Facebook

Facebook Privacy: Oxymoron?

Just askin’, OK? 😀

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It’s unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information.

Better read the whole article, I suppose: Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information.

An Ominous Use of Facebook

I use Facebook, albeit with great caution and reserve.

But even that caution and reserve would not have protected me from a Gardes Maroc Maroc:

Muslim uses Facebook profiles to find and target Christians

But what if your Facebook profile were used as a weapon against you by Muslim extremists opposed to your Christian faith?

According to Compass Direct News, this is exactly what is happening in Morocco, where over 100 foreign Christians have been deported since the beginning of the year for allegedly “proselytizing.”

Facebook user Gardes Maroc Maroc collected pictures and information from Christian converts’ Facebook profiles, then posted 32 collages of the Christians, referring to them as “hyena evangelists,” “wolves in lamb’s skins” and accusing them of trying to “shake the faith of Muslims.” If the latter statement were true, the Christians would be guilty of breaking Morocco’s anti-proselytizing law and would face deportation or prison.

[…]

In addition to Maroc singling out several Christians, he also called for authorities to investigate the Village of Hope in Ain Leuh, where he claimed “foreign missionaries” were indoctrinating the children. This may be part of the reason the orphanage was raided on March 8 and 26 foreign Christians expelled.

Does this mean I will hide my faith online?

No.

At least not at this point.

Which naturally begs this follow-up question: At what point would I consider hiding my Christian identity online?

Facebook to Track and Target?

Facebook to target ads based on users’ trail

Facebook has laid the ground for a new system that would track its users’ behaviour as they visit other sites around the internet, using the information to deliver highly targeted advertisements to them on the social networking site.

So-called “behavioural targeting” is widely used by companies such as Google but, on Facebook.com, the move is likely to provoke a new round of criticism over incursions into users’ privacy.

[…]

The move would mark a departure for Facebook which, until now, has targeted ads based only on the personal information in a user’s profile – such as location, age, gender and relationship status. An announcement on the system is expected on Wednesday, at Facebook’s annual F8 conference in San Francisco.

I report; you decide.

Well, wait. I have one observation:

F8 😯

Whose fate?

Employers and Your Social Media

Are the Facebook posts and Twitter tweets you make while away from the job immune from the prying eyes of your employer? The New York Times reports that new software called Social Sentry is ensuring everything you do online is being scrutinized.

Employers pay between $2 and $8 per employee depending on company size to have Social Sentry’s proprietary software automatically track employees in the social media sphere. The Social Sentry service is only available for Facebook and Twitter at this point, but it will soon expand to cover YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Six out of 10 companies now say they have a social media monitoring policy. Employers are considering anything that’s publicly accessible as something that you waive your right to privacy on.

Source: Clark Howard: Employers monitor your social networking profile

Three Facebook Settings

Got Facebook? Have you adjusted your user privacy settings since December?

Whether you have or not, this may be a good article for you to read.

In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users’ privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only – no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.

[…]

Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it’s time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point…That is, unless you agree with Facebook in thinking that the world is becoming more open and therefore you should too.

Source: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

How Privacy Vanishes Online

Balance Them!

Privacy
Social Media

OK, I know. I’m spitting in the cyber wind again.

But I refuse to accept the premise that privacy no longer matters.

Or even that privacy is more public than it used to be.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

[…]

In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual’s actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet.

You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing.

[…]

His advice: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

Source: New York Times

You really should read the parts I left out.

Facebook, Google, Carbonite?

Do you store personal data there?

Well, I saw the link to this over at Drudge:

The attack also highlights the inability of the private sector — including industries that would be expected to employ the most sophisticated cyber defenses — to protect itself.

“The traditional security approaches of intrusion-detection systems and anti-virus software are by definition inadequate for these types of sophisticated threats,” Yoran said. “The things that we — industry — have been doing for the past 20 years are ineffective with attacks like this. That’s the story.”

Source: More than 75,000 computer systems hacked in one of largest cyber attacks, security firm says

This story reinforces my disinclination to trust online personal data storage. So I don’t use it. Not even the free gigs provided by my ISP. Not even the space on the two servers I use to run my various sites.

Call me paranoid. Call me safe(r). 😉

Above all, love God!