Jag_Warrior
18th October 2010, 19:28
I recently (finally) got into something more than playful tiff with my girl. She and her sister are Facebook addicts. I had forbidden her from including pictures of me or personal information about me on her Facebook page. She feels that I am refusing to be a part of her (online) life by being so strict about that. My problem is that she and her sister are Facebook addicts. And IMO, they put too much information online... like when Sis and her hubby went to Rome earlier this year. Sis put up details of the trip and how long they'd be away from home on her Facebook page. I think that's crazy. Wade91 and I could/should have gone to their house, cleaned it out, split the loot... and then Wade could have danced on their cars. For whatever reason, both girls believe that their Facbook privacy settings mean something. I have always believed that they don't mean much of anything. The boy who created this service is named Zuckerberg, not Suckerberg! I've been around long enough to know that there are no free lunches in this life. And so he's not going to welcome you into his "free" service unless he has some sort of scheme to make money off you being there.
I'm not anti-social media. I mean, I've been here for over 10 years, and including Compuserve, I've been interacting with other people online for over 20 years. So I do enjoy online interaction. I just don't care to (unwittingly) get my 15 minutes of fame as I'm goofing off with friends and/or family. For instance, a picture of my girl's (married) sister sitting on my lap while I'm wearing a sombrero, holding a pistol in one hand and a mason jar full of a "clear liquid" in the other... we all know it's a staged goof. But if I ever ran for Board of Supervisors, a potential voter probably wouldn't know that. That could be a minor scandal in an area like where I live. If you tend to goof off in photos, you keep that sort of thing (truly) private!
And so, here we are:
Facebook in Privacy Breach
Top-Ranked Applications Transmit Personal IDs, a Journal Investigation Finds (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html?m od=djemalertTECH)
Wall Street Journal - October 18, 2010
The information being transmitted is one of Facebook's basic building blocks: the unique "Facebook ID" number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person's name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with "everyone," including age, residence, occupation and photos.
The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities.
The applications transmitting Facebook IDs may have breached their own privacy policies, as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn't share and advertisers shouldn't collect personally identifiable information without users' permission. Zynga, for example, says in its privacy policy that it "does not provide any Personally Identifiable Information to third-party advertising companies."
The most expansive use of Facebook user information uncovered by the Journal involved RapLeaf. The San Francisco company compiles and sells profiles of individuals based in part on their online activities.
The Journal found that some LOLapps applications, as well as the Family Tree application, were transmitting users' Facebook ID numbers to RapLeaf.
RapLeaf then linked those ID numbers to dossiers it had previously assembled on those individuals, according to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then embedded that information in an Internet-tracking file known as a "cookie."
RapLeaf says it strips out the user's name when it embeds the information in the cookie and shares that information for ad targeting. However, The Wall Street Journal found that RapLeaf transmitted Facebook user IDs to a dozen other advertising and data firms, including Google Inc.'s Invite Media.
It would break my heart to break up with a great girl because of something as silly as her addiction to Facebook. She has the best chance of any girl that I've gone out with in many years of becoming Mrs. Jag_Warrior. It's perfectly OK to play online. But you have to be smart and realize that people stay up late at night trying to think of illicit ways to empty the money out of your pockets. So I didn't stutter and I wasn't smiling when I told her to get any pictures of me off her Facebook page!
I'm not anti-social media. I mean, I've been here for over 10 years, and including Compuserve, I've been interacting with other people online for over 20 years. So I do enjoy online interaction. I just don't care to (unwittingly) get my 15 minutes of fame as I'm goofing off with friends and/or family. For instance, a picture of my girl's (married) sister sitting on my lap while I'm wearing a sombrero, holding a pistol in one hand and a mason jar full of a "clear liquid" in the other... we all know it's a staged goof. But if I ever ran for Board of Supervisors, a potential voter probably wouldn't know that. That could be a minor scandal in an area like where I live. If you tend to goof off in photos, you keep that sort of thing (truly) private!
And so, here we are:
Facebook in Privacy Breach
Top-Ranked Applications Transmit Personal IDs, a Journal Investigation Finds (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html?m od=djemalertTECH)
Wall Street Journal - October 18, 2010
The information being transmitted is one of Facebook's basic building blocks: the unique "Facebook ID" number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person's name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with "everyone," including age, residence, occupation and photos.
The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities.
The applications transmitting Facebook IDs may have breached their own privacy policies, as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn't share and advertisers shouldn't collect personally identifiable information without users' permission. Zynga, for example, says in its privacy policy that it "does not provide any Personally Identifiable Information to third-party advertising companies."
The most expansive use of Facebook user information uncovered by the Journal involved RapLeaf. The San Francisco company compiles and sells profiles of individuals based in part on their online activities.
The Journal found that some LOLapps applications, as well as the Family Tree application, were transmitting users' Facebook ID numbers to RapLeaf.
RapLeaf then linked those ID numbers to dossiers it had previously assembled on those individuals, according to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then embedded that information in an Internet-tracking file known as a "cookie."
RapLeaf says it strips out the user's name when it embeds the information in the cookie and shares that information for ad targeting. However, The Wall Street Journal found that RapLeaf transmitted Facebook user IDs to a dozen other advertising and data firms, including Google Inc.'s Invite Media.
It would break my heart to break up with a great girl because of something as silly as her addiction to Facebook. She has the best chance of any girl that I've gone out with in many years of becoming Mrs. Jag_Warrior. It's perfectly OK to play online. But you have to be smart and realize that people stay up late at night trying to think of illicit ways to empty the money out of your pockets. So I didn't stutter and I wasn't smiling when I told her to get any pictures of me off her Facebook page!