The Schleswig-Holstein Question...

[Gerald]

Facebook has agreed to work with the German government to develop a code of conduct governing privacy on social networking sites. But why is this one country so reluctant to share online?

Facebook and Google want to improve the way we discover information and interact with one another, while selling us things along the way.

Many people see nothing wrong with the way these and other online companies monitor use of their systems to work out who might want to buy what, but the situation is different in Germany.

It is not as if the companies' services are unpopular there - a quarter of the German population are active Facebook users and Google has 95% of the country's search market.

However, German citizens and their regulators are becoming well-known for giving these giants of the web a hard time.

In August, the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD) in Schleswig-Holstein banned all organisations in the state from having Facebook fan pages and embedding 'Like' buttons on their websites. The ULD said citizens were being monitored without realising it.

Earlier that month, privacy officials in Hamburg said Facebook could be fined for keeping biometric data collected through the site's facial recognition system.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14859813


Note: 10 September 2011 Last updated at 08:36 GMT

[Skybird]

Facebook, Google etc are not offering any "free products" - for them, the user is the product, which they trad, which they sell and which they make a profit from.

The product is left in the unknown about this, and the product also does not share in these prifts made from it.

Plus principle concerns, over data and privacy security - something that the Americans are traditionally extremely lax and naive about, since their optimistic belief into technology tends to touch infinity. Often, such beliefs are not well-founded at all, leaving many with not knowing about risks. Germany is as extremeist as America is - just at the other end of the scale. Both nations exaggerate their positions, and very much so.

The profiles created from the clicking record of your browser and your buying deicisons and surfing habits, can be extremely fra leading, much more far-kleading than many here maybe imagine. This leads to private business owning information of most personal nature about you - information that most nation's laws and even constitutions claim to protect by fundamental rules and that even ban secret services and police from collecting them without judge-approved, very good reasons. We do not trust our polcie and our state as that we are allowing them all too easily to get that ammount of poersonal, intimate info about us - but we should put these very same informations into the hands of private businessmen...?

Nobody should ever think that Google services and Facebook and Twitter were "free", or compare to offering a product to the user. The product being sold is YOU.

A bit less hysteria and "Angst" on the German side. A bit less naivety on the American side. That's what I think would do best. Just do not trust private business' sense of responsibility more than you trust politics' sense of responsibility. The one is not better than the other.

[Catfish]

Hello,
the thing is you post something in Facebook like "I'm out to meet my friends tomorrow" etc., and any burglar knows when to visit your empty house or appartement. The data to connect phone number, address, name and personal likes can be collected and (ab)used, they call it "scraping". It is not only used for criminal action of course, but also by governments, police or just for economical purposes.

If you posted that you just lost your job and need a new car, along with the face recognition you just walk into a bank to ask for that credit, and they politely tell you to go - sorry man, not worthy of credit.
As well when you looked for an Aston-Martin, or real estate, and have a nice bank account without bad history, you might get that credit.
As well add a personal opinion or anything your boss does not like, and you're out.

Basically everyone can read it, and even if you set your profile to private or "friends only", data are anything but secure on the net. And i'm not only speaking of the police here ..
So what Schleswig-Holstein has in mind is that those networks touch the right on individual privacy and can be dangerous, which is understandable - however everyone is responsible for himself and what he writes into hos blog or facebook site, and what he likes others to read and know about him.

Social networking is not a bad idea, but be aware and careful what you post -

[Highbury]

Every time the topic of Facebook and information profiling comes up I think of this clip, I may have even posted it here before.



It is comedy, but it has a few very funny but relevant things to say about it.

[Platapus]

When the product is free, it is customer that is being sold.

[Oberon]

I prefer this version:

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I prefer this version:

And to answer the question: it shot first.