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vangogh
05-20-2010, 09:55 PM
You may have seen recently that many people are becoming very critical of Facebook privacy. Facebook seems to make privacy changes every week (or it feels that way) making it more and more difficult to control who does and doesn't see what you post on the site.

If this is new to you here are a couple of posts talking about some high profile internet people closing their accounts

Why I left Facebook (http://www.macworld.com/article/151225/2010/05/facebook.html)
More Web Industry Leaders Quit Facebook, Call For Open Alternative (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_web_industry_leaders_quit_facebook_call_for_o .php)

There's plenty more if you're interested and do a little searching.

Much of the problem is that too much information is public unless you make it private. In a way you have to opt-out of having your information made public. Facebook argues that since you have to join the system is really opt-in. Many argue that there are far too many privacy settings to make it realistic that people can set them all of keep up with changes. Facebook counters saying all those different settings are to help make privacy more granular.

Facebook's current privacy policy is longer than the U.S. Constitution (without the amendments)

Here's something I found today from the New York Times, Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html). It's an image showing all the steps you need to take to set your privacy on Facebook.


To manage your privacy on Facebook, you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options

It's an interesting image. If the current privacy policy doesn't bother you it's actually a good instruction file to help you set your own privacy.

nealrm
05-21-2010, 08:03 AM
Interesting post. It did prompt me to go out and check my Facebook setting. Base on the piece in the NYT you would expect that this would take me hours and I would get lost in the tangle. In truth it took me about 2-3 minutes. I expect if this was a initial setup it would take 15-30 minutes. However I am not really concerned about Facebooks privacy setting. Why? because I have my own privacy setting and they are very simple. I do not share anything on any social networking, blog, comment post, or forum that I would not want the world to see.

---- Soapbox warning -------
I have to say that I am getting tired of seeing articles in the media stating how bad social sites are, and blaming them for giving out information. For example - If I were to put a sign by the interstate stating that "My name is Jo Smith, I live at 123 main street in Smallville, I will be on vacation between Aug 7-15, 2010. My home will be vacant that whole time." Most people would rightly brand me as an idiot. Yet, if I post that same information of Facebook, the media would use it as an example of why Facebook is bad. It is time individuals take responsibility for their actions and not blame other. You type the information into the site, you are responsible it being released to the public.

Spider
05-21-2010, 09:24 AM
Right on, Neal!

It's the entitlement attiude that seems to pervade so much of society today. In this case, "I am entitled to my privacy!" True, so keep your stuff private.

You may be entitled to your privacy but I am entitled to talk about anything I know - and if what I know is about you, my entitlement trumps your entitlement!!!

For that reason, I don't share anything with anyone that I don't want made public. And if I do, and it gets shared, it's my own responsibility. This is why when anyone wants to share a secret with me, I tell them not to. I have no secrets, and I don't see why I should burden myself with someone else's secrets.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 11:30 AM
The issue with privacy when it comes to Facebook isn't about entitlement. It's often that something we set as private gets changed by Facebook as they change their privacy policy. You set up something so only friends can see it and then later Facebook decides it will benefit them to have search engines index those pages so they take what you both agreed was private communication and make it public.

Imagine if tomorrow your email provider decided it was in their best interests to make your email public. You probably wouldn't be happy with that. Some might say it's your own fault for sending out something over the internet. However there's a pretty clear agreement that your email is private communication.

As far as the settings are concerned, those of us who are a bit savvy will have no problem with them, but you also have to think of the average person who might join Facebook. Why not just make most things an opt-in so the average non-tech savvy person doesn't accidentally post something publicly that they thought was only viewable by friends.

How about your friends though. You might know how to set up your privacy, but do all your friends? Now that you're all protected I guess there's no worries…until you start communicated with friends who have nothing set to be private.

The point is really that while it's true we should be responsible for what we say on a site like Facebook, many people aren't aware that they should or even need to be. Facebook can easily prevent accidental public communication by setting up their system to be opt-in as opposed to opt-out (as far as privacy is concerned).

Personally I'm not worried at all. I'm with you guys. The main privacy filter I have is me. I expect my communication on sites like Facebook is public and don't post things I don't want people to see. But I do think there are some issues with the way Facebook handles privacy. It's not all that long ago they started tracking what ads you clicked on and what purchases you made then tell all your friends with the assumption that since you bought it they will too.

If I post something to my or someone else's wall I expect that will be or at least could be public. If I buy something online I don't expect that Facebook is going to track me and share what I purchased with all my friends.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 11:42 AM
I'm with Neal.
If you want something to be private, don't post it on a free Social Networking Website on the World Wide Web. Everything about that say's PUBLIC.

I have always assumed to only put out information that I am comfortable being seen. I assumed everyone had that kind of "street smarts", but apparently not.

It's not even about the privacy settings, it's about people sharing too much information on a free website and having the stones to be surprised that other people can see it.

The best way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone.

I have been telling my Mother for years that people don't just give away free stuff online. Stuff online costs money. There is an ulterior motive to get your information, advertise to you or something.

I just don't understand why people think that all of these public free sites and services owe them privacy.

I remember the same issue back in the "old days" about email accounts and privacy issues. Back then I wondered why people would send sensitive information through a free email account, or personal information from a work email account.

People put too much trust in things with pretty colors and shiny buttons.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 12:02 PM
What if when you sign up for that network you very clearly modify your settings so that certain things you post are private (only viewable by certain people you ok). The site in question makes it very clear that all your communication in this one area will never be made public.

Then a year after you've been communicating in a way that both you and the site in question agree is private communication they suddenly change their mind and say you know all that stuff we told you we would never show to anyone, well we're going to show it to everyone.

I know you can argue that you should have expected that to happen, but I don't think that's fair and reasonable. You guys also seem to be forgetting that you're among the more tech savvy who are aware how these things work. Most people aren't as aware. They may trust that when a company says we won't make something public that they really won't make something public.

Is there any reason why Facebook can't change their defaults? Are you all suggesting that it's in the best interest of their users not to help protect them a little?

Yes we live in a world that's very connected and we all have to realize the things we say and do can easily end up being more public than we intended. Is there any reason companies can't help us out a little by protecting us with what amounts to about very little effort on their part.

As a small business owner do you help your clients or do you take advantage of them? I'm guessing you do your best to help them. Is there any reason Facebook shouldn't do the same? If you started taking advantage of all your clients how many clients would you expect to have in a year or two? If Facebook shows that they're all about how much they can extract from us how many users should they expect to have in a few years?

Spider
05-21-2010, 12:11 PM
The issue with privacy when it comes to Facebook isn't about entitlement. It's often that something we set as private gets changed by Facebook as they change their privacy policy. You set up something so only friends can see it and then later Facebook decides it will benefit them to have search engines index those pages so they take what you both agreed was private communication and make it public...As stated here, I agree. However, I have never come across such a situation - something you designate that only friends can see it is changed by Facebook and made public. At each evolutionary step, I see Facebook saying that they are now making things that are already public information on Facebook, more available to others. I have never seen them say that what you have marked private is now to be public. In fact, at every step I have seen, they state specifically, that it is only information that was already determined to be public is made "more" public. I am okay with that.


...Imagine if tomorrow your email provider decided it was in their best interests to make your email public. You probably wouldn't be happy with that. Some might say it's your own fault for sending out something over the internet. However there's a pretty clear agreement that your email is private communication... I don't think this is a good example. I don't believe that what FB is doing is anything akin to this example.


...As far as the settings are concerned, those of us who are a bit savvy will have no problem with them, but you also have to think of the average person who might join Facebook. Why not just make most things an opt-in so the average non-tech savvy person doesn't accidentally post something publicly that they thought was only viewable by friends...Why? I would agree if it was determined that FB was purposely misleading people, but I don't think they are. It is not up to FB to protect people from themselves (Governments do enough of that!)


...How about your friends though. You might know how to set up your privacy, but do all your friends? Now that you're all protected I guess there's no worries…until you start communicated with friends who have nothing set to be private...That's why it's best not to tell your secrets to anyone online. This is no different than a friend telling another friend your secret. No-one can protect you from that, and I don't think FB should be expected to, either.


...The point is really that while it's true we should be responsible for what we say on a site like Facebook, many people aren't aware that they should or even need to be. Facebook can easily prevent accidental public communication by setting up their system to be opt-in as opposed to opt-out (as far as privacy is concerned)...I don't think this is a responsibility of FB's. This is an example of FB being expected to protect people from themselves. However, I would like to see FB stating somewhere that their social networking system is a social networking system, not a private mail system. Just as other products must carry warning labels -- "Don't dry your poodle in the microwave!" "This insomnia drug may have you falling asleep while driving a vehicle!" "Don't put your hand under the lawnmowever while the engine is running!" And so on -- How about this for a FB Warning Label - "People can see what you submit to Facebook. Don't post anything you don't want others to see."

nealrm
05-21-2010, 12:19 PM
If something is marked private and Facebook changed the setting to public, that is bad. Unfortunately, Facebook is guilty of doing that. Shame on them. Shame on me for giving that information to a social networking site.

On the flip side - Facebook is a FREE service set up to PUBLICLY BROADCAST your photos and comments. That is the core of their business. Setting the privacy filters so that you have to opt-in to everything, would eliminate privacy problems. However it would also completely defeat the key feature of Facebook. So the complaints would go from "I posted public comments about my boss on the internet and now he is mad at me" to "Facebook is worthless - no one can see the public comments I made". So which complaint is worse for a company whose key feature is PUBLICLY BROADCASTING comments and photos???

As for email being private. Several prominent news stories have made it clear that is not the case. Email messages sent over the internet is stored on every server between here and then (at least temporary). So I would not trust internet email for sensitive information. Plus, I have no control over who an email is sent to after I have sent it.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 12:21 PM
What if when you sign up for that network you very clearly modify your settings so that certain things you post are private (only viewable by certain people you ok). The site in question makes it very clear that all your communication in this one area will never be made public.

Then a year after you've been communicating in a way that both you and the site in question agree is private communication they suddenly change their mind and say you know all that stuff we told you we would never show to anyone, well we're going to show it to everyone.

I know you can argue that you should have expected that to happen, but I don't think that's fair and reasonable. You guys also seem to be forgetting that you're among the more tech savvy who are aware how these things work. Most people aren't as aware. They may trust that when a company says we won't make something public that they really won't make something public.
You know every agreement ( the ones that no one reads) on sites such as this always state that they have the right to change or alter the rules at any time. Yet, people still get caught off guard when it actually happens.

I don't think it has anything to do with being "tech savvy" it has to do with people putting way too much personal trust in the big shiny objects, without knowing what they are really doing.



Is there any reason why Facebook can't change their defaults? Are you all suggesting that it's in the best interest of their users not to help protect them a little?
No, not at all. I actually think if people want complete control and privacy protection that Facebook should offer a paid version and give it to them.

I don't have expectations from a free service, I take it as it comes.



Yes we live in a world that's very connected and we all have to realize the things we say and do can easily end up being more public than we intended. Is there any reason companies can't help us out a little by protecting us with what amounts to about very little effort on their part.
Again, you are acting as if they owe us or have some obligation to the public. They don't.
Now don't get me wrong, they are screwing their public image and if they were smart, they would get this crap together to make everyone happy.

Facebook is valuable because it has a user base to advertise to. Piss off the users and they leave and you will be left with My Space.



As a small business owner do you help your clients or do you take advantage of them? I'm guessing you do your best to help them. Is there any reason Facebook shouldn't do the same? If you started taking advantage of all your clients how many clients would you expect to have in a year or two? If Facebook shows that they're all about how much they can extract from us how many users should they expect to have in a few years?

The difference is, my clients pay me. Facebook is free. Different set of obligations.
My paying clients, get much better service and support than strangers who contact me via email and want free tech support.

The bottom line is Facebook is not a public utility. We don;t have to use it, we just want to and want it on our terms..but that is a lot to ask of something that someone else is paying for.

KristineS
05-21-2010, 01:01 PM
I've seen all the angst over the Facebook privacy settings and mostly it bores me. People need to understand that the Internet isn't private. Nothing about it is private. If you think it is private you're fooling yourself.

This all goes back to what I said on another thread the other day, information is the new currency. No site you use is truly free. If you pay for access, then you have a platform from which you can demand your right to privacy. If you don't pay, then you're payment is the information you put on the site. That's how it works, whether we like it or not.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 01:11 PM
I have never come across such a situation - something you designate that only friends can see it is changed by Facebook and made public.

You may not have seen that personally because of the way you had the system set, but it has happened. How about the whole Beacon thing where they did start sharing your purchases with your friends. For example


When Facebook launched its off-site advertising initiative called Beacon, users were seeing things like the purchase of a surprise engagement ring on Overstock.com exposed to a would-be wife on Facebook


I don't think this is a good example. I don't believe that what FB is doing is anything akin to this example.

Why isn't it the same? Facebook has taken things you set as private and changed their policy and made them public. Again just because you haven't personally experienced that doesn't mean it's never happened. I've never been held up at gunpoint so I guess I never happens. You experiences aren't necessarily the same as everyone else.

How would that be any different than your email provider taking something you both agreed would be private and then changing their mind and making it public.

Let's since all any call you make on your cell phone travels over public airwaves I guess it would be ok for your service provider to publicly post them for all to see too.

Keep in mind that Facebook initially built up its network by promoting how it protected people's privacy as opposed to MySpace where everything goes.

You may not remember the early days of Facebook, but the reason many people joined early is because Facebook led you to believe they protected your privacy and only things you wanted to be public would be made public. They were the network that protected your privacy.

From this post (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_is_wrong_about_privacy.php)


In Facebook's early days, and for the vast majority of the site's life, its primary differentiator was that your user data was only visible to other users that you approved friend requests from. As of mid-December (2009), Facebook users were no longer allowed to hide from the web-at-large some information including their profile photos, list of friends and interests in the form of fan pages they followed. Text, photo and video updates shared on the site have always been by default private (friends only) but if you'd never changed your privacy settings before last month, then Facebook suggested you switch them to make those updates publicly visible to everyone. That became the new default.

Facebook's system used to be based on the idea that you could control who did and didn't see your data.


Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used to say that people would share more information if they felt comfortable knowing that it would only be visible to people they trusted.

So they set expectations of privacy for years and are now saying they changed their mind and everything should be public. That isn't what many people signed up for. Maybe you did and maybe many other people are doing that now too. But many people also signed up because there expectations were set that they could keep things private and little by little that privacy is being eroded.

All I'm saying is that defaults should be set to benefit and protect users and that once someone sets something a company should honor that setting and not change it later without your permission.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 01:13 PM
Facebook is a FREE service set up to PUBLICLY BROADCAST your photos and comments.

Actually it was a free service set up to let you selectively share some things publicly and some things privately.


Facebook is valuable because it has a user base to advertise to. Piss off the users and they leave and you will be left with My Space.

Exactly. I'm not saying they or anyone else owes us anything. Personally I take responsibility for my own actions and every bit of communication I make. Again I'm not at all worried about any of this for myself. But Facebook is angering users and they may or may not realize it, but their platform isn't worth much. It's only their community that's worth something. Anger people to the point where they leave and the next site now has the community.

It's in Facebook's best interest to protect their users.

Spider
05-21-2010, 05:38 PM
You may not have seen that personally because of the way you had the system set, but it has happened. How about the whole Beacon thing where they did start sharing your purchases with your friends. ..I have never used Beacon and have never seen them (FB - or any other online seller, for that matter) promise that purchases are private information and that they won't share the information.

And, being reminded by Harold of the Terms of Service, they have probably stated that they can and will.


...Why isn't it the same? Facebook has taken things you set as private and changed their policy and made them public. Again just because you haven't personally experienced that doesn't mean it's never happened. I've never been held up at gunpoint so I guess I never happens. You experiences aren't necessarily the same as everyone else...Are you saying that there have been instances that an "email provider decided it was in their best interests to make your email public"? Do you actually know of such an occasion?

Also, like you, I have never been held up at gunpoint but I have heard of specific instances of this happening. I have not heard of specific instances where FB has taken information set as private by a FB-user and changed it to be public. In fact, in every notice of privacy changes, that I have seen, FB has been very careful to state that if you have something marked as private ("only to be seen by self or friends") that they have not changed that - that they have only made what was previously public information and made it public on a wider scale.

I think - judging by Facebook notices - that Facebook have been remarkably careful and concerned about their member's privacy. Which, judging from the rest of your post, seems to be in accordance with expectations. I admit though that there has been plenty of talk to the contrary that has not been accompanied by details of any specific occurances.

I am not going to be worried myself, nor pass on any worries, based solely on conjecture and comments on what people think might happen or might have happened.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 05:46 PM
I can see that people are really upset over this. I had no idea that people actually expected privacy over the internet.

I always assumed that I put out the information that I was comfortable with everyone in the free world seeing, and that was that.

What was everyone else expecting?

Did I miss the 20/20 episode that told everyone that we can trust this without question and to disclose all of our personal secrets?

Am I the only one that doesn't have privacy issues?

Spider
05-21-2010, 05:50 PM
...Am I the only one that doesn't have privacy issues?No. I don't either.

I don't have secrets and refuse to keep other people's secrets.

PUBLIC NOTICE: If you, or anyone you know, has a secret, don't tell it to me. I'm not interested. And, if it's interesting enough, I will probably share it with other people I know - and maybe some I don't!

vangogh
05-21-2010, 10:05 PM
I have never used Beacon

You didn't have a choice. It wasn't something you chose to use or not. You may not have been affected by it if you didn't follow ads on the site and make a purchase. Again your personal experience isn't the issue. Are you suggesting that it's ok for me to commit a crime against someone as long as that someone isn't you? I know you would never suggest that. And I'm not suggesting that Facebook is committing a crime. Just saying the issue isn't about your personal experience with the site.


Are you saying that there have been instances that an "email provider decided it was in their best interests to make your email public"?

You're twisting my words. I never suggested anything of the kind. The comparison is that there are expectations that when you send an email to someone the communication is private. It's certainly true someone could intercept the email illegally or the recipient of your email has the ability to share its content. However there's a general expectation that email is private communication.

Facebook was the same way. Initially the site was about sharing content only with the people you chose to share content with including sharing some of it publicly with everyone. An expectation for a certain level of privacy was set and now being taken away little by little.


I had no idea that people actually expected privacy over the internet.

I think it's a ridiculous notion that just because something travels over the internet it must automatically be public. (By the way this is what bothers me most about all the privacy issues. What Facebook does or doesn't do isn't really something I care about since I don't give them any information that's important to me to keep private. What bothers me is the idea that just because I use the internet I no longer have any rights to privacy.)

I'll point again to email for a start. There is definitely an expectation that email is private communication. Just because it's possible for someone to intercept that communication doesn't change the expectation. Is your snail mail public just because someone could take it out of your mailbox and open it or because it travels along public roads to get to your house.

Ever pay for something online with a credit card? I assume you consider your credit card number something for public consumption then. Is the password you use to log into your web server also public? The email address you used to sign up. How about the one you use to login into you bank? Feel free to post all your info here since you consider it public.

There's a backend to this forum. It's on the internet, but isn't there an expectation that those pages on the backend are private? Sure that side of the site can be hacked, but that's not the same thing as the pages being public by default unless you also consider it ok to break into your home too.

There's a huge difference between being able to access something and having a right to access it.

Frederick you're one of the quickest people here to complain about receiving emails you don't want to receive. But since you're saying we shouldn't have an expectation of privacy I guess it's ok for sites to sell your email address to the highest bidder or give it away freely. Don't blame the site. After all you it was you who made your email public by using it to sign up at the site.

I think it's fair to assume that when I sign up with a site like Facebook that my email address is still my private data. (I know I'm using email a lot as an example. It's simply an easy example to make my point) I'm granting the site in question permission to contact me, but I'm not granting them permission to share it with others, especially if they tell me they won't share it when I sign up. If that site later changes it's policy and says they changed their mind and they're going to share my email with anyone they please I consider a violation of my privacy. I didn't grant them the right to share that data, but they are.

By the way, Facebook does share data like your email address with every app on the site that requests it. When you install any app all the data Facebook has collected about you is accessible to that app. Do you think most people are aware of that? Even if some box comes up saying the app needs to access things in your account.


I don't have secrets and refuse to keep other people's secrets.

Secrets and privacy are not the same thing. My medical records are not a secret, but I do expect them to remain private. Or is there no such thing as doctor patient confidentiality any more. Have we lost that right now that we live in the internet age.

What saddens me is the less other people value their privacy the less rights I seem to have with my privacy. To me privacy isn't a specific issue about what a site like Facebook does or doesn't do. It's that the more we simply let every site do what they want with data that we have reasonable expectations to remain private the less privacy we'll end up with in every other part of our lives.

I'm fully aware of the risks involved when my data travels across the internet. I'm probably a lot more careful and guarded with my information than most people. Risk is not the same thing as it automatically being made public or not having an expectation that certain data is still private.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 11:29 PM
My only point here I guess is, I don't think that EVERYTHING on the internet should be assumed public, but I certainly think that information on a Public Social Networking website has the possibility to be publicly consumed.

I would never expect anything that I put on Facebook to be private. If I want to have private communications, I have my own private communications platforms and devices, I don't need to use someone else's.

I think people put too much faith in platforms like Facebook as if they are there solely for their convenience.

I say as long as we filter what information we put on theses type of sites, then we can never be caught with our pants down if someone changes the rules or gets hacked.

There will never be as much information on a site like Facebook as I have in my wallet.

To me Networking sites are 90% for your business information (Which you want everyone to see) ,and just enough personal information to make your business stuff seem personable.

I see people put their whole life online, like an open book and I just don't get it.

But, no matter how some people get upset at sites like Facebook for sharing profile information, other people are willfully integrating every aspect of their lies online for all to see.

Have you seen this one: foursquare (http://foursquare.com/)?
It's a smart phone app where you input your location, and some people do it all day long.
Now, these days when most people are combining their social Profiles, and at the very least everything goes through Twitter now...not only is your information out there, but your location as well.

It won't be long before we can access a persons online information and location all at once. If nothing else it will make dating a little less mysterious.

I rigged up a feed on a site that I'm working on (http://nyblogs.net)... monitoring New Yorkers and the feed is going all day long with people announcing their locations. So much for privacy, people are willfully giving it up.

vangogh
05-22-2010, 12:11 AM
I certainly think that information on a Public Social Networking website has the possibility to be publicly consumed.

I think this might be where we differ some. I understand where you're coming from. The idea of a social network is generally to share with other people. I don't think everything though that's shared with the site is necessarily meant for public consumption.

For example take Twitter. They have direct messages which are private messages within the network. I think it would be fair to think there's an expectation that those messages are private and if Twitter were to make them public at some point it would be a betrayal of their users.

Another example is this or any other forum that has a private message system. I think the word private is a clear indication that the system is meant for private communication.

Now I agree we should be careful because by going through another site we are in effect giving them control over the information. I just don't think that means the site can change those parts that are private into something public. It might not be the smartest thing in the world, but people do share what they consider private information with a limited group of people on sites like Facebook and I think they do it with a reasonable expectation that the information will remain private.


I say as long as we filter what information we put on theses type of sites, then we can never be caught with our pants down if someone changes the rules or gets hacked.

I agree and that's how I personally treat all these sites. Again though I'll take it back to email. Technically is email any different from a technical point of view as far as sharing data? We're completely giving someone else control over our data, yet I think we all consider email private communication. You're using email to network socially too.

I wouldn't hesitate to share something with a trusted friend in an email that I don't want the world to know I said. I'd imagine many of us could say the same thing. Why do we consider one to be private, but not the other?

Yep, I've seen foursquare and have no interested in loading it on my phone or ever using it. I can't imagine why anyone would want to share that much. Thanks for letting me know you're not home. Now I know it's a good time to break into your house. The only time I want people to be able to locate me via GPS is in an emergency. Otherwise if I wanted you to know where I am I would have told you.

I know people are giving up privacy left and right. A good deal of it comes in trade for the convenience of technology. I like having a cell phone, but I am aware that even if I'm not using foursquare I can be tracked as long as the phone is on. I don't like that, but I accept it as part of living in the world today.

I guess with all the privacy we're losing I prefer to hang on to whatever is left and fight for it.

Harold Mansfield
05-22-2010, 12:36 AM
Thanks for letting me know you're not home. Now I know it's a good time to break into your house.

..and get a hold of that new HDTV that you purchased , reviewed and posted to Twitter, and maybe I'll get lucky and grab that Rolex that you are showing off in your My Space photo.

Oh and look, it says here on Facebook that you are dating this girl and you 2 are together so maybe I'll hit her house while I'm at it since you both are across town.
Her Linked In Profile says that she is a partner at a Law Firm, I'll bet she has some nice stuff.

I also noticed that you Twittered that you dropped your parents off at the air port to go on a 2 week cruise. I'd love to rob them as well, but I just can't do 3 houses in one day, but since I have your mother's maiden name (from your Facebook family connections), and your birth date from the horoscope that you share everyday, I may as well make sure I grab a few documents while I'm robbing you, to open a few credit cards in your name.

Spider
05-22-2010, 09:57 AM
You didn't have a choice. It wasn't something you chose to use or not. You may not have been affected by it if you didn't follow ads on the site and make a purchase. Again your personal experience isn't the issue. Are you suggesting that it's ok for me to commit a crime against someone as long as that someone isn't you? I know you would never suggest that. And I'm not suggesting that Facebook is committing a crime. Just saying the issue isn't about your personal experience with the site...I am not referring to my personal experience to suggest this is the only way it is, or the only way things work, nor am I trying to suggest that what I experience is what everyone else does or should experience. Much of what has been said over the subject of Facebook's privacy policies appears to be generalizations without corroborating data. I am trying to indicate that what could happen in someone's imagination isn't necessarily happening in fact, and 'proving' it, to some degree, by showing that it's not happening to me.

I also have a tendency (a good one, I feel) to only refer to information of which I am aware and not extrapolate that out to "all" such information. eg. you will likely not hear me say "all the notices posted by Facebook" because I suspect that I have not read all the notices posted by Facebook. I am much more likely to say, "all the notices I have read." Stating my personal experience, in this manner, makes my comments more accurate and precise, which, I believe, leads to clarity.

So much of what I have read on the internet - on this subject and others - appears to be speculation rather than fact. I try not to fall into that trap.

Spider
05-22-2010, 10:16 AM
I had no idea that people actually expected privacy over the internet.Just for clarity's sake, I did not say that. It's true, you did not quote it as coming from me, but it followed a quote of something I said and was in the middle of several quotes that were from me, that I thought it was a quote of something I said and went looking for it.

No problem, but you did address me in your reply and it looked as if you thought I had made that comment.