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privacy
Posts Tagged “Facebook
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privacy
astroturfing
With over 150,000 fans, Ticketmaster's Facebook page is one of the most popular. Too bad most of its friends' profiles are fake.
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Ticketmaster's Facebook Page Is Full Of Fake Friends
With over 150,000 fans, Ticketmaster's Facebook page is one of the most popular. Too bad most of its friends' profiles are fake.
More »
beacon
Woman Sues Blockbuster For Telling All Her Facebook Friends What She Was Renting
Facebook's Beacon has finally resulted in a lawsuit. A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster for participating in Beacon, claiming that "Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent," says MediaPost. More »
privacy
Are You Sure You Want To Add That Facebook App?
Gregory writes in to point out that Facebook does a lousy job of monitoring the development of its third-party Platform applications—and in fact many of them are written so badly that they can be easily hacked. The examples he cites, which are listed in the winter issue of the hacker magazine 2600, are all fairly mild stunts like spoofing user IDs, changing the moods of another user, and re-routing gifts, "but this information could be used to mount large scale social engineering attacks if automated and coupled with other information." To illustrate how easy it is to change another user's settings, he pointed us to a YouTube example of how to change another users "mood" via the Mood app. More »
taking it seriously
Facebook Takes Letting The Whole World See Your Private Photos Seriously
WHO: FacebookWHAT: A security lapse made it possible for unwelcome strangers to peruse personal photos posted on Facebook, circumventing a recent upgrade to the Web site's privacy controls, says the Associated Press
WHERE: Security lapse exposes Facebook photos [CNN]
THE QUOTE:"We take privacy very seriously and continue to make enhancements to the site," said a Facebook spokesperson. More »
worst company in america
Round 2: Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association
This is round 2 in our Worst Company In America contest, Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association. Their major crimes: The American Arbitration Association is the main supplier of kangaroo courts to companies who want to deprive consumers of most of their rights in the event of a legal dispute. Most contracts you sign with companies these days contain a mandatory arbitration clause. Facebook is a social networking site for yupsters that for a while was spying on all your purchases and selling the data to big big advertisers so they could sell you more ads. Which is the greater threat to our way of life? Choose!
PREVIOUSLY: Comcast vs Menu Foods
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/
policy revision
Facebook Says They Will Delete Your Account If You Email And Ask Nicely
Facebook is changing their tune to avoid another "Beacon" fiasco:On Monday, Facebook modified its help pages to tell people that if they wanted to remove their accounts entirely, they could e-mail the company to have it done. But on Tuesday, representatives of Facebook stopped short of saying the company would introduce a one-step delete account option.More »
privacy
Joining Facebook Is Like Joining The Mafia. Just Try To Leave.
The New York Times says that joining Facebook is easy, but leaving is hard. In fact, it might just be impossible. Even if you delete your information, Facebook keeps a copy."It's like the Hotel California," said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."More »
privacy
Anorexic? Your Insurance Company Could Subpeona Your Writings On MySpace And Facebook
How's this for twisted: An insurance company, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, have demanded that the parents of minor children who suffer from anorexia turn over their children's writings on MySpace and Facebook, as well as any emails where they discuss their problems. More »
videos
Dairy Queen Owner Exclaims "Good God Almighty, Where's My Manager?" After Workers Moon Drive-Thru Window
Hey St. John's Dairy Queen workers, you forgot to make your Facebook group private. Now your hilarious little videos of each other mooning the drive-thru and waging indoor snowball fights are all over Canadian television. They just don't understand your jokes about "using meat the next day that wasn't kept overnight in the cooler." Neither do the health inspectors. More »
scams
Someone From Arkansas Is Selling Wiis For Only $99!!!
Quick, type in all of your credit card information before he runs out of inventory! Omgwtf $99 Wiis! The website, www.wiifor99.com—which is being advertised on Facebook, according to a reader—consists of the two screens shown above and that's it. What a lazy con. Since the site no longer exists, here are two screencaps we took of it on Wednesday night. Index page. Order form.More »
privacy
Do You Care About Privacy Or Just Unpleasant Surprises?
Seth Godin thinks that for all the talk about privacy, what people really object to is being "surprised."If your credit card company called you up and said, "we've been looking over your records and we see that you've been having an extramarital affair. We'd like to offer you a free coupon for VD testing..." you'd freak out, and for good reason.More »
Buckling under a blistering poopy pile of criticism, Facebook will now let users turn off 
privacy
How To Block Facebook's Beacon
Don't like Facebook secretly tracking your online purchases and telling your friends what you bought? Users of the Firefox we browser can use an easy add-on that jams the beacon's signal. Just install the BlockSite add-on, and then add http://*facebook.com/beacon/* as one of the blocked sites. Make sure to keep those asterisks in. If that sounds a little complicated, this step-by-step walk-through at Wikihow shows you how it's done. Alternatively, you could also add the same url to AdBlockPlus, another Firefox extension.
How to Block Facebook Beacon [WikiHow]
PREVIOUSLY: Facebook Ruins Christmas?
privacy
Facebook Tries To Keep Founder's Private Papers Off Internet, Fails
In a funny twist of fate, last week Facebook failed in its attempt to force a site to remove incriminating and/or embarrassing personal information about Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. We think Facebook missed a real opportunity here—they should have distributed the documents personally and attached ads to them. More »
online privacy
List Of Companies That Participate In Facebook's Beacon Spy Program
One of our readers yesterday left a couple of interesting links in the comments section of our Beacon post. They provide the names of the companies that Facebook says are participating in its poorly conceived spy program Beacon. Here they are: More »
privacy
Facebook Alters Shopping Stalker
The New York Times says that Facebook will be making a slight change to "Beacon" the feature that tracks users purchases throughout the web and broadcasts them to their friends.Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time.More »
privacy
Facebook Might Revamp Shopping Stalking Feature
Responding to criticism from MoveOn.org and consumer advocates, Facebook might revamp "beacon," its feature that stalks your purchases throughout the web and broadcasts them to your friends.BusinessWeek says they have a source close to Facebook that says executives are discussing changes to the controversial marketing tool. More »
