what bothers me - or has me in awe even (to some extent) is how early on in the process facebook started storing all this information! I've had status updates from years ago show up in my "this day in 2009" pop-up on the sidebar. And clearly from the content of these files on the above website - they have stuff on you that goes way -way back. It seems almost sinister - as if they knew all along that they would aggregate so much information - althought on the face of it - it was just another social networking site. Which I would assume like any other website or web-app would delete unneccesary stuff in order to save space / efficiency etc (atleast before they got huge and had their own server farms). At the same time - one cant help but wonder if having all this data (and probably a lot lot more that we dont see from an outsider's perspective) - is really what is responsible for facebook making the "right" moves every now and then with regards to really delivering features that its users will use and growing at unbelievable rates? Might be food for thought - after all - the more you know about your users - the better you can serve them!
How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#82Unbelievable: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html They delete sh*t, if you delete your posts they don't remove them from their databases. This makes me really angry, there is a reason why i delete this stuff. I can't believe this, they have a responsibility. Edit: WTF http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html#Mac... This is maybe the most frightening: http://europe-v-facebook.org/E…
Best advice I ever heard (and it came from an ex-Facebook employee), "treat communication ("private" & "public") on all services, including Gmail, Facebook, and Tumblr, like a million people are listening."
Similar advice that was given to me during a messy legal fight'; Assume that anything you put in an email might one day be read out to you in court.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, please do that (limiting your market to the U.S.).
Excuse me, there are a couple of entire continents getting tired of that! Or should I assume you talked out of the same frustration?
I was guessing it was a joke from the perspective of a European startup--- they'd love it if all U.S. startups ignored Europe.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's surprising that the PDF I looked at (the first one) doesn't contain any access-log data at all. Shouldn't it contain the time, date, and IP address of every time she's viewed a page on Facebook, at least as far back as they keep HTTP access logs? Or do they not log the user ID when they log HTTP accesses? Someone (in Europe, therefore not me) should ask the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to get an answer to…
I doubt they HTTP access logs are tied directly to the user id. It might be possible to derive this information by linking on the IP address, but that isn't the same thing as a direct link at all.
Facebook is able to tell which profiles you view more frequently than others, so some sort of log data correlated with users is being kept.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not Facebook's call. The USA PATRIOT Act allows for National Security Letters, or NSLs, that legally function like warrants but require no judicial review. The US government uses them over 60,000 times per year. The law allowing them turns ten years old next month.
Precisely. If you want to place blame, it goes squarely on the Bush Administration. (And yes, I'm sure I'll be down-voted for saying that, but it's still unquestionably, uncontroversially, non-debatably true.) If you want this fixed, it has to be fixed politically at a federal level.
@Bud - upvoted.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#86Unbelievable: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html They delete sh*t, if you delete your posts they don't remove them from their databases. This makes me really angry, there is a reason why i delete this stuff. I can't believe this, they have a responsibility. Edit: WTF http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html#Mac... This is maybe the most frightening: http://europe-v-facebook.org/E…
Best advice I ever heard (and it came from an ex-Facebook employee), "treat communication ("private" & "public") on all services, including Gmail, Facebook, and Tumblr, like a million people are listening."
I think my life would be considerably worse if I had been treating all e-communication with my girlfriend as though it was public.
It has yet to hurt me.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#87Unbelievable: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html They delete sh*t, if you delete your posts they don't remove them from their databases. This makes me really angry, there is a reason why i delete this stuff. I can't believe this, they have a responsibility. Edit: WTF http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html#Mac... This is maybe the most frightening: http://europe-v-facebook.org/E…
Best advice I ever heard (and it came from an ex-Facebook employee), "treat communication ("private" & "public") on all services, including Gmail, Facebook, and Tumblr, like a million people are listening."
I'm pretty sure that in Gmail, delete actually means delete.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's out of date. The planet has enough resources for everyone. Humans do not need to prey on our own species.
Predator/prey is also a metaphor. People aren't actually being eaten. They are voluntarily sharing data that is used to provide them with a service that they want. I'm so depressed that I have to spell everything out.
And in these threads where you call us sheep, we are deciding that the data price is too high for the service rendered.
We have the right to use government to nationalize these programs if they are going to be so deceptive and intrusive.
Facebook falsely advertises their service as free. They don't tell their users that they are collecting unnecessary amounts of data to violate people's privacy, and that this data is payment for the service.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#89Unbelievable: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html They delete sh*t, if you delete your posts they don't remove them from their databases. This makes me really angry, there is a reason why i delete this stuff. I can't believe this, they have a responsibility. Edit: WTF http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Data_Pool/data_pool.html#Mac... This is maybe the most frightening: http://europe-v-facebook.org/E…
You may be surprised that many (at a guess, maybe most?) companies/websites actually consider a delete function to be changing a 'deleted' flag to 1 in a database. The data persists, but is no longer shown. I would also make a very big assumption that the only companies who wouldn't do this are those run by developers or other people who have had experience implementing that sort of system. There's nothing bosses lov…
unless I was dealing with a security based application where data needed to be wiped - I would never delete, but just flag as deleted. I don't see it as evil from a development perspective. Losing data is about the worst thing that can happen - all other errors can be fixed.
I have many times ran into a situation where having that deleted data either saved us from losing a customer or was used to show that our app was not mysteriously "deleting" their data.
Re: How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt they HTTP access logs are tied directly to the user id. It might be possible to derive this information by linking on the IP address, but that isn't the same thing as a direct link at all.
Facebook is able to tell which profiles you view more frequently than others, so some sort of log data correlated with users is being kept.
That's different to HTTP access logs.
If I view a profile on the mobile app or on the web page it is (presumably) measured the same, presumably in the application layer. That's different to recording the your id in the HTTP access logs.