Social Media Matters
About this Blog:
Kristin Burnham chronicles what matters (and what doesn't) in the world of social networking, Web 2.0 and consumer applications.
How to Handle the Newest Facebook Privacy "Breach": Relax
Another Facebook privacy snafu, another uproar -- this time including congressmen. But here's why it's much ado about nothing.
Everyone was up in arms this week after the Wall Street Journal reported that some of Facebook's popular applications—Farmville and others—had been transmitting identifying information to Internet tracking companies.
Print
U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), co-chairmen of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who was already up to his hoodie in media scrutiny due to The Social Network movie.) An onslaught of articles from media scrutinizing Facebook's latest privacy slip-up flooded the Internet. And Facebook users freaked, which is only natural in the culture of fear that Facebook seems to have created.
But is this latest "privacy breach" really that big a deal? Is it time to throw in the towel on social networking and delete your account? Some security pundits might say yes—"it's just one more error Facebook has made with your information"—but let's take a closer look at the two claims causing the most controversy.
1. Your information was stolen.
The "identifying information" that the WSJ reports was scraped from tens of millions of accounts, in many cases, is already public data. This includes your Facebook ID number, which anyone can use to look up your name via search engines even if you have set all privacy settings to private. (One way around this is disabling the "public search" feature, which can be found in your privacy settings.) If you selected any information to be viewed publicly, this information can also be viewed by searching your Facebook ID number.
[Facebook Quick Tip: Control Apps Access to Your Data]
If you have opted out of appearing in public searches, anyone (i.e. more than 500 million people) with a Facebook account can view your name, picture, gender and networks anyway. There's no getting around that.
2. Your information was sold.
WSJ claims that data-gathering firms such as RapLeaf linked Facebook user ID information to its own database of Internet users, which it sells. It also transmitted the IDs to other firms, as well. Is that a big deal? TechCrunch's Michael Arrington put it this way:
"If you do stuff online, people are tracking it and putting it into a database and trying to sell you stuff based on that. There’s not much you can do about it except not be online. And it’s not all that bad, really, to get ads for diapers when you’re having a baby, or ads for cars when you are looking to buy a car. Life will go on."
[Want more tips, tricks and details on Facebook privacy? Check out CIO.com's Facebook Bible.]
Privacy snafus are becoming commonplace with Facebook, which isn't right, but is a reality. Facebook is aware of its problems. It's taking steps to win back the trust of their users. And as Facebook users, we need to be aware of how to stay safe when we're on the site.
Undoubtedly, Facebook will stumble again. In the meantime, do what you can to protect yourself: Familiarize yourself with the privacy controls. Practice common sense. Above all, be careful of what you post.
Kristin Burnham covers Consumer Technology, SaaS, Social Networking and Web 2.0 for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com.
Previous Post: YouTube's 5 Can't-Miss Social Media ParodiesNext Post: Facebook's Rumored "Deals" Service: A Done Deal or No Deal?
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
