Facebook, evils thereof

[highlyeccentric]

You may have heard that recently (in the past six months or so) FB made all profiles google-able. If you happen to be daft enough not to have screened your contact details to your facebook friends only, your details, photos, and the like may be searchable and viewable to strangers. Give some thought to changing your privacy settings.

Meanwhile... about a month ago Facebook launched another of its icky consumer based programs, called Beacon. Beacon takes your IP address (the series of numbers which identifies your computer or internet service) and communicates with other websites, including LJ, Busted Tees, the NYTimes, and STA Travel, which have agreed to feed back to Facebook information on your internet movements and especially your purchases. The information it gathers is the sort of information which spyware programs gather, but instead of installing anything on your computer, the host websites pass information straight to facebook. A full list of participating sites can be found here.
Beacon was initally opt-out, which means that it tracked and published this information without asking your permission. After protests, Facebook adjusted it to an opt-in program. That means that it will ASK you if the partner site can publish information on your profile, each time it recieves information on you. You can also opt to NEVER have this information published, by editing your privacy settings here.

However, Facebook still recieves this information. Consider this investigation, as reported on consumerist.com:

But Berteau's investigation reveals that Beacon is more intrusive andstealthy than anyone had imagined. In his note, titled "Facebook'sMisrepresentation of Beacon's Threat to Privacy: Tracking users who optout or are not logged in," he explains that he created an account onConde Nast's food site Epicurious.com, a site participating in Beacon,and saved three recipes as favorites.

He saved the first recipe while logged in to Facebook, and he optedout of having it broadcast to his friends on Facebook. He saved thesecond recipe after closing the Facebook window, but without loggingoff from Epicurious or ending the browser session, and again declinedbroadcasting it to his friends. Then he logged out of Facebook andsaved the third recipe. This time, no Facebook alert appeared asking ifhe wanted the information displayed to his friends.

After checking his network traffic logs, Berteau saw that in allthree cases, information about his activities was reported back toFacebook, although not to his friends. That information included wherehe was on Epicurious, the action he had just taken and his Facebookaccount name.

Facebook say they do not retain details of those who have opted out of Beacon. However, we have no way of knowing that they do.

For the security-cautious, you can prevent Beacon from accessing your information by using Firefox adblocking extensions. The Consumerist and Wikihow both recommend the BlockSite extension, and Wikihow has detailed instructions on installing it.
Personally, I recommend AdBlockPro, since it does all sorts of other wonderful things, like completely wipe out all evidence of LJ-Ads. Yay, bonus points to me, I get a Sponsored!Plus account and yet never have to look at the ads.

Meanwhile, for LJers too sensible to be using Facebook, yendi, from whom goblinpaladin first recieved this warning, is concerned about the fact that LJ/Sixapart are happily passing on our consumer information to a third party site.
I don't like the internet so much anymore. And i REALLY don't like Facebook.

ed: The NY Times presents the evolution of Beacon

Comments

[king-cheezer.livejournal.com]

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's not the internet that's so bad- it's Facebook.

I'm winning the game!

[ulfruna.livejournal.com]

Oh, I dunno. I think there's a lot of Bad in the internet that isn't specifically localised fo Facebook.

A lot.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

My point is just that the internet isn't bad: it is what people place onto the internet.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*shrug* i know my LJ is public, i know i feature on the blogrolls of several medievalist bloggers. that doesn't bother me. if i wanted an entirely private webpage i'd flock it.

what bother's me about facebook is that I joined it when privacy was their watchword, and they make changes with minimal or unreliable notice on the website. Add to that the fact that Beacon tracks your PURCHASES, and that's disturbing.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I'm not so fond of SixApart anymore either...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

well, what people have been placing on the internet lately is such that i don't like the combination.

i like milkshakes, but i wouldn't like a milkshake made on soy sauce and orange jelly. LJ and FB are increasing the soy sauce quota of the internet these days.

[ulfruna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll give you that.


I copy by trying not to dwell on it. It gets scary otherwise.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

But I am on the internet!

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

That is a brilliant metaphor.

Also, SixApart suck.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

my point exactly.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

:P

[tranquillita.livejournal.com]

I never liked SixApart.

I've now gone and changed all my privacy settings on Facebook. I hadn't realised that the default for everything was to show it to 'your networks and friends' - my phone number was until now visible to whoever was a member of the La Trobe Uni network. I found the Beacon settings page through one of your links. Thank you =]

[tranquillita.livejournal.com]

And by that I mean I found it because you directly linked to it. D'oh.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

no twubble.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I've been less than keen on 6A at least since June, and the huge Strikethrough '07 Debacle that hit fandom like you wouldn't believe. And then this thing with the giving out of personal details, and the addition of the adult content warnings system, and their selling out to the Russians....

What I don't like about the adult content thing is that in order to circumvent it, all under-14 or -16s have to do is either just ignore the "adult concepts" warnings or put your age as older than it is. Which is exactly what I did when I encountered the 17-and-up-only fics on FictionAlley three years ago! Honestly. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*sniggers* indeed.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

Shaddup.

FA has an over-reactive ratings system, anyway.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

What you said. SixApart have had some good ideas regarding making LJ 'safer,' but have implemented them so very, very poorly.

Also, icon love.

identity theft

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

apparently in terms of risk for identity theft, having your birthdate accessible on such things is one of the biggest problems, because it's hard for people to know otherwise, and because once you have that you can find other info about a person in various govt databases or whatnot...

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

It's as though they'd heard about this wondrous thing called "keeping the little kiddies safe on TEH INTERNET", but didn't realise what it actually entailed and didn't receive the Do Not Do This, It Will Not Work But Will Instead Alienate Your Users list.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Ja.

Also, Parents: It is up to YOU.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

Yes.

All those people who are "somebody please think of the children" and mean, of course, *their* children, never seem to think that maybe it should be *them* that should be thinking of their children. So therefore they should do something about the fact that their kids can get to, I don't know, customers_suck, where there are, shock and horror, "bad naughty words" used.

Grarh.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Or how about the real world has naughty words in it? Any thirteen-year-old who hasn't encountered a naughty word is living in a sewer somewhere. The real world isn't censored!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

yup.

and if you realise you can't control where your child GOES on the internet (or what they read, or what they watch, or whatever) then maybe they're old enough that you should be educating them about PROCESSING some of this stuff. kids are pretty good self-censors, most of the time. Give them the understanding that if ANYTHING bothers them you're happy to watch/read it with them and talk about what's in it, and that will stand them in much better stead than "there is BAD STUFF on the internet don't you dare read any of it".