Thursday, November 05, 2009
Some Privacy Please, Facebook
In 2006, more than 700,000 people signed an online petition to prompt Facebook to be more strict with its privacy issues.
Currently there is an application running with Facebook called Beacon. Beacon is program that shares with users the websites you have been to and even the purchases you have made.
Obviously this could be a problem. If you are friends with someone on Facebook, and bought them something, they could be alerted and the suprise blown, instantly because of Beacon.
"One of the reasons Facebook is popular is that it makes it so easy for users to follow their friends' activities" Says Andy Carvin, NPR's senior product manager for online communities.
This program Beacon, was protested against and petitioned by as many as 50,000 Facebook users. Facebook took a stand and made this program optional with a check box, but there is still way that it stay active anyway.
I personally use Facebook, and I agree, it makes it extremely easy to follow your friends and see what they are doing. I haven't had issues with the privacy policies, but I can certainly see where people do. Facebook is just the start of privacy issues on the internet.
Google currently saves every search ever done, forever.
Beacon "may collect information on non-Facebookmembers." Any computer that is used to log onto a Facebook profile instantly becomes a tracking number for Facebook computers. Facebook says it deletes all this information received in this way ... but we will never know.
Labels: Beacon, facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, social networks
