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Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

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Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#91
post #85
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also replaces the app drawer, which means when you click an app icon to launch an app -- from either the home screen or the app drawer -- FB Home can make a note of it and send that information to FB.

Pray may I ask how anyone can use than information to harm me?

There's obvious privacy issues, you don't want say, your employer finding out you just used certain apps like a job seeker or something else that posts to Facebook that you use it and ergo Facebook automatically likes it for you like they do with keywords.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#92
post #68
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with OM, Facebook Home is not just one app but a suite of apps running on your phone. The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall :( Think about the scenarios when you start to see all kinds of ad's popping up on your home screen and impossible to remove? . Remember, fb still needs to solve the problem of serving ad's on mobile well.

Exactly, this is "the money quote": "The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall".

I don't see how an informed consumer can't avoid this. I really started to dislike OEM's and decided to go Nexus. The number of bundled apps that went dead (Blockbuster went bankrupt and yet I was stuck with that app) or unsupported just drove me away.

I understand that now instead of worrying about unsupported apps you have to worry about what these apps track in the background, however there are a number of other phone options - why not just use another?

The appeal of this Launcher is there, it seems like a fairly clean interface that is satisfying to use, but like Facebook.com, if you don't feel comfortable using it, then you don't have to.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#94
post #65

I don't think we should be too surprised with how FB will use the new data. I'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with. I know a guy who works at one of Facebook's "partner companies" that pays gobs for FB user data. This partner company gets (as far as they can tell) fully-populated user data in Facebook's user dumps - way, way more information than they need or ask for. So the partner company…

I'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with.

I think you answered your own question with: pays gobs

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#95
Google Now already does all of this. It deduced my address by scraping my emails, and somehow it knows where I work, too. When my airline tickets were emailed to me, it brought up flight tracker information and weather for both arrival and destination cities. Creepy.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#97
post #65

I don't think we should be too surprised with how FB will use the new data. I'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with. I know a guy who works at one of Facebook's "partner companies" that pays gobs for FB user data. This partner company gets (as far as they can tell) fully-populated user data in Facebook's user dumps - way, way more information than they need or ask for. So the partner company…

Facebook doesn't sell user data.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#98

This is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook doesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App Annie. For another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what he's describing. Also what does "Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well," mean? Unless you're rolling your own ve…

> As far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same privacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions. Except for the part where no other app collects or maintains anywhere near as much data about your personal history, your friends, what you look like, what your friends look like, what you like, what your friends like, who you talk to, what you talk about, what your friends talk abo…

Facebook already has that data and gives most of it away via connect to third parties with a click. If you're already using Facebook, and using location-based apps, then getting upset over this is silly.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#99
post #83
post #65

I don't think we should be too surprised with how FB will use the new data. I'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with. I know a guy who works at one of Facebook's "partner companies" that pays gobs for FB user data. This partner company gets (as far as they can tell) fully-populated user data in Facebook's user dumps - way, way more information than they need or ask for. So the partner company…

> They're scared of the legal liability of holding onto all the personal details they receive don't need but Facebook shares anyway because Facebook genuinely doesn't care as long as they're monetizing. I find it odd that Facebook isn't scared of the same legal liability. Infact, they should be more scared. I don't see any reason why Facebook would give away more information than they need to. They have the skill and…

> I find it odd that Facebook isn't scared of the same legal liability. Infact, they should be more scared.

You don't understand how partnerships work in this case. Facebook is paid to provide data according to a contract between the two companies. That's it. They have many, many such contracts to fulfill with many partners. These contracts don't say "we provide exactly the data you ask for, no more, no less" because that is a lot, lot more work and at the end of the day the contracts still get signed and FB still gets paid. A lot. Where do you see legal liability for FB so far? Their terms of service fully permit this data sharing, and the contracts are just between FB and partner companies.

Meanwhile, the partner companies use the shared data to produce value-added products which they provide to their customers under existing contracts and policies. They can't violate their customer's privacy or rights under any of the existing such policies, which are not identical to FB's. In fact, depending on the industry of the partner company, these policies can be extremely different. It is up to the partner company - not Facebook - to comply with the partner company's contracts/policies.

> I don't see any reason why Facebook would give away more information than they need to.

Facebook doesn't see any reason why they should waste time withholding more data than they need to. They still get paid the same amount, and the partner companies just filter out what they don't want. What's the point? There isn't even a big long-term concern here for Facebook, since extra social data isn't exactly very useful years later.

> They have the skill and resources to filter data themselves.

You say that, but every large technology company has to prioritize what they use engineering manpower for. Not everything a company can do or wants to do ends up getting done. For example, you might say "Facebook has the skill and resources to delete data from their CDN. I highly doubt they would throw away money on byte stored in Akamai" and yet they didn't do so for years and probably still don't. And that's a far easier problem with real measurable costs. Compare that to filtering the same enormous data set differently for each partner company when there's no compelling business reason to do so. The contracts are still going to be signed and Facebook will still get paid. Why should anyone care?

> I highly doubt that they would throw away personal and sensitive to other companies.

This is something FB is doing and have been doing for years. So your doubts are baseless.

Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy

#100
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, this is "the money quote": "The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall".

I don't see how an informed consumer can't avoid this. I really started to dislike OEM's and decided to go Nexus. The number of bundled apps that went dead (Blockbuster went bankrupt and yet I was stuck with that app) or unsupported just drove me away. I understand that now instead of worrying about unsupported apps you have to worry about what these apps track in the background, however there are a number of other p…

Not to mention most OEMs put a custom launcher of some sort on their Android devices already and pretty much always have. I don't see Facebook as being any more odious than Samsung just because they know I like The Black Keys and Mad Men too. My phone's manufacturer could collect much more personal information about me than Facebook does. For all I know they're recording all my calls and uploaded them somewhere.

Really it's just so easy in the tech blog world to get page views by decrying whatever Facebook does as an invasion of privacy and that's what Om is doing. He should be ashamed for writing such a brainless piece of linkbait.

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