on here for something other than an MP3 playing Xmas Tree ;)

  • anytime an entity has control over a large dataset of demographic data, sales droids will not stop trying trying to turn that into revenue.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Yes... and even if geeks and privacy fans manage to avoid being in the particular set of data, who cares... there are plenty of folks (one borne every minute) who have happily posted lots of stuff on FB, etc... It's a gold-mine of demographic data, only an idiot (or someone with ethics) would pass up the chance to use that data to Make Money Fast.

      Time to Update Barnum's Philosophy for the 21st Century: 'It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep their money or their privacy'

  • And let's see if advertisers will continue to be interested in your personal info after that... Hopefully sometime in the near future, when this or similar fan pages will grow large enough, advertisers will start excluding people that belong to them.
    • They'll still be interested. Demographic information is worth money. If they don't use it on Facebook (or the web) they'll use it in other places.

  • "Unaware" Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2010 @09:59AM (#32292684)

    > 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.

    Yeah, right.

    If you look closely at Google/Yahoo advertising tags - they are proactively trying to catch (via Javascript) and log (in GET parameters to their server) current URL to which their ads are served. Unless you fake referer AND use NoScript extension, you're giving them this data. And I have a strong diesbelief that they do not store this data.

    Yahoo and Google are logging huge part of your Web browsing history this way.

    I guess they've coded it by accident?

  • Not Again, I told everyone NOT to take that RED pill.

  • by MarkvW ( 1037596 ) on Friday May 21, 2010 @11:04AM (#32293578)

    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.

  • I hope they enjoy wasting money advertising to Mr. Guy Incognito, 123 Fake Street, Fakesville, USA and emailing tons of stuff to an temporary webmail address that only POP3 fwd email to another webmail account, until I decide to drop it and delete it whenever I like.

    If you don't want to share your personal information, don't share it. I am pretty sure my "friends" know where I live and what my email address is anyway. And hey, if it gets so bad that you can't use it anymore to connect with people, then Face

  • News at 11 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Social media sites that make money by selling the information you give them actually sell the information you give them...
    News at 11

  • There's a sad sort of leaking
    From Facebook on your wall
    And the info on your profile, too
    And out to the advertise
    An absurd little Zuckerburg... See More
    Is popping out to say boo-hoo
    (boo-hoo, boo-hoo)

    boo-hoo Regretfully they tell us
    boo-hoo But firmly they compel us
    to be a dumb fuck
    boo-hoo
    To you

    So long, farewell
    Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight
    I hate to go and leave this pretty site

    (Children)
    So long, farewell
    Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
    (Zuckerburg)
    What's new, what's new
    To you and you and you

    (chorus)
    Who care, farewell
    Au rev

  • We warned you. You didn't listen. Here's your fucking violin [xkcd.com].

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz

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