How Facebook Can Out Your Most Personal Secrets 467
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook revealed the sexual preferences of users despite those users have chosen 'privacy lock-down' settings on Facebook. The article describes two students who were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users: 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
Stopped using facebook 8 months ago (Score:5, Informative)
Privacy concerns part of it.
Requiring that I provide a legitimate phone number for each of my farmville bot accounts was most of it. But farmville was the main reason I was logging on in the first place. I would have never given them any legitimate information after the first half dozen privacy dumps.
Plus- it just sucked the way they kept colliding and smashing up different groups of friends and different groups of relatives and causing me grief in my personal life.
So I cut them loose. And haven't missed them since.
Re:IF YOU HAND THEM OVER IT WILL TAKE THEM !! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that one of them "handed it over" it's that she got added to a group (Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined) whose name alone exposed what she was hiding from her father (among others).
Just say NO! (Score:5, Informative)
It's too bad this happened, but perhaps it will convince some people to simply not use Facebook. Facebook's habit of raping users' privacy shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who uses a computer - they've done it many times, and it's been big news.
Users don't pay Facebook any money, so they have no reasonable expectation of ANY standard of privacy, service, or redress, and Facebook has no 'duty of care' obligations. So it's really quite simple - don't use Facebook, and if you DO insist on using it, then A), don't post anything from which your secrets might even be deduced, and B), prepare to suffer the consequences when, (not if), your secrets are revealed.
It's been said before, and it bears repeating: when you aren't paying for a service, then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. If you don't want to be treated as a product, don't use the service.
Re:Truly horrible. (Score:5, Informative)
unless you are ok with it getting out, because that is inevitable.
Re:Stopped using facebook 8 months ago (Score:2, Informative)
Not using Facebook is no protection. People can still post stuff about you on the Internet. They can tag you in photos, put you in groups, add you to mailing lists, etc. On Facebook or anywhere. All without your knowledge.
It has always been this way. The Internet just made it easier and Facebook makes it more public and accesible to the general population of morons.
Re:Stopped using facebook 8 months ago (Score:5, Informative)
I'm about to chew out one of the "don't post it if you don't want it known" commenters, hit refresh to see if somebody else already did, and got distracted by you post.
As much as I dislike facebook, you seem to be unaware of its workings (when they work and don't 'accidentally' break, etc.).
Only friends can add you to a group (unless school group, etc.). If you're being added to 'fairly extreme view' groups, then I guess you have 'fairly extreme view' facebook 'friends'. If you'd rather not be part of those groups, you may wish to review the status of that 'friendship'. If you value the 'friendship' but would prefer that you don't get added to any groups, there was (is?) a trick: join meaningless groups to hit the group limit, then ignore everything from those groups. When you want to join a group, drop one of those groups and join up. Down side: if one of those groups becomes meaningful, you may become associated with those.
For applications, you can actually ignore the application. Upper right corner of the application's post, hit ignore.
Alternatively, go to your account settings, privacy, edit settings, 'applications and websites', disable platform applications.
Until it 'accidentally' breaks. Or facebook makes another change for the benefit of their users, then waits to see if the criticism is bad enough to reverse the change (at which point the damage is already done), or take their losses from the vocal few leave the change intact because it's a net positive.
3rd Party (Score:5, Informative)
If you tell Facebook your secret, it's not a secret anymore and you're a moron for thinking it would be.
The problem isn't what they told to Facebook. The problems is that the girls got added to some queer-themed group. group-adding on facebook doesn't require user confirmation nor anything.
A 3rd party just clicked on a group button while the girls were online, and their homophobic parents saw "Girl1 and Girl2 joined group 'lesbian chorus singers' " and freaked out. Without the girls ever needing to do anything, they didn't even need to write their preferences into their profile, and in fact their account could even have been dormant.
The biggest problem is not only that clueless users could mess their own privacy online, but morons can mess other people's privacy as well (and in a few cases including privacy of people who aren't even on facebook themselves).
Re:Again and again (Score:5, Informative)
She didn't tell Facebook anything related to her sexual preferences. And she still got outed. That's the whole point of the article.
Re:Truly horrible. (Score:5, Informative)
What, exactly, is the "American Atheist Association"? No such organization exists. If you're going to make up accusations, at least make them up about a group that isn't imaginary.
Re:"you should never post"? Get a clue. (Score:5, Informative)
Huh?
The only time these two individuals ever did anything related to the chain of events was when they friended, or accepted a friend request, from this choir group in the first place. If you're saying that they shouldn't have done that unless they were 'ready and willing' to own, that's fine.
Look, I'm not sure you realize how it works. If someone sends you an invite to a group, you are added to the group. There is no "friending" involved, and there is no control by the recipient of the invite to the group.
How do I know that? Well a few weeks ago, someone sent me an invite to a group. I received the email, but had no interest. In fact I replied to the person's personal email and said "thanks, but no thanks. I don't Facebook, I log in to my account maybe 1 time a week to see the page and what relatives were up to. Two days later, I happened to log in to facebook, and low and behold I'm being spammed by this group on my wall. I never agreed, never "friended" anyone, I was simply notified that I was invited. Magically I'm in that group without any action on my part, and had to remove myself from the group without ever joining.
These teens had the same thing happen. This is a Facebook security issue and has nothing to do with those two teens. In fact, I hope it opens up a nice fat class action case against them and marks the piece of shit that is facebook.
Re:Truly horrible. (Score:5, Informative)
I assume its these guys:
http://www.atheists.org/ [atheists.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Atheists [wikipedia.org]
Re:Again, I must ask you all: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:3rd Party (Score:4, Informative)
This was a large problem for my wife. My mother in law is evil. My wife wants nothing to do with her mother (just an example, she killed my wife's cat and put an illegal lien on my house because we were moving and taking her grandson far away, and yes, it sabotaged a sale in progress). But my wife talks to her sisters. But if she posts on her sister's wall, or vice versa, then her mother can see some non-public information. For example, wife posts "I went to XXX today" Her sister, friends with her mother, posts "sounds like fun" then MIL can now read the original "private" post. There exists no way (well, didn't last I checked) to "block" a person or group of people. My wife has enemies, real ones. And she wants to be able to share information with some people without it getting inappropriately seen by others.
You should tell your wife about this thing I heard of called "Email". It's apparently pretty new, not many people know about it.