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Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

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Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#11

Post by aphyr »

jkincaid wrote: post #9
aphyr wrote: post #6

Even with instant personalization turned off, your friends can share your info on any service they get suckered into using. Given how many of my Facebook friends bombard me with quizzes and Farmville, I'm guessing that's going to happen a lot. You have to block each application individually. Moreover, any site can display your profile information. http://cnn.com even seems to combine it with what CNN stories they lik…

We were told that third parties can't get any information from the social plugins. The data is served directly from Facebook using an iframe.

Ah, so CNN is handing its template and some fb query off to the plugin for display, then?

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#13

Post by mikebo »

The biggest privacy issue here are the social plugins. They're easily embedded in existing sites using an iframe which is hosted by facebook.

As more sites adopt these, Facebook will be able to track every site you visit on the web. I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable letting Facebook know which sites I visit.

Google adsense/doubleclick is fairly prevalent and has the same issue. You can opt out of it with Google though: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html -- the Facebook settings I have seen aren't clear about their data retention policies and what 'opting out' really means.

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#14

Post by jrmurad »

pxlpshr wrote: post #4
robotron wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know what? There's a setting in Privacy Settings->Applications and Websites called "Instant Personalization". Uncheck it and there you go. I realize there are a lot of people who won't do this but the option is there.

I did just that, and this is what it told me: "Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application."

But what does "public" mean there? If your privacy settings have information access as "visible to friends only", can "these partner sites" access that data if your friend doesn't opt out of this sharing?

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#15

Post by jfager »

robotron wrote: post #3
jkincaid wrote: post #2

This actually wasn't a surprise — I wrote about it a few weeks ago ( http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/27/facebook-privacy-connect/ ) and it was hinted at in Facebook's new Terms of Service. Facebook knows it could lead to some major backlash too, so they're being very conservative with the initial rollout. If you go to Yelp, it's actually hard to tell at first glance that any data sharing has occurred. Go to Pandora and…

But you know what? There's a setting in Privacy Settings->Applications and Websites called "Instant Personalization". Uncheck it and there you go. I realize there are a lot of people who won't do this but the option is there.

Any change that exposes more of your personal information should be opt-in, period. This should be a mantra for these kinds of services.

This move by FB makes whatever mistakes Google made with Buzz look relatively innocent. They need to get burned hard over this.

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#16

Post by qhoxie »

83457 wrote: post #8

The author states... Instant personalization means that if you show up to the Internet radio site Pandora for the first time, it will now be able to look directly at your Facebook profile and use public information — name, profile picture, gender and connections, plus anything else you’ve made public — to give you a personalized experience. Is this true? A simple enable or opt-in prompt in the frame on the first visi…

Yes, that is basically the point and the reason they call it "instant" - they don't want anything to be a click away.

The opt-out prompt is in the form of a blue bar at the top of the page. Once you say "No thanks" they are required to remove any of your information and not connect you on future visits.

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#17

Post by cemregr »

aphyr wrote: post #11
jkincaid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were told that third parties can't get any information from the social plugins. The data is served directly from Facebook using an iframe.

Ah, so CNN is handing its template and some fb query off to the plugin for display, then?

Exactly.

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#18

Post by hammerdr »

qhoxie wrote: post #16
83457 wrote: post #8

The author states... Instant personalization means that if you show up to the Internet radio site Pandora for the first time, it will now be able to look directly at your Facebook profile and use public information — name, profile picture, gender and connections, plus anything else you’ve made public — to give you a personalized experience. Is this true? A simple enable or opt-in prompt in the frame on the first visi…

Yes, that is basically the point and the reason they call it "instant" - they don't want anything to be a click away. The opt-out prompt is in the form of a blue bar at the top of the page. Once you say "No thanks" they are required to remove any of your information and not connect you on future visits.

Screenshot of the instant signin

http://yfrog.com/iymcjp

This was without prompt, as qhoxie states.

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#19

Post by Adaptive »

Forget about Google... Facebook is gunning for Claritas and other profiling companies that have been doing this for years, though behind the scenes and not in real time (see http://epic.org/privacy/profiling/ for more about profiling).

Google may have (deservedly) gotten a black eye for the Buzz debacle, but they have a lot of cultural DNA that values privacy (their CEO aside) and at least some systems in place to allow management of personal data (as well as data exodus).

Facebook on the other hand is clearly all business and will bend privacy concepts till their either break or users are conditioned to accept lack-thereof as the new standard (all in the name of "sharing").

Re: Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Problem

#20

Post by sp332 »

hammerdr wrote: post #18
qhoxie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is basically the point and the reason they call it "instant" - they don't want anything to be a click away. The opt-out prompt is in the form of a blue bar at the top of the page. Once you say "No thanks" they are required to remove any of your information and not connect you on future visits.

Screenshot of the instant signin http://yfrog.com/iymcjp This was without prompt, as qhoxie states.

Man, talk about banner blindness! It took me 10 seconds to find the Facebook bar in that picture, and I knew (approximately) where to look!
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