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Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

techcrunch.com

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Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#141

Post by Evbn »

tisme wrote: post #66
stephengillie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This DOES seem to be anecdotally confirmed, but we're yet to see any screenshots of this. Pics or it didn't happen, folks.

Think about what you're asking for here. You are essentially asking to compound the error facebook made by making a screenshot of their private communications and posting it on yet another open forum. That's like asking a rape victim to show her bruises publicly or you won't believe it. Pics or it didn't happen applies to lots of stuff but when there are a lot of people with pretty good reputations making the exact s…

Um, blacked out words showing just then first and last letter would be fine.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#142

Post by Evbn »

darien wrote: post #121
palebluedot wrote: post #35

This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, if true , this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made. It is difficult to think of something like this, where private ema…

Keep in mind that facebook's engineering philosophy is to push new code out every single day. This means that there is little to no QA on code push. Every engineer takes responsibility for their own code push and because people are human they mess up from time to time. I don't think this means that the culture is broken... there are simply pros and cons to on the fly site builds.

Have you ever written software? Or counted?

Facebook pushes code every day. As does Google and Amazon. These are orgs with thousands of people. Not every engineer pushes code every day.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#143

Post by Evbn »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #83
zabar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the best solution for them at this point would be something in between, like hiding all friend's post on every user's wall instead of letting every user to that manually.

But facebook is about "sharing" with advertisers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends. They don't want less "sharing."

Advertisers target to your demographics regardless of privacy settings.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#144

Post by Evbn »

hermannj314 wrote: post #10
kamechan wrote: post #6

i can confirm this too. 3 private message threads from 2009-2010 were on my wall with the privacy set to "friends". these were conversations right out of my private messages (which were also in my private messages). i'm deleting every facebook message as a result of this, which isn't easy as it has to be done one by one. i am in the US, but my UK friends are the ones who alerted me to it, as it was happening to them…

Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline. Is the quickest option a manual delete? She is freaking out. Edit: I have set her privacy as strict as I can for now, but having pressed her on the topic, it isn't entirely certain that these messages were ever private. My comment to her was that even if they…

If FB shows in-network content to people who joined after the content was posted, that is a severe privacy violation.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#145

Post by Evbn »

Havoc wrote: post #95
AlexMuir wrote: post #82

You know what's most interesting to me here? The tug between trusting my social network, and trusting FB and my own knowledge. My friends are ASSURING me that these are private messages. But every media outlet is now running the story that this is not true. And I have seen no evidence. So what do I believe?

EDIT: zevyoura pointed out that I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Please ignore if not applicable. Trusting FB? I hope you are joking. You are the product being sold & FB will maximize the value of that at any cost. Its all one big scam: They provide endless privacy controls over what your friends can see, but discreetly forget to provide controls over what they can sell to advertisers.

How does scaring people off the system benefit advertising sales? Think before you post. Even being greedy and selfish is not the same as desiring to ruin users lives.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#146

Post by Evbn »

seiji wrote: post #30
pilgrim689 wrote: post #27

Every time I hear of Facebook developer philosophies, it's always "Move Fast and Break Things."... Not with 800 million people's private conversations, please.

What can one do? They aren't a government entity -- you can't vote management out or change policies. They aren't regulated -- you have no complaint procedures or escalation mechanism. The best you can do is yell at them. They will gladly laugh at you through their young-and-rich-and-by-the-way-fu billionaire eyes. If they decide to make public every thing you've ever written in rolling 10 year intervals there is not…

How many FB engineers are billionaires?

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#147

Post by Evbn »

arunv wrote: post #111

Hey guys - I work on Timeline here at Facebook and just wanted to chime in here. I've looked into a bunch of cases today where people were concerned their messages were showing up, but as has been pointed out in many places (e.g. techcrunch), there was no privacy violation here. If you've kept your old emails around (woohoo gmail!), one thing you can do is go back and look for the notification email you got for a par…

Here is an idea: don't dig up people's old forgotten posts shared to the smaller past FB network and repost them publicly to new members without explicit opt-in. That's paparazzi tabloid behavior.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#148

Post by Evbn »

klaut wrote: post #123

i went to check my fb timeline and indeed some messages between 2008-2009 DO look like they must've been private messages - people writing their home addresses and phone numbers and similar stuff.. i doubt these were public wall posts to begin with .. i can't find any old fb notification emails as i am deleting this things, unfortunatelly. but i does feel a bit scary :|

The vast majority of FB users are confused enough to post this info publicly. Look at any "I got a new cell phone! Send me your digits!" post.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#149

Post by ldng »

stephengillie wrote: post #59
palebluedot wrote: post #35

This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, if true , this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made. It is difficult to think of something like this, where private ema…

This DOES seem to be anecdotally confirmed, but we're yet to see any screenshots of this. Pics or it didn't happen, folks.

Well it IS happening, and it's spreading. People are pissed. I found private messages published. And no, no pics because, you know, they were supposed to be private. And I am very careful on the matter. I am very annoyed to see it downplayed.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#150

Post by ldng »

atestu wrote: post #63
palebluedot wrote: post #35

This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, if true , this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made. It is difficult to think of something like this, where private ema…

It happened to me and all of my French friends. It's a top story on all major French news site http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4565739

FYI, it is spread to Spain.
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