Friday, May 14, 2010
Derek Thompson at The Atlantic on How Facebook Created Its Privacy Crisis
Derek Thompson at The Atlantic magazine in How Facebook Created Its Privacy Crisis gives a good rundown on why Facebook is "facing" a self-made crisis.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Privacy Rights : Violations at Facebook -- as reported by the New York Times
It seems like a never-ending string of violations of privacy rights by social networking platforms.
Jenna Wortham at the New York Times reports on the newest Facebook incursion on privacy rights at Glitch Brings New Worries About Facebook’s Privacy:
Jenna Wortham at the New York Times reports on the newest Facebook incursion on privacy rights at Glitch Brings New Worries About Facebook’s Privacy:
"On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations."The newest "glitch" comes on the heels of previous privacy rights violations at Facebook which suggest that no user should put sensitive information of any kind into the hands of social networking portals. As Wortham writes:
"Over the last few months, Facebook has introduced changes that encourage users to make their photos and other information accessible to anyone on the Internet.... Facebook began prompting users to link information in their profile pages, like their hobbies and hometowns, in a way that makes that information public.Read the whole article here.
That last change prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group, to file a complaint on Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission.
“Facebook continues to manipulate the privacy settings of users and its own privacy policy so that it can take personal information provided by users for a limited purpose and make it widely available for commercial purposes,” Marc Rotenberg, the group’s executive director, said in a letter to the commission."
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Business Week Reports that Facebook Policies Draw Criticism by Consumer Groups
Douglas MacMillan for Bloomberg at BusinessWeek.com in Facebook Policies Draw Criticism by Consumer Groups (Update2, which Adds FTC comment in seventh paragraph) writes:
Read the whole posting by MacMillan here.
"Recent changes at Facebook “violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations,” said Marc Rotenberg, who runs the Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of 15 groups that complained about Facebook in a filing with the Federal Trade Commission late yesterday."We agree that Facebook Inc. has greatly overstepped permissibile bounds and that new privacy laws in the United States are essential to counteract a stream of negative privacy developments in social networking.
Read the whole posting by MacMillan here.
EFF: Facebook Tries to Make User Use of Aggregating Services Into Criminal Trespassing Violations
At EFF Seeks to Protect Innovation for Social Network Users: Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes:
Claire Cain Miller, Bits, New York Times, Facebook Is No Friend of Power.com
... and
Niall Kennedy's Weblog, Facebook v. Power Ventures and Data Portability, Authentication, and Authorization
Essentially, Facebook wants to deny users the ability to use aggregating services to connect to Facebook and to force every user to connect to Facebook only in the manner that Facebook dictates. Pure tyranny.
The more we learn about Facebook, the less we like what we see. Facebook apparently thinks it is permitted to do anything it wants while it attempts to keep its competition from doing anything that might reduce Facebook power. We predict that this philosophy will down the road end in severe legal sanctions against Facebook, who is otherwise trying to run roughshod over user privacy. Suing power.com for trespassing while at the the same time engaging in its own -- what we regard to be criminal -- privacy invasion of its users data has got to take the cake.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites.See:
"California's computer crime law is aimed at penalizing computer trespassers," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Users who choose to give their usernames and passwords to aggregators like Power Ventures are not trespassing. Under Facebook's theory, millions of Californians who disregard or don't read terms of service on the websites they visit could face criminal liability. Also, any Internet company could use this argument as a hammer to prevent its users from easily leaving the service as well as to shut down innovators and competitors."
Claire Cain Miller, Bits, New York Times, Facebook Is No Friend of Power.com
... and
Niall Kennedy's Weblog, Facebook v. Power Ventures and Data Portability, Authentication, and Authorization
Essentially, Facebook wants to deny users the ability to use aggregating services to connect to Facebook and to force every user to connect to Facebook only in the manner that Facebook dictates. Pure tyranny.
The more we learn about Facebook, the less we like what we see. Facebook apparently thinks it is permitted to do anything it wants while it attempts to keep its competition from doing anything that might reduce Facebook power. We predict that this philosophy will down the road end in severe legal sanctions against Facebook, who is otherwise trying to run roughshod over user privacy. Suing power.com for trespassing while at the the same time engaging in its own -- what we regard to be criminal -- privacy invasion of its users data has got to take the cake.
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