Thursday, November 15, 2007

facebook users, read this

from the CBC website, a story about the new Facebook Beacon advertising system and how it collects -- and SHARES -- the data with others, whether we like it or not.

One worrying paragraph:
"If you buy a book on Amazon, a little bit of code is embedded within that site then sends the data to Facebook and informs your friends that you've bought a particular book. Or say you're surfing the recipe/food site Epicurious and rate or comment on a few recipes, again your Facebook friends will be notified of your culinary interests, as will Facebook itself and their advertising partners."

Read the rest of the article. My finger is on the "delete my account button" and will hover there until I'm sure my private info will stay private. If it won't, buh-bye, Facebook.

---

I have several much cheerier posts in me. Just not tonight. The no-voice thing has turned into no-voice + general malaise, so I'm trying to shake/sleep it off.

posted by amy [Knitty] @ 6:07 PM 13 comments

Comments:
I only signed up to facebook recently to keep in touch with some family and friends but I immediately didn't quite feel comfortable with the whole set-up...this confirms my fears...think I'm going to give it up...Ravelry's enough for me! Thanks for the info!
# posted by Blogger Gudrun Johnston : 6:54 PM, November 15, 2007
 
To be fair, you can turn it off (or at least make it so it doesn't post to your feeds). That said, still a crummy practice. I found out the hard way about this and was not happy either.
# posted by Anonymous mel : 7:14 PM, November 15, 2007
 
Oh dear. Where will we play scrabble now?
# posted by Blogger Cari : 12:13 AM, November 16, 2007
 
You can review and edit your security settings, so that your information is still kept private. Personally, I've also reduced the number of 'add ons' in my account and removed a lot of identifying details (like my DOB) from my account. Real friends should recognise me from a name and a picture.
# posted by Anonymous Lunasa : 5:10 AM, November 16, 2007
 
FYI, Yahoo Groups (KAL anyone?) also use web beacons. You can opt out, but it’s not that straightforward. Login to your Yahoo Groups. From the page that displays your groups, click on “Privacy Policy”, it’s at the very bottom of the page, under the copyright info.

Scroll to the middle of the page, click on the “Web Beacons” link under the heading “Cookies”. Then click the “please click here to opt-out” link. You have to confirm you really want to opt out. Then it displays a second very similar message telling you to click if you want to opt back in! I presume a lot of people must click that not realizing what it says.

This is computer specific, not account specific, so you may need to repeat those steps at on every computer you use.
# posted by Blogger Malva : 7:38 AM, November 16, 2007
 
Full disclosure: I work at one of the major online advertising providers.

Beaconing is a very common practice - every ad network I know of does it. The thing is that ad networks typically span multiple sites, so there is always cross-sharing of information, usually user behavior.

There is usually an opt-out link - But as Malva said, it's often hard to find. But you can always clear out your cookies - and should, on a regular basis. There's an option in Firefox to clear out cookies every time you exit the program. If you're concerned about privacy, that's probably a good way to go (it also annoys the hell out of those of us who do this for a living, but c'est la vie!)
# posted by Anonymous susan : 10:03 AM, November 16, 2007
 
susan, would you write me at knittymagazine AT gmail? i've got a question for you.

thanks!
Amy
# posted by Blogger amy [Knitty] : 10:58 AM, November 16, 2007
 
i just use facebook to stay in touch with people from high school, and i ignore every little thing they have added. I use the regular wall and hit the 'ignore' button on everything people invite/ask yadda yadda. don't want to get involved because they are WAY too invasive of all my privacy
# posted by Blogger Helen : 12:26 PM, November 16, 2007
 
Google is pretty scary this way, too...
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6:02 PM, November 16, 2007
 
It doesn't appear that one can "delete my account". I've only found a deactivate my account option, which leaves the account info intact but inactive. I find this very worrisome.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 1:15 PM, November 18, 2007
 
charming.

well, you could go through and put gibberish in every field and save it.

the skeptic in me, however, is pretty sure the previous version of the data would get saved somewhere.

this rather sucks, doesn't it?
# posted by Blogger amy [Knitty] : 2:38 PM, November 18, 2007
 
Deactivating isn't enough. Facebook doesn't believe you really want to deactivate your account. They continue to nag you with emails, telling you what fun all your friends are having without you, and asking if you really mean it, tempting you back. You're still in their system.

To clear your Facebook account completely you have to clear EVERY piece of data from EVERY field in your profile. Then deactivate your account. Then write customer services at comment-info-rt@facebook.com and request that your account be permanently closed.

They will not believe you want to do this, and you may have to exchange a few emails to get there. In my case it took three days of back and forth, but eventually my account was closed and my data deleted from their servers.
# posted by Blogger Brenda Dayne : 1:37 PM, November 19, 2007
 
Why does everything from grocery store member cards to FACE-BLOODY-BOOK have to turn out to be tryiong ot advertise to us?! What a pisser!

~gyl
# posted by Blogger rhembein : 5:52 PM, November 23, 2007
 
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