Jump to content
The Inquirer-Home

Facebook hands data to marketing companies

All your personal details are belong to multi-national corporations
Monday, 2 February 2009, 09:14

SOCIAL NOTWORKING site, Facebook is handing its huge database of personal information over to market researchers.

Soon, members will be spammed by some of the largest multinational companies in the world with the sort of irritating product review calls that we hang up on.

Companies will be able to pose questions to 'specially selected members'. We guess it is only a matter of time that you will get your account shut down if you fail to answer the questions.

Randi Zuckerberg, the global markets director of Facebook and sister of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said multinational companies were over joyed about the ability to annoy such a huge database of people who didn't think they would every be spammed in such a way.

She said she had tons of people saying 'this could be so incredible for our business'.
We notice she didn't say he got angry posts from his Facebook customers furious that they will be bothered in this way. µ

L'Inq
Torygraph

Share this:

Comments
2 years...

I was active on my space, after almost 2 years the site got... a little too advertised filled for me. I change to facebook, simple layout like I like almost 2 years and now they want to make money out of my personal information? Guess it's time to search for another community site.

posted by : Douken, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Data mining

Facebook always has been first and foremost a data mining exercise. The only matter in dispute is who's behind it from that point of view.

posted by : DG, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Simple mistake...not

Look Nick, Randi Zuckerberg is a woman, for which the correct pronoun is 'she', not 'he'. The clue to her gender is in the word 'sister', clearly stated in the original Torygraph article you lifted.

I always wondered where Facebook got its money.

posted by : Simon Williams, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Randi...

is she?

:)

posted by : Sean, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
"who didn't think they would every be spammed in such a way"

An extra y there. So, along with the he/she business, a clear example of a complete lack of proof-reading here. Again. Come on, make an effort.

posted by : D, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
@2 years...

You use a service which is free then complain when they try to make money off your personal data? What did you think they were gonna do? Or were you under the impression Facebook was run as some bizarre charitable organisation for the Internet's benefit?

Seriously...

posted by : GC, 02 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Groan...

Why does this always happen. I've used several social networking/blogging sites. livejournal, myspace and now facebook. All these sites start out innocent and useful. Free accounts with no or unobtrusive advertising and friendly mods.

Then after a couple of years, things start to go bad. They start pumping out ad's, charging for 'premium' accounts, random account bans (livejournal) and eventually sell your details to companies with commercial interests.

Someone needs to make a wikipedia-style not-for-profit community run social networking site.

posted by : mega, 03 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Serves you right

This shit never happens to me, you know why? Because I have a life. When I want to "socialize" I go MEET my friends in person and we do ACTIVITIES together, shoot darts, play pool, go fishing, drink beers, go bowling, have bbqs, so on and so forth. I don't go online and spill out my personal life to complete strangers so they can tag me and poke me. Whatever happens to you now is well deserved.

Facebook et al is never seeing me join, ever.

posted by : so get a life, 03 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Get your own web site.

For some reason I never really caught on to the whole myspacebook idea. Even when I try, I find it a tad confusing...for goodness sakes I have to learn the user interface for every one of those stupid sites. Here's a revolutionary thought...before any of those sites existed, I had my own actual web page...how's that for ultimate flexibility, control, and privacy?

posted by : Nick, 03 February 2009 Complain about this comment
Advertisement
Subscribe to the INQ Newsletter
Sign-up for the INQBot weekly newsletter
Click here to sign up Existing user
Advertisement
INQ Poll

Christmas computer sales

Will you be buying a new computer this Christmas?