Qu'ils mangent de la brioche - Queen Marie-Antoinette
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Facebook and MySpace send data to advertising companies
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has dumped a huge pile of manure onto Facebook's and MySpace's so-called privacy policies.
Hacks at the WSJ discovered that Facebook, MySpace and several other social notworking websites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details.
This is despite promises that they don't share such information without consent.
Basically the sites have been sending user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads.
After reporters asked about the practice Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes and apparently Facebook has rewritten some of the offending computer code.
The advertising companies had been receiving information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person's real name, age, hometown and occupation.
Google 's DoubleClick and Yahoo's Right Media said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social notworking sites, and said they haven't made use of it.
Craig Wills, a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute said that most social networks haven't bothered to obscure user names or ID numbers from their web addresses. He warned that the websites might have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards. µ
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True, that is the perspective that Internet users should always have.
However, a promise remains a promise, on the Internet or not, and breaking a promise is not something that should just be shrugged off and forgotten.
It's not because it's the Internet that morals are to be set aside with disdain. No site is _forced_ to promise anything, but if you _do_ something, then it is normal that people hold you to your promise.
Of course, holding a total jackass to a promise, when said jackass publicly considers his customers to be dumb fucks and everyone else to be bitches may be a bit unrealistic to begin with.
Well, although we knew something valued at 20b billion couldn't just be for fun, could it?
Gentlemen on the wrong side of the ocean, you should congratulate yourselves that Rupert Murdoch's elfish monkeys broke this story before you could have even dreamed it up.
I must say though, the past few months the wsj has had some teeth into technology. The CMDA iPhone (still waiting to see if it adapted by vzw in the states).
But even beyond that, when has a consumer ever believed a privacy promise was there to protect them? As has been mentioned numerous times around the interweb, if its on the web (same goes for you cloud'ish fools), it ain't safe.
Those Wall Street Journal reporters will be on a breadline next week. Rupert Murdoch owns it and MySpace.
I've never seen an ad on Facebook, but then I use adblock with Firefox. The only thing dumber than seeing ads on Facebook is actually clicking through one.
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drashek
Last year, I advertised my company on Facebook. My site stats page soon started showing detailed referrer links, which took me straight to the page that the clicker was on at the time. It gave me access to complete strangers facebook wall, photos, their name and other details (uni, etc). Even though they were not my 'friend'. Very worrying. I don't advertise with Facebook any more.