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Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

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Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#41

Post by rblion »

"And earlier this year, Facebook discontinued the practice of obtaining browsing data about Internet users who had never visited Facebook.com, after it was disclosed by Dutch researcher Arnold Roosendaal."

I'm going to trust my gut on this one. I just get an uneasy feeling from their track record of 'mishaps' and the excuses that follow. There is a lot of stories that don't get enough attention or make enough people think...

Facebook might be called BigBrotherBlue when people look back one day. BigBrotherBlue is always watching.

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#42

Post by mnutt »

cbs wrote: post #15
mnutt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any code changes take a non-trivial amount of time. It sounds like the solution is to delete more of the cookies on logout, but there may be other Facebook services that use them and need to be transitioned away.

>Any code changes take a non-trivial amount of time Thats a awfully cautions attitude and smells like a huge cop out for the well known fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants commit to live strategy that facebook has.

I don't work there, but where I work we deploy 10-20 times a day and if somebody asked me to change the way we store data in cookies, it would probably take a bit of time to roll out.

I'm only defending them because it annoys me when people who aren't familiar with the software internals tell me "this is a minor change, it should take you less than an hour".

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#43

Post by jstanderfer »

pork wrote: post #35
jstanderfer wrote: post #26

This is a great example of the inherent conflict of interest when your users are not your customers, in fact they're your product. http://johnstanderfer.com/2011/09/26/facebooks-most-importan...

Please don't take this personally, but the whole "you're the product" meme, while it has a shred of truth in it, has been so re-hashed on the net that it's no longer pithy or informative. Just google for "you're the product" and you'll see what I mean.

I don't take it personally at all. The meme is common among people familiar with the internal workings of consumer web business models. My concern is that its not well understood outside that group. I also think it's an interesting way to view the rollout of Facebook's new features and public reaction to them.

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#44

Post by lbrandy »

bokonon wrote: post #38
fl3tch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you delete your account entirely? Do they delete your data then?

This is what really matters to me. If they don't delete messages or posts while I still have an account, than who cares. But if I decide to close my account permently, which I did yesterday, then why should they keep all the data they have for me. It's no help for me, it's not convientent in any way. It seems like the only reason they would keep it would be for their own use.

There is another reason that is stated and restated, including elsewhere in this thread: it's not trivial to (actually) erase anything.

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#45

Post by suking »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #17

The cookies are somewhat a red-herring when you consider how insignificant they are compared to other methods of tracking. They don't need a cookie in place to receive the IP of whoever loads a page with a Facebook 'like' button on it. They're a big enough company with smart enough people to develop algorithms that can associate an IP address to a user account to at least a 95% confidence interval. They've got all th…

Tracking by IP is pretty useless with so many people on phones, aol, etc. Plus, multiple accounts per workplace, just doesn't work...

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#46

Post by CGamesPlay »

fl3tch wrote: post #28
tripzilch wrote: post #6

Their defence doesn't hold much water. But then, I can't imagine any excuse that would satisfy me. They say “The onus is on us is to take all the data and scrub it,” said Arturo Bejar, a Facebook director of engineering. “What really matters is what we say as a company and back it up.”, except their track record on that matter isn't exactly stellar. We know they don't actually delete messages or things you delete on…

What if you delete your account entirely? Do they delete your data then?

Facebook does delete all data associated with an account after it is deleted. An account is deleted after you indicate that you want to delete it (via a form in your account settings), and 2 weeks passes without you trying to reactivate the account (by logging into it). And yes, I do mean the permanent, irreversible kind of deleting. (I work at Facebook.)

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#47

Post by rationalbeats »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #46
fl3tch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you delete your account entirely? Do they delete your data then?

Facebook does delete all data associated with an account after it is deleted. An account is deleted after you indicate that you want to delete it (via a form in your account settings), and 2 weeks passes without you trying to reactivate the account (by logging into it). And yes, I do mean the permanent, irreversible kind of deleting. (I work at Facebook.)

I honestly don't believe that. (How could you or Facebook prove that?)

I deleted my account a few months ago. However I have no way of verifying if all that data is gone for good, overwritten with some new persons data to sell to marketers.

But the reason I deleted my Facebook account is because I just don't trust Facebook.

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#48

Post by alastairpat »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #17

The cookies are somewhat a red-herring when you consider how insignificant they are compared to other methods of tracking. They don't need a cookie in place to receive the IP of whoever loads a page with a Facebook 'like' button on it. They're a big enough company with smart enough people to develop algorithms that can associate an IP address to a user account to at least a 95% confidence interval. They've got all th…

Tracking by IP is a ridiculous idea. My mobile phone provider uses transparent proxying for its mobile Internet - I must share the same external IP as thousands of other people when I browse the web via my phone. Not to mention that households using NAT will have three plus accounts from the one IP, let alone businesses with hundreds.

Internet-facing IP simply isn't unique enough for these purposes.

Re: Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users

#50

Post by DougWebb »

alastairpat wrote: post #48
FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #17

The cookies are somewhat a red-herring when you consider how insignificant they are compared to other methods of tracking. They don't need a cookie in place to receive the IP of whoever loads a page with a Facebook 'like' button on it. They're a big enough company with smart enough people to develop algorithms that can associate an IP address to a user account to at least a 95% confidence interval. They've got all th…

Tracking by IP is a ridiculous idea. My mobile phone provider uses transparent proxying for its mobile Internet - I must share the same external IP as thousands of other people when I browse the web via my phone. Not to mention that households using NAT will have three plus accounts from the one IP, let alone businesses with hundreds. Internet-facing IP simply isn't unique enough for these purposes.

My inclination is to agree with you; the IP is hardly a unique identifier. But they don't need perfection. Think about it: most people, most of the time, will send requests to FB from just a few IPs and maybe one ISP proxy network (which FB can recognize as a proxy.) They know that your account is associated with these IPs based on tracking cookies. So, when they see a request from one of these IPs without the cookie, they can do a reverse lookup to get a list of possible accounts. That narrows the field. Next they can do a semantic analysis of the page that had the Like button which sent the request, and compare that to pages previously associated with the possible accounts. If one of them stands out as a likely match, they can be pretty sure who sent the request.

The more data they gather, and the more relationships they can record between you, your friends, and the pages you visit, the better they will get at tracking you without the cookies.

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