Why you should never trust Facebook

From
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=4708&tag=nl.e064

Facebook has a dismal reputation when it comes to privacy issues. This is evidently a problem that starts at the top, with Facebook co-founder, President, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Nick Bilton summed it up neatly in a Tweet:

Off record chat w/ Facebook employee. Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn’t believe in it.

This does not appear to be a new development, either. In 2003, when Facebook was called “The Facebook” and Zuckerberg operated it from his Harvard dorm room, he said some regrettable things in an IM conversation about users of the fledgling social networking site, according to a SocialMediaNews article:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard.

Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

(Friend): What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it. I don’t know why.

They “trust me”

Dumb f**ks.

This has manifested in a number of ways that show significant negligence, sometimes to the point of appearing to be hostility, toward issues of Facebook users’ privacy. Lifehacker reported that “Facebook ‘Delete’ Can Take 16 Embarrassing Months,” for instance.

It gets bigger than that. The Wall Street Journal reports, in its article, Facebook in Privacy Breach, that many of the most popular Facebook apps have been giving users’ identifying information — and that of their Facebook friends — to advertising and Internet data mining companies:

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.

It has gotten so bad that, as ClickZ puts it, “Congressmen Question Facebook About Alleged Privacy Breach.”

The way Facebook is insinuating itself into everything else on the Web, from other sites’ login mechanisms to the now-ubiquitous “Like button”, the problem seems destined to grow worse. Arnab Nandi explains that “Deceiving Users with the Facebook Like Button” is easy:

Users can be tricked into “Like”ing pages they’re not at.

There's more. 


Bottom line: Don't trust Facebook to keep your private data private. It won't happen.