Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers

Facebook’s privacy woes continue to get worse. Now they have been caught actually sharing your secret data with advertisers.

Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook’s users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. “If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are,” Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Source

Why do people still trust this company?

Facebook Doesn’t Get It

Responding to concerns about privacy Facebook came out with a new security feature… except it doesn’t address any of the fears that users of the site are having.

Facebook has announced a new security feature that aims to keep hackers from tapping into users’ personal information.

First off, they should already be doing everything they can to prevent hackers from gaining access to your account. That they are just now addressing that issue is a cause for alarm. That’s not even the issue at hand though. The real issue is Facebook sharing your data (data that they even said would remain private) with “partner” websites. We’ve already seen two massive data leaks from Yelp since this program was introduced. Not only does this not go far enough, it’s opt-in.

“Oddly, this system is ‘opt-in,’ meaning by default it’s not enabled. You have to dig through Facebook’s labyrinthine privacy settings to turn it on,” he writes. “This might be a mistake, given how complex and intimidating Facebook’s privacy settings already are.”

More settings to confuse people. It’s beginning to look like they do this on purpose so that as much data as you can possible have is out there and fodder for their advertising partners.

Some users have complained they are uneasy about their personal preferences showing up on sites other than Facebook.com. Recently, an unknown number of people, including some notable tech pundits, have deleted or deactivated their Facebook accounts in response to privacy concerns.

Last month, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to Facebook asking the company, which was started in a Harvard dorm room and is now valued at billions of dollars, to give users more control of their private information.

The new security features do not address the issues most users have been complaining about, such as whether Facebook will keep their information private. Instead, the latest feature aims to protect Facebook users from external hackers. It does not change company policy.

Translation: We have you locked in. You’re not leaving us. We don’t care about your privacy, we want money. Go < expletive > yourselves. Nice, Facebook. Nice.

A Bewildering Tangle of Options

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

Your Facebook Data Once Again Put at Risk

Popular social media site Yelp has had two issues in the past day or so in which Facebook users’ data was put at risk. Is this just the tip of the iceberg for your data?

Last night, we reported on a security exploit discovered by web security consultant George Deglin that would allow a malicious site to quietly harvest a user’s Facebook friend list, email address, and other data. The exploit used a technique called Cross Site Scripting (XSS) to inject malicious code into Yelp, and took advantage of the fact that Yelp is one of Facebook’s partners for its controversial Instant Personalization feature to harvest the Facebook user data. The hole was quickly patched, and no user data was compromised.

Tonight, Deglin discovered a second hole in Yelp that once again allowed him to inject malicious code using XSS that could put Facebook user data at risk. Yelp has now patched this second hole, and once again the company believes that no user data was compromised. Facebook has turned off Instant Personalization on Yelp for the time being as Yelp looks to ensure there are no more vulnerabilities. Source

It’s plain to see that money from partners matters more to Facebook than the security of user data. I really hope something changes soon.

Reading

I recently renewed my library card after not using it for 10 years. Normally when I want to read a book I purchase it and then proudly put it on my shelf. The problem with that is I live in a small apartment and I have run out of shelf space. In fact, I ran out about 20 books or so ago. Now that I renewed my library card I’ve started to pay attention to books again. When there is a review on NPR I make note. When I hear about a book from a friend, I mark it down. Now my problem isn’t finding space for all these books on my shelves. The problem is finding the time to read all these great new books. At least that is a good problem.

These are the books on my to read list:

• When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub
• The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
• A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewery in St. Louis by Tom Schlafly
• Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I Went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair by Gary David Goldberg

So many books, so little time.