Facebook settles with FTC, under privacy watch for 20 years

Audits will prevent future action, but there's apparently no punishment for past actions. So, they got away with it.

Okay so question on this one.

- required to prevent anyone from accessing a user's material more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;

Does this include people that have already deleted their account? Does this also include Government agencies and such from seeing the >30 day deleted data? I'd like to know that after permanently deleting my account all my stuff is gone, but I don't really see anywhere that says that's true. Meaning the site is still destroying my privacy even after I've decided to have nothing to do with the account.

My argument is that Facebook has a history of mishandling privacy.

And further that users have been, at least on some level, aware of it.

I was on Facebook when they first implemented the news feed and got everyone upset. They've since introduced dozens of features that have gotten everyone upset (or at least a sizable enough minority to be noticeable). They make it clear that ads are targeted based on your personal information. They make privacy settings complicated. They continuously push you to supply more information, connect with more people, use Facebook for more things. They continuously make more things public by default, and add more features that make personal information discoverable (such as tagging in images).

If they weren't suspicious, they wouldn't have been investigated in the first place.

I'm not talking about a time machine. But let me observe a few things:

- I deleted my account a year ago (and knew I wanted to before that) without the FTC investigating anything. Because Facebook was clearly suspicious.

- You still have an account today even though you know about Facebook's lies today. You don't need a time machine to make changes today.

My argument is this:

Fraud protection is extremely important. There are many cases where there is no suspicion of fraud, no source of information about possible fraud, and consumers get taken advantage of. For example, people get taken advantage of by phishing every day.

But if you fall victim to increasingly bad phishing attacks from the same company over the course of years, you aren't paying attention. You are relying on watchmen to protect you and not watching out for yourself.

I am not blaming the victim. I am trying to empower the victim. Everyone who is reading this and still has a Facebook account knows that Facebook will outright lie about privacy in order to make more money from advertisers. They are still guilty of their actions if you get fooled again, but you don't have to get fooled again.

My argument is "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

It is our mistake we made them now they sell us as product http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3293936

When I created an account with HN using Google account via ClickPass, one of the screen steps before I grant access to ClickPass, Google advised me to not grant it and if I do it I can cancel it any time which it will prevent ClickPass to access to my account information and my password.

This warning statement is not new; it’s there everywhere when you grant any application to use your Facebook, Twitter, Google ... etc accounts.

In the mean time Google Search is nothing without us, because "we are the product", they sell (us to third parties or Governments) or use our "private information" or what they told us it’s private without approval from us.

Facebook is doing same thing and that’s why their entire business model under fire in the EU. http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/28/facebook-advertising-eu/ Do you remember what happened in 2008 with Google’s Evil EULA (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/google_chrome_eula_s...)?

Now, are we "the product" still having any privacy? Are we safe? How far we can trust those businesses?

Should we keep using their services; and later complain about how evil their Terms and conditions or EULA are???

Is anyone else really tired of reading this "you're not the customer, you're the product" platitude every day, especially in contexts like here where it's totally irrelevant? Yes, we get it, Facebook isn't directly making money off their users.