131–140 of 182 posts
When you install the Facebook app on your phone it requires permission to read your contacts, call log, location, accounts, and application data. Is this true?
on Android, yes
In terms of threat-level to privacy, this isn't all that egregious. The term "shadow profile" is not one that Facebook itself espouses, it's just added for flair. Clearly, this is making a lot of noise about something that's actually fairly harmless.
I would place more blame on the people sharing my data with Facebook than I would blame Facebook for "mapping" interpersonal data. It's really not that big a deal people.
Is this it? This is our brave new world of pervasive data gathering, social network analysis, and the dying gasp of any shred of privacy? This is the future we've built for ourselves? I haven't had a facebook account for 3 years. I'm certain FB has a shadow profile for me today and there's nothing I can do about it. My friends don't understand (or don't care about) the implications of everything they do online being…
> tracked, in minute detail, and stored indefinitely. Don't forget being analyzed and profiled. When I get arrested for conducting my life in a way that is more than 2 standard deviations outside the norm by some metric the government has deemed critical, it's on all your heads!
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I think that Facebook has a social duty to set the bar in terms of what is acceptable to do with this wealth of user data. Never before has there been one place that has so much detailed information about so many people - with great power comes great responsibility. The rules are still being refined. Things get tried - some work, some don't - then from this, lessons are learnt.
Yes. However, I believe Facebook has a history that shows it repeatedly failing to be trustworthy enough to make those decisions.
Put it a different way - do you think anyone who works at Facebook would want people to think the company isn't trustworthy? I'd suggest not as it does nothing but harm the company. The decisions are likely made with the best intentions in mind, but to err is human and I don't think that Facebook have all the answers.
The only drawback, so far as I see, is wasting bandwidth of sites I don't really visit.
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You are correct. Facebook was not the first social network and they will not be the last. I guess I'm more concerned about the precedent they've set, in terms of (mis)handling user data, and how other companies seem to be falling over themselves to add 'social' features. Very few companies begin with a commitment to user privacy. My fear is that FB has done some kind of irreversible damage, even if only as measured i…
They have made real data privacy an issue they can be competed with on. Who says the next social network has to be run by a corporation seeking a profit motive? Why can't the next social network by a peer-to-peer network where your personal data stays on your personal machine at home and where you have total control over who has access to what. Don't want to give access to your pictures to the guys who wrote the syst…
Eben Moglen's FreedomBox project has been working on a soup-to-nuts software stack for that sort of thing for a couple of years now. They can use more talent.
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I see your point, but I disagree. There will always be those that just don't give a shit, but I get the feeling that people generally are better educated about privacy and the consequences of freely giving up information online. People not respecting their own privacy is a marketing problem. Teach people it's cool to respect their privacy and people will be more careful. It used to be cool to smoke too, after all.
>Teach people it's cool to respect their privacy and people will be more careful. There is no profit in this, and the government makes facebook privacy-encroaching look trivial, so looking to them to regulate it is a non-starter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are correct. Facebook was not the first social network and they will not be the last. I guess I'm more concerned about the precedent they've set, in terms of (mis)handling user data, and how other companies seem to be falling over themselves to add 'social' features. Very few companies begin with a commitment to user privacy. My fear is that FB has done some kind of irreversible damage, even if only as measured i…
I think that Facebook has a social duty to set the bar in terms of what is acceptable to do with this wealth of user data. Never before has there been one place that has so much detailed information about so many people - with great power comes great responsibility. The rules are still being refined. Things get tried - some work, some don't - then from this, lessons are learnt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think anti-smoking was done to fatten a bottom line. It was largely a money grab by the states, and state/federal/tobacco money continually poured into anti-smoking organizations. The reason why nobody cares anymore is because the money dried up (lawsuits ended, settlements happened), and now tobacco companies themselves are using the laws to keep smaller/foreign competitors and safer alternatives (such as Swedish…
You certainly live up to your screenname!
It was beyond creepy.