Facebook Announcement Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Posts tagged "Facebook Announcement"

Facebook Privacy: New Data Use Policy Banks on User Laziness

Is there such a thing as Facebook privacy? You’ve might have heard that Facebook is proposing a new Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (formerly known as a privacy policy). No one refers to it as a Privacy Policy anymore, because there is absolutely no sign of privacy left. And if you read the email from Facebook alerting you to the changes, or even the summary of changes that they provide, you are left with no clear idea of the magnitude of those alterations (you’d have to read the actual suggested changes).

Facebook is masking privacy erosion with a deceptive executive summary. The latest changes make me very uncomfortable in three ways:

It appears that Facebook has left open the option to collect and utilize your mobile phone number when you access Facebook from your mobile device. That is valuable information to advertisers who want to text, call or serve up ads to you directly.

Facebook Email: Putting Every Last Egg in One Basket

Facebook wants a piece of every social interaction you have, which is why they are poised to offer you a free email account, just like Gmail or Hotmail.

Facebook’s newest features (email and eventually a built-in search engine) are aimed at making their website your one-stop shop for all things internet. Rumor has it that at 10:30am PT, Facebook will offer their existing users email addresses. And millions of existing users will take them up on their offer because it will be cool to have a Facebook email account and because we are all in short supply of email accounts to check 24/7. Other sources are saying that Facebook will soon be offering a search engine as well.