privacy | Ain't Complicated

Your Face in Facebook

Your photo. From your computer. To Facebook. And from there to who knows where for who knows what to be 'enjoyed' by who knows whom. Be wise, Facebook users!

And elsewhere.

From Facebook.

Thanks to you.

CNN: ‘Dating’ site imports 250,000 Facebook profiles without permission

How does an unknown dating site, with the absurd intention of destroying Facebook, launch with 250,000 member profiles on the first day?

Simple.

You scrape data from Facebook.

At least, that’s the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched Lovely-Faces.com this week, with profiles — names, locations and photos — scraped from publicly accessible Facebook pages. The site categorizes these unwitting volunteers into personality types, using a facial recognition algorithm, so you can search for someone in your general area who is “easy going,” “smug” or “sly.”

[…]

“Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating — unfortunately, without the user’s control. But that’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in general. If we start to play with the concepts of identity theft and dating, we should be able to unveil how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be.”

Now think about those photos of you.

Which you have put on Facebook.

Can you imagine where they might end up next?

Do You Trust Google?

It turns out Google’s Street View cars found out more about Internet users than previously acknowledged. Last Friday, the company said the cars, which roam the world taking pictures for its location-based applications, scarfed up e-mail addresses, URLs and passwords from residential Wi-Fi networks they passed by in dozens of countries.

[…]

Some privacy advocates say Google’s admission highlights a common attitude among high-tech firms that rush to get out new technologies without enough consideration of how consumers may be harmed in the process.

“First they said they didn’t gather data; then they said they did, but it was only fragments; and today they finally admit entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords,” said John Simpson, director of consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “Maybe some Google executives are beginning to get it: privacy matters. The reality, though, is that the company’s entire culture needs to change.”

Source: Google ‘mortified’ that Street View cars scarfed up e-mail, passwords; privacy criticism intensifies

If they’re stealing and abusing data from people, what are they doing with the data people give them willingly?

Think: Gmail, Buzz, Maps, Docs, Search, API, and on and on!

Oh, and let this be another reminder to secure your wireless networks, OK?

Has a Tracking Device Been Planted on Your Car?

No, very likely not.

But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the government may do so. All sneaky-like. Legally.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell.

[…]

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

[…]

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”

Source: The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

Now don’t go getting paranoid, OK?

Just live as though somebody were tracking you all the time.

Because Somebody is.

“The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3).

“Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:24).

I am blessed and thankful to realize again that God wants to watch over me for good. I needn’t fear His omniscience; rather, I can be comforted and encouraged by it.

The Web, Your Secrets, Your Number

Far too many people just don’t care about online privacy. Maybe you’re one of them. And maybe I don’t care if I spit into the wind on this subject. Again.

Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty’s computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.

[…]

The Journal examined the 50 most popular U.S. websites, which account for about 40% of the Web pages viewed by Americans. (The Journal also tested its own site, WSJ.com.) It then analyzed the tracking files and programs these sites downloaded onto a test computer.

As a group, the top 50 sites placed 3,180 tracking files in total on the Journal’s test computer. Nearly a third of these were innocuous, deployed to remember the password to a favorite site or tally most-popular articles.

But over two-thirds—2,224—were installed by 131 companies, many of which are in the business of tracking Web users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold.

The top venue for such technology, the Journal found, was….

I was surprised.

Maybe you won’t be.

Dictionary.com

Amazing!

The top venue for such technology, the Journal found, was IAC/InterActive Corp.’s Dictionary.com. A visit to the online dictionary site resulted in 234 files or programs being downloaded onto the Journal’s test computer, 223 of which were from companies that track Web users.

It’s a long article, but I highly recommend it to you: The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

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?