Data Kraken Facebook taking fire

[Skybird]

An Austrian student has used the fact that Facebook allowed to get lured to Ireland over assumed tax reliefs and founded a daughter company there to which around 70% of all global Facebook users are subscribed - all users outside the US, that is. But according to European law, every user registered not on Facebook US, but Facebook Ireland Limited, can demand full documentation of all and everything that is being stored by Facebook abpout the user. It's in the very very small print.

The student demanded that information from Facebook, together with some friends. They got back - several CDs containing several thousands of printable pages, while Facebook - ilegally - refused to give info about several other categories of informationm like statistics about the user'S use of the "like" button, face recognition, and more. That means: Facebook actually stores even more data about users than it admits.

The group also found that their profiling data is detailed in 57 categories in which Facebooks saves the information about the user, including age, social relation behaviour, religious and political convictions.

They also discovered that Facebook still stores plenty of data about their accounts that they - the users - had deleted in the past, leaving the user uninformed about that. YOU CANNOT DELETE DATA from your facebook account. NEVER. Chat protocols, postings, emails, friendship requests, names, non-public secret protocols - it all was there, fulky documented in statistics and by content. Facebook never deleted anything, while lying that it would delete for sure when the user hits the button and confirms several times that he wants something to be deleted for sure.

This is all in all a very serious violation of most essential privacy protection and data security laws in Europe, which reveals how underdeveloped any awareness and recognition about these things is in Silicon Valley. Mind you, Google systematically collected personal code information down to credit card information and much of what was send via WLAN by private users when its Streetview camera cars drove through the streets and obviously did much more than just making visual pictures with cameras - that it all was just a malfunction or an accident maybe is being believed in Silicon Valley - but in Europe, nobody believes that. Maybe because it happened over and over and over again, and continued to happen after Google "admitted" that the malfunction was brought to its awareness and was corrected. It was a systematic and intentional violation of laws, plain and simple.

The group of Austrian students caused many more people demanding information about their data records at Facebook, a flood of such requests is said to be directed at Facebook Ireland. It becomes even worse for Facebook: criminal charges in 22 categories have been filed at the Irish data protection authorities which have started a full examination of internal working procedures at Facebook. Data security officials from Ireland and Austria as well as the EU support the action against facebook, saying that it becomes absurd if even the features of one'S own face become legal property od Facebook.

If Facebook would not have moved to Ireland over tax reasons, there would have been no legalö basis for the action against Facebook. In America comparable data security laws like inEurope for the most do not exist, even worse: an awareness for such laws even being needed and destrable, especially in the IT business branch is said to be almost non-existent. If you travel to the US as a foreigner you have to reveal more personal and intimate data about yourself than over here the police is allowed to get from you even if you go into prison.

They have founded an net initiave now against facebook, which can be checked out here:

http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

We call for judges' verdicts if the police should monitor a suspect or collect data and record private communication. We regulate intel services' activities by laws. But private business is left with the freedom to collect even more data about ourselves and our privatesphere? Some people say they do not care and what'S the matter with it. I think such people have lost their marbles. Facebook some days ago started a campaign that people should put all their life and personal logs and photo albums voluntarily on Facebook'S website, but of course they did not say anything about the implications regarding intellectual property claims made by Facebook, regarding these data. Young people and ttens not knowing a world without Facebook, are especially vulnerable for becoming a very uncritical user group targetted by these practices. Older people like me - if any of us is stupid enough to use that lifeline thing, I can only feel pity.

Facebook, Google etc are not for free, but you pay for them with your privacy and your permission to get spied out from A to Z, and any vulnerability this may mean for you in the future, because these companies NEVER delete the data they collect. They offer you no "free" service at all - but you become the product that is being sold for financial profit.

If that is what you want and what you will - nobody can help you. Die dümmsten Kälber wählen sich ihre Metzger selber.

German article (http://www.fr-online.de/politik/datensicherheit-die-facebook-protokolle,1472596,10919862.html)

[Schroeder]

Not really a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for years now. I've never used face book and will never use it.:cool:

[MH]

Facebook, Google etc are not for free, but you pay for them with your privacy and your permission to get spied out from A to Z, and any vulnerability this may mean for you in the future, because these companies NEVER delete the data they collect. They offer you no "free" service at all - but you become the product that is being sold for financial profit.

If that is what you want and what you will - nobody can help you. Die dümmsten Kälber wählen sich ihre Metzger selber.

German article (http://www.fr-online.de/politik/datensicherheit-die-facebook-protokolle,1472596,10919862.html)




Welcome to the 21 century.
Drop your PC out the window use cash move to woods.

I thought that it was always obvious fact that what ever you post on the web stays on the web.
The younger generation simply dos not care much about it.

[vienna]

I thought that it was always obvious fact that what ever you post on the web stays on the web.
The younger generation simply dos not care much about it.


This is reminicent of the old "This will stay on your permanent record" threat I used to hear in my youth. Time proved that very little as I grew up was either permanent or a matter of record. However, times have changed; perhaps, now, the threat could be turned instead into a llure for good conduct and say "We'll keep this off any records"...

[MH]

This is reminicent of the old "This will stay on your permanent record" threat I used to hear in my youth. Time proved that very little as I grew up was either permanent or a matter of record. However, times have changed; perhaps, now, the threat could be turned instead into a llure for good conduct and say "We'll keep this off any records"...

I'm not defending facebook here.

Posting all private data on social site is just like doing something private in public place and then complain about it.
Fact is that most of your digital activity can be restored when needed not only Facebook.
That is something that every user should consider when posting on the site in first place.
If those companies can be legally forced to be more transparent then its for the better.

[Skybird]

Welcome to the 21 century.
Drop your PC out the window use cash move to woods.

I thought that it was always obvious fact that what ever you post on the web stays on the web.
The younger generation simply dos not care much about it.

That'S a bit too much simplification. We are not talking about background data of computer network activities and statistical, but we talk maboiut creative content and priovate communications that the user is actively led to beleive he had deleted them. We are talking about data that are not anonymous, and remain in the labyrinth of server providers, but information" and communication message content that the company makes the user beliueve he can delete it, but in fact actively hides away to form individual profiles of very very elaborated kinds that it then sells for a profit to the industry. Such datasets are pure gold in the business. We are talking about a company that lies to its customers. We are talking about a product that once it saw birth given to some personal communication, promises to never allow a possible privacy breach in the future being closed.

Last but not least we talk about active manipulation and education of the young people (and older people as well!) to train them not to care for data security and protection of their private sphere and make them believe exhibitionism is the most natural form of social life. This atitude is wanted like the modern consumer is wanted, too: to think he cannot live without owning the latest of the lkatest gadgets, and that the meaning of life is buying things.

Refusing that, has nothing to do with going back to a life in the wilderness. Claiming that it is, is just overkill rethorics. The very uncritical attitude of many people especially in the US about technology in general, but especially protection of private data and data security, did not just fall down from the sky - it is the result of a training process, of education (or seen from another perspective: the - wanted? - lack of such education on certain issues).

Facebook knows more about its users than the police can collect in information without a judge'S decision first. Is this really no reason for concern when porivate business gains more power than official legal structure that rfegulates police, state athorities, intel services, etc? It deliberately collects such data, stores threm away, hides the fact from the users, misleads them by telling them they can delete it, and makes a money from all this together. Why do we need police and judges anymore for spying on people's lives?

People usually are not born as dumb sheep. They get turned into dumb sheep.

[mapuc]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20114163-245/facebook-sued-over-tracking-users-after-logout/?fb_ref=fbrecT&fb_source=home_multiline

Right know Mark is in deep water.

Markus

[joea]

It was the work of this blogger who found the problem.

https://nikcub.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough

The issue was solved thanks to the publicity of this guy.

A good cartoon illustrating the whole story.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1596.html

:D

[MH]

The end of privacy as we know it, one tweet at a time

If, until not long ago, privacy was perceived as the standard, and invading it required justification, today we live in a society in which exposure is the standard, and the request to protect one's privacy almost demands justification.

By Amalia Rosenblum





The final segment was broadcast last month of cable television channel Hot's series, "Mehubarim" ("Connected" ), which challenged accepted social norms with regard to where it is proper to wash one's dirty laundry. The heroes of the series documented themselves and their families for months in sensitive, extreme and crisis situations. In the advice-giving entertainment show "Super Nanny" we get a peek at what is going behind the curtain in the homes of strangers, this time people who are collapsing under the burdens of parenthood.
Common to "Mehubarim" and "Super Nanny" is that the behind-the-curtain goings-on are on display for all to see. The personal exposure of the participants in those programs does not suit everyone, yet most of us are ourselves exposed on the Web much more than we could have imagined a decade ago.

We write about marital or single statuses on Facebook, gossip on Twitter, update the world on our family situations and post personal pictures for all to see, without getting excited over the fact that there is no sure way to delete any of it.
Perhaps there is nothing to get excited about. One of the most remarkable statements on this matter came from Google CEO Eric Schmidt less than a year ago: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
In other words, we are experiencing a complete reversal in our concept of privacy. If, until not long ago, privacy was perceived as the standard, and invading it required justification, today we live in a society in which exposure is the standard, and the request to protect one's privacy almost demands justification. Exhibitionist behaviors are perceived as less and less pathological, while it is the basic human need to close the door that is beginning to seem potentially criminal.
There was a moment in the past in which one of the temptations of surfing the Web was the seeming possibility of hiding one's identity. You could be an Israeli child from Holon pretending to be a female American soldier in Iraq. But since that time, the use of the Web has changed: It is no longer a camouflage net, but rather Hyde Park, with billions of potential listeners. The outcome is that a Google search of the person you are going to meet (standard procedure before an important meeting ) can bring up pictures on his Facebook page in which he is shown with his kids in a bathing suit on vacation in Thailand, in addition to his tweets alluding to make-up sex with his wife after last night's argument, which she even reported on real-time on Twitter.
So that we do not feel there is anything wrong with that, we cover up the exposure with a new lexicon, including words like "share," "friends" and of course, "online," words that perhaps attest to the fact that over-exposure is the antidote we take to reduce the feeling of isolation that the technological developments have brought with them. One of the interesting questions in this context is what the response will be of children who experience this kind of exposure, the same children whose parents put them in front of the camera in the various documentary-reality programs, or invade their privacy in some other way. Are these children likely, in another 20 years or so, to react by suing the people who stole their privacy? Or might they not feel that they are missing anything?
Perhaps, in order to understand an article like this one, for example, they will have to look up the esoteric word "privacy" in the dictionary, somewhere near its neighbors, "partisans" and "prehistoric."

..........
That is sort of common attitude i think...