A generally harmless but misleading — as well as quite annoying — status update is worming its way through Facebook, imploring contacts to perform a ritual that will supposedly stop strangers from seeing their comments on the sidebar. (It won't). More »
Facebook, the startup website that the kid from Squid & the Whale was accused of stealing from those twins in that pistachio commercial (or at least that's what I learned from fast-forwarding through The Social Network), is finally set to join the ranks of the publicly traded. The company has filed papers for its initial public offering, which is expected to make a bunch of people really, really rich and maybe, just maybe, make us all love one another again. More »
If you've always wanted to add the title "Facebook part-owner" to your resume, the opportunity could be arriving soon. That Facebook Initial Public Offering that wasn't supposed to occur until late this year could happen this week. The stock sale could be one of the most lucrative ever for an American business, pumping as much as $10 billion into the company. More »
Aww, snap! Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill doesn't care that her speech opening a forum on Data Privacy Day was being streamed on Facebook and likely Googled by many — she still put the verbal smackdown on those two companies for their problems protecting user privacy. More »
As we've previously reported, Bank of America's loan modification program (for want of a better phrase) is being sued by the state of Arizona. But the AZ Attorney General says the nation's second-largest bank is hindering his investigation by quietly negotiating settlements with underwater homeowners — or at least those who will pledge to keep their mouths shut about the bank. More »
You've seen it lurking on your friends' Facebook profiles, and felt the oppressive weight of the stress to eventually pick the perfect, horizontal cover image, and now the time is almost nigh — the Timeline feature will soon be the default interface on Facebook, and mandatory for all users. More »
The folks at Facebook have made no secret of their objection to the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. And while it would have been a huge statement for Facebook to shut down, even for a few hours, you can't fault the company for not wanting to turn off the money machine. Regardless, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just took to his personal page to quickly voice his opinion on these pieces of legislation. More »
Many Facebook users are already familiar with programs like Spotify and Rdio that can let friends know what the other is listening to, and allow you to judge that girl from high school for playing Spice Girls repeatedly. But now overlord Mark Zuckerberg and his minions are pushing the game a step further with a feature that allows users to listen along with pals in real time. More »
Figuring cops shouldn't be the only ones chasing down criminals via Facebook, convenience store chain Circle K has started going after small-time alleged thieves by posting surveillance video footage on Facebook. The chain's partner, crime fighting nonprofit Silent Witness, gives as much as $100 to those who spot acquaintances and soon-to-be-former friends making off with beer. More »
A nasty bit of malware making the rounds on Facebook has reportedly made off with the usernames and passwords of more than 45,000 users. The worm, dubbed Ramnit, has the ability to infect Windows, Microsoft Office and HTML files, say the experts at McAfee. More »
Think that Facebook's de facto spam filter couldn't possibly be keeping anything of consequence out of your inbox? Think again. When James happened to click that unobtrusive "Other" tab on his Facebook inbox, he learned that he had won a new TV, Blu-Ray player, and a copy of the movie the contest was promoting. But Facebook had filed this message away on his behalf....in August 2010. More »
It's been almost a year since Facebook began taking your "like" list and turning it into advertising via so-called "sponsored stories," and on Friday, a U.S. District Court judge in California rejected the social networking site's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit that claims Facebook unjustly enriched itself with these ads by violating a California law pertaining to commercial endorsements. More »
When Facebook thinks you don't particularly want to read a message that's sent your way, it redirects it into a folder dubbed "other." Some users forget to check the box regularly, and others may not even be aware that they have it. More »
Not that this has happened to us, but our friends say that they've found themselves wasting away entire days at work not having accomplished much of anything other than getting sucked into an endless vortex of status updates, instant messages and YouTube videos. Social media is a powerful tool that can actually increase your efficiency, but it can also dominate those who lack the discipline to compartmentalize it. More »
Three years after the Federal Trade Commission leveled charges against Facebook, claiming the social networking site violated users' privacy, a settlement has been reached. Part of the terms of the proposed settlement requires Facebook to undergo audits for 20 years. More »
Some Facebook users reportedly suffered a deluge of pornographic and violent images earlier this week due to a hacker-spawned exploit, but the social network says it has the problem under control. The images that flooded accounts' news feeds allegedly consisted of hardcore porn with celebrity faces pasted in, as well as disturbing images, one of which featured an abused dog. The problem continued for as long as 48 hours before Facebook got a handle on it. More »
Facebook can be quite the stickler when it comes to enforcing its real name policy. Celebrity writer Salman Rushdie took to Twitter complaining that Facebook deactivated his account because it thought it was a fake. After he proved his identity, the powers that be reactivated his page in his given name, Ahmed. Only after taking his problem public via Twitter did he get Facebook to back down and let him use Salman. More »
If you are hyper-paranoid about getting cut off from Facebook and want to allow members of your trusted inner circle to swoop in and help you out when you're in need, you're now covered. Facebook is testing a feature called "Trusted Friends" that lets contacts you choose retrieve access codes to pass along to you if you find yourself unable to log on. More »
Those who toil away on free-to-play Facebook games may have built up a false sense of security as they blindly click on all the permission buttons in order to get to the good stuff. But an ad that claims to offer Facebookers access to a free Mario Kart game is a trap, like one of those upside down question blocks in the real version of the game. More »
Accusing Facebook of violating federal wiretap laws by tracking her web use when she wasn't logged in to the site, a Mississippi woman is taking the social networking giant to court. Her suit, which seeks class action status, is going after Facebook for trespassing, invasion of privacy, unjust enrichment and breach of contract. More »
The Hunger Games is a wildly popular series of books about a dystopian future where the government spies on your every move and teenagers square off in a to-the-death tournament for the amusement of the upper-class residents of the capitol city. The books are soon to become a big-time Hollywood franchise and as part of the much-hyped countdown to that release, millions of people are getting in on the viral marketing by logging onto a website that creates a unique badge for each user. But are these people looking at the permissions they're signing away when they log in? More »
On this poster, "Facebook" should really be a fill-in-the blank option. I can think of several other instances where this is true. If you're not paying for a service online, then you're what's being sold to advertisers and marketers, either in the form of ads being served, your data being sold, or both. So, in the case of the Facebook redesign backlash, that was the pig complaining about the barn getting a paint job and a new rope swing. More »
Back when online music service Spotify first launched in the U.S., users had the option of using their Facebook ID to log in. But that all changed last week, around the same time that Facebook launched their much-derided redesign, and now new Spotify users must use their Facebook ID to log in. More »
Senators Blumenthal and Franken have figuratively posted on Social Intelligence Corp's Facebook wall a poll asking the company to answer several questions about its background check business. What makes this company's service unique is that it scours the internet profiles of prospective employees and flags them for things like holding drinks or holding guns. More »
It turns out you can't trust all the news that reaches you via email forwards. A hoax that declares Facebook is about to start charging for its services is reportedly circulating, involving a request for users to post messages on their walls that will allow them to continue using Facebook for free. More »
Netflix would like to buddy up with Facebook, but a 1988 law called the Video Privacy Protection Act, which makes it illegal to publish customers' rental history, prevents it from doing so. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted the legal roadblock at Facebook's f8 conference Thursday, and the company publicly asked customers for support. More »
Kevin has had his Facebook account for quite a few years, but decided to poke around and go on a friending spree to make it easier to make contacts and find a new job. That's how he learned the hard way that while Facebook wants you to connect with people, they don't really want you to connect with so many of them that you look like a spambot. More »
Facebook rolled out some new tweaks this week, like adding a real-time "ticker" of all your friends' updates in the right sidebar, and making pictures bigger in the news feed, along with a few other tweaks. Some people woke up to them and promptly starting making Facebook status updates on how much they hate the new Facebook. Well, there's a few ways to roll them back and get the "old" Facebook. More »
The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that it is seeking public comment on proposed changes to the Children's Online Privacy Act, which would strengthen the law's ability to protect children under the age of 13. More »
Potential Facebook investors who were salivating over snagging a piece of the company come April will have to wait several months longer than expected to buy in. The social networking behemoth delayed its initial public offering, which could possibly be the largest in history, from April to an undisclosed time late in 2012. More »
According to the National Labor Relations Board, workers have the right to publicly gripe about workplace conditions without suffering retribution. An NLRB judgment in a messy case last week reaffirmed the stance. An employee at a Buffalo nonprofit complained about the work ethic of a coworker on Facebook, and coworkers piled on in comments. After the organization fired the employees, citing an anti-cyber harassment policy, one of them filed a complaint via the NLRB. More »
Now that Facebook is streaming movie rentals, it was only a matter of time until it got more deeply involved with music. Conflicting reports say that Facebook is going to either reveal its own music service or announce deeper integration with existing services at its developer conference Sept. 22. More »
Unless you live in North Korea, Russia or China, chances are you've never flown on North Korea's Air Koryo. But thanks to the power of Facebook, you can now choose to like the airline and comment on its wall. But be careful what you say. The airline recently had to scold a group of "South Korean false fans" whose "spam had engulfed much of the fan-pages' posts and pictures." More »
Facebook Deals, the four-month-old effort to compete with Groupon and LivingSocial, is on the way out. The social networking site plans to sever its daily deals arm in the coming weeks. More »
Although the days in which it was socially acceptable to SuperPoke someone via a social network have long since passed, Google is reportedly doing its part to make sure no one is ever again subjected to the annoyance. The company, which purchased SuperPoke developer Slide last year, is shutting down its social apps. More »
Facebook has taken steps to make it easier to pinpoint which people can see things you post. Rather than forcing you to juggle settings on your profile, the site displays the groups who can view each individual post in a drop-down menu next to it. The move seems geared to match a similar setup on Google+. More »
Facebook is lining up deals with movie studios to put their films online for streaming rental, making agreements with Universal last week and Miramax this week. Using special apps for the services, you pay 30 Facebook credits — $3 per film — and have a 48-hour window to watch the movies. More »
Facebook is forcing pharmaceutical companies to open up and swallow public opinion. Before this week, the organizations were allowed to have closed walls that didn't allow users to post. Thanks to a shift in policy, pharmaceutical companies now no longer receive the privilege. More »
Be careful the next time you're planning a bank heist on Facebook or send out a Tweet that reads "there were only supposed to be two alarm systems wtf???" As we've already reported, cops around the country have begun using social media to track down criminals, and now comes the news that the New York City Police Department has actually created a unit that monitors Facebook updates, Twitter feeds and the like to detect the planning of, or bragging about, illegal goings-on. More »
Last week, Facebook introduced a new feature that lets parents list themselves as "Expected: Child" in the "Friends and Family" portion of their profiles, adding in a due date and name. The feature gives expecting parents a way to share their news without the tedium of having to notify everyone they know individually, or having to set up a separate page for the baby. More »
Facebook has become an effective crime-fighting tool for law enforcement officers, not only allowing cops to profile suspects but providing convenient ways for victims to report crimes. More »
Back in the late 1980s, lawmakers were determined to prevent movie rental companies from publishing customers' rental history. The Video Privacy Protection Act made violations punishable by $2,500 per offense. Now the law is causing headaches for Facebook and Netflix because it's reportedly written in a way that would forbid Netflix from publishing your rental history on your Facebook page. More »
After years in court, the determined twin Harvard classmates of Facebook CEO/president Mark Zuckerberg who claim he stole their idea for Facebook have finally given up their legal challenge to their $65 million 2008 settlement. More »
The FTC has given thumbs up to a company, Social Intelligence Corp., selling a new kind of employee background check to employers. This one scours the internet for your posts and pictures to social media sites and creates a file of all the dumb stuff you ever uploaded online. For instance, this sample they provided was flagged for "Demonstrating potentially violent behavior" because of "flagrant display of weapons or bombs." More »
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says comments he made last week at an education conference about wanting to open the site up to kids under 13 were taken out of context. "That's just not top of the list of things for us to figure out right now," he told attendees at a conference in Paris. More »
The days of finding lipstick on a shirt collar are over. All you need now is to look on a cheating spouse's Facebook wall, as one man in a 20-year long marriage learned. More »
Given the sheer number of people on Facebook — and given the vast number of parents who have no problem saddling a child with a name that will require an explanation for its entire lifetime — it was inevitable that someone out there would be so inspired by Facebook that they would name their kid after the site's "Like" button. More »
To help combat clickjacking, Facebook is adding a new feature that will spot scam-like behavior by pages on its site and ask you to confirm your "like" before automatically adding a story to your profile and your friends' News Feeds." So how do you as a user fight clickjacking on Facebook? It's a really easy one-step process. When you see a post that says "to watch this kkkkrazy video, just copy and paste this URL into your browser," — don't do it. More »
Earlier this week it was revealed that a top PR firm was, on behalf on an unnamed client, testing the waters of the blogosphere, trying to find writers to post anti-Google items with promises of getting that content linked on bigger sites. Now a new report on The Daily Beast confirms that the folks at Facebook were the ones behind the attempted smear campaign. More »
How dare non-Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg be so impertinent as to have the same name as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg! The nerve! The social networking site has retaliated against NFF-Zuckerberg for the very impudence of being born and named thusly by booting him from Facebook. That oughta teach him a lesson. More »
Most of the people reading this post were older than 13 years of age when Facebook was unleashed upon the world a few years back, so we never had to lie about our age just to play Frontierville or post grainy camera phone photos of ourselves. But according to a new study from our kin at Consumer Reports, more than one in three of the 20 million Facebook users under the age of 18 are also too young to actually be on the site in the first place. More »
Soap operas continue to wash out, and demographic analysis suggests audiences may be shifting away from the programming to spend more time on Facebook games. More »
I know all of you have gotten used to checking to see if it was an orange, yellow, or red day according to the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alert system. But now that's all gone, and you can check Facebook or Twitter to see whether or not the world is going to blow up today. More »
The twin former Harvard classmates of Facebook CEO/president Mark Zuckerberg, who contend he stole their idea for the site, refuse to give up their quest to procure more than what they got in a previous settlement. Even after a U.S. appeals court judge denied their argument and pointedly told them to give up the case, the twins' lawyers asked a special 11-judge panel to take a look at their appeal. More »
In a precedent-setting case, a court has ruled that a debt collector can't continue to contact a debtor's friends and family on Facebook about her car payments, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The debt collector had already emailed, texted her, and called her at home and work, according tot he lawsuit, 23 times in one day. More »
Kevin was worried. His friend Mike said over Facebook chat that he and his wife and kids were stranded in London after getting mugged. They needed money wired immediately to settle their hotel bill. This was especially worrisome because Mike was supposed to be recuperating in the hospital from head surgery... Then Kevin realized that someone had cracked his friend's Facebook account and was impersonating him. Here is the transcript of their conversation: More »
People share all kinds of news via Facebook status update: births, college acceptances, new jobs, and deaths. Facebook recently introduced a feature that rehashes "previous," (originally called "memorable") status updates in the right sidebar, with some of the text of and a link to certain status updates, which could be several years old. It's incredibly confusing at first, but at least it generates pageviews for Facebook.
The feature has been causing Carroll a lot of anxiety lately because it keeps pulling up statuses from her and her contacts' feeds from a period in her life that she would rather not remember, when many of her loved ones and pets died in a short span of time. More »
An epilogue to the film The Social Network took place in a U.S. appeals court, with twin Harvard classmates of Facebook CEO/president Mark Zuckerberg — who accused him of ripping them off — being forced to stick with their 2008 settlement of $65 million. More »
MTV and The College Board recently teamed up for something called the College Affordability Challenge, a contest to create digital tools that will help to make navigating the financial aid maze even slightly easier. Earlier this week, they announced the winner, a Facebook application that takes users' info and matches them up with the most appropriate aid providers. More »
It might be shocking to you to find out that some companies have lied about their own creation, but hey, who doesn't like a good story? From eBay to YouTube, tall tales have been spun to consumers for various reasons. Let's take a walk down liars' memory lane, shall we? More »
Hoping there's a market of lonely single dudes who wish to project the image of happy domesticity, a company promises to develop pretend girlfriends to post sweet nothings on clients' walls. More »
You might want to think twice the next time you update your Facebook status with, "Someone send me a pound of gummy bears and a gigantic chocolate rabbit": Facebook is in the process of testing ad targeting that would work off your real-time conversations. More »
Only one of this afternoon's combatants has been the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie. Apparently, two hours of customers sitting on the phone not being helped by Time Warner Cable customer service isn't as thrilling as the story of a site that lets 500 million users share baby photos with friends and all their personal info with sketchy app developers. More »
A married Michigan man who went ahead and got hitched to a second woman — whom he told he was divorced — was revealed to be a polygamist when his original wife spotted his wedding photos on Facebook and turned him in. She found the pictures after her husband de-friended her on the social networking site. More »
For the sixth year in a row, we asked Consumerist readers to send us their nominations for our Worst Company In America tournament. And this year's response was the greatest by far. More »
It was bound to happen eventually. Earlier today, Warner Bros. launched a new program on Facebook that will let users rent streaming movies directly through the social networking site. More »
Facebook's "like" button is more than just Lil Wayne's plaything. It's now an all-powerful method of endorsement and conduit for viral spreading. More »
Facebook has had a bad relationship with the whole "privacy" thing. Now the company says it will be toning down the legalese on its nearly 6,000-word privacy policy. More »
Lil Wayne isn't so little when it comes to Facebook like-age. The rapper took the Guinness World Record for Facebook "likes" in a 24-hour span with this uninspiring, yet resoundingly effective solicitation: More »
It was recently reported that Google is in the market to buy Twitter and that the price tag floating around for the company was somewhere in the $8-10 billion range. But today, Twitter's CEO denied those reports — sort of. More »
A lot of people expressed surprise at the $315 million purchase of Huffington Post by AOL. But that's nothing compared to the figures Facebook and Google are reportedly considering ponying up to acquire Twitter. More »
Sony really, really wants people to start playing its games on new handheld devices. After announcing a follow-up to the PSP and revealing it will make PlayStation games available on Android phones, it's finally revealed that it's going to unveil the long-rumored PlayStation Phone. More »
Hardcore gamers my scoff at free-to-play Facebook games such as Zynga's FarmVille and CityVille, but the social games have proven to be more popular and lucrative than most major video game titles, according to estimates from IGN. More »
The proprietors of a satirical dating site culled info from 250,000 public Facebook profiles (including real names) to construct mock dating profiles in what they claim is an effort to expose the social networking giant's dark side. More »
February is free Facebook access month for seven airlines, which will let passengers access the social networking site via Gogo Inflight Internet throughout February More »
For the none of you who really, really wanted to have your Facebook updates automatically converted into ads for which you receive no money — and which you can't opt out of — the site has answered your prayers! More »
If you've ever wondered how some of your Facebook friends find the time to update their status as frequently as they do, a new survey may have an answer. According to the study, from AIS Media, 27% of people use Facebook in the bathroom. Good thing they're not actually including details about that in their updates. More »
Max says he used Facebook Ads to direct traffic to his computer repair service, and is baffled that the Zuckerberg Death Star is charging him nearly $300 despite receiving only eight weekly page views during the ad campaign — down from his usual 10 weekly hits. A $50 credit helped defray the costs, but he's still stuck with a $245.17 bill. More »
Facebook is so relatively new that deaths of users are somewhat of an anomaly, but a mathematical model reveals that the amount of undead accounts will rise to 50 million within five years. More »
A woman has filed suit, the first of its kind, to get a debt collector to stop harassing her, her friends, and her family through Facebook and other social networking sites. More »
Even though more and more people have been using their Facebook accounts to send e-mails to their friends and family, apparently that's not enough for the site's head honcho Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier today, the youngster announced a new e-mailing service that he says is the next step in messaging. More »
Here's a fun lil' project to protect your privacy in just a few minutes. Go through Facebook and delete all the apps you're no longer using. That way they'll no longer have access your data so they can't mine it or sell it. Here's how to do it. More »
Cracking down on Facebook app developers who were caught sharing user IDs to advertisers, the social networking site revealed a zero tolerance policy for data brokers, going so far as to ban offenders for half a year. More »
The guy sitting next to you in the coffee shop might actually be logging into your Facebook account, using the info beaming out your computer. It's called "session hijacking" or "sidejacking" and despite it being a well-known vulnerability, most websites aren't protecting their users from it. After a developer recently unveiled a user-friendly bit of code that makes "sidejacking" as easy a few mouse clicks, the problem is getting fresh attention. More »
It's always nice when a Democrat from Massachusetts and a Republican from Texas can work together, though Facebook bigwig Mark Zuckerberg might disagree. The website's CEO finds himself being asked to answer some tough questions from a pair of Congressmen from those two states. More »
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a large number of the most popular applications on Facebook — including all of the 10 most popular apps — have been improperly transmitting user info, including names and possibly names of friends to advertising and internet tracking companies. More »
Facebook updated its Groups feature this week, making it easier for your friends to create new groups and add you to them — without asking you first. As Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis discovered, this means a long-forgotten "friend" can make you a member of just about anything, even a group known by the acronym NAMBLA. More »
If you don't like the concept of having your online actions tracked for marketing purposes, you can add Nielsen to you list of sworn enemies. The audience measurement company is better known for its TV viewer ratings, but yesterday it announced a new partnership with websites like Facebook where it will access user info (age and gender only, it says) to collect aggregate data on ad views around the web. More »
The New York Bar Association has decreed that it's okay for lawyers to troll through Facebook and other social media sites for damaging info on their opposition. There is an important caveat, though. It's only ethical if the info is publicly available. "Friending" someone for the purpose of accessing data the person only makes available to their "friends" is not kosher, nor is it cool to ask someone else to do it for you. More »
Somewhere in the secret Facebook labs, a plan was enacted to create a phone to battle the likes of the iPhone and Droid. The company has reportedly contracted with a third party to get rolling on the until-now secret device, which could be out by the holidays this year. Or not. More »
Even though your friends may be bored with your copious Facebook posts, there is a certain group that is very interested in your lame airport terminal observations and vacation photos. That group would be thieves. More »
Because there is nothing more important for GM to improve with their vehicles, the car company has begun testing a functionality that would allow Facebook-addicted drivers to tell everyone "I can't believe Prince Poppycock made it through to the finals on America's Got Talent!!!" without having to take their hands off the steering wheel. More »
"I justify this as being my only source of entertainment, and I'm forgoing movies and dinners out, so it's OK," one Farmville addict told Cnet. Frugality, or self-deluded rationalization? More »
Investigating why it is that you can't block Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook, Mashable discovered a safeguard makes it so once someone has been blocked enough, future blockage is prevented. More »
"Facebook Places" is a new Facebook feature with Foursquare check-in-like functionality, but by default it lets other people tag you as being at a location without requiring your consent even if you're not there. This could lead to friends tagging you as being inside a peepshow, or an ex-girlfriend tagging you as being with another girl so your new girlfriend gets pissed off. The sitcom storyline possibilities are endless! Here's how to turn it off: More »
Ever since Facebook introduced the "like" button for comments, photos, status updates, etc., many users have expressed the need for a "dislike" button to level things out. Now unscrupulous marketers are using peoples' desire for a dislike button to their own advantage. More »
Coinstar, which has more than 60,000 change-converting kiosks around the world, is offering an alternative to cash and gift cards by serving up Facebook Credits to spend on games and applications on the social networking site. More »
Tim says he's pinpointed a flaw in Facebook's security system that blocks users and computers from Facebook accounts — while also locking the accounts — if they are hit with too many failed logins or too many successful logins in too short of a time period. Facebook got back to Tim and says it's aware of the issue and is working on a fix but doesn't yet know when it will come. More »
Remember Beacon? This is not Beacon, Amazon wants you to know. The retailer has launched a new program where you can connect your Amazon account to your Facebook account, but it promises it won't broadcast your purchases or bug your friends. Instead, the connection seems designed to funnel all the likes and favorites on your Facebook account (and those of your friends as well) into Amazon's giant brain, so it can refine its shopping recommendations. Oh, and it will remind you of upcoming birthdays. More »
Do you share your personal info with everyone on Facebook? If so, there's a decent chance that data is now part of a file — containing information for around 100 million users of the social networking site — that's now making its way around the Web. More »
Back in the day, advertising was supposed to be kinda sneaky — yeah, we knew companies were directing ads at us consumers in an effort to get us to buy stuff, but no one talked about it. Now, social media heavies like Twitter, Zynga (makers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and other time leechers) and LinkedIn are being totally open about their efforts. More »
A tech-savvy 12-year-old Minnesota girl reported a sexual assault by her mom's ex-boyfriend by using her iPod to contact a friend through Facebook. More »
Has Facebook's ongoing foolishness with privacy settings, fine print, and advertising taken its toll on the brand? According to The American Customer Satisfaction Index's E-Business Report, Facebook scored 64 points out of 100, which puts it in the bottom 5% of private companies, "in the same range as airlines and cable companies." The one bit of good news for Facebook is that MySpace scored 63 points. More »
It hasn't been a good week on the other side of the pond for Burger King or Coca Cola. The fast food company got a kick in the rear for misleading customers about the size of its chicken sandwich, while the cola giant is left having to tell little kids not to Google "2 girls 1 cup" after a failed Facebook campaign. More »
Recently, a judge in New York slapped a restraining order on Facebook's ability to transfer company assets after a web designer sued the site, claiming he is entitled to an 84% share of the company. But yesterday, the social networking giant got a bit of relief when a different judge reversed the earlier order. More »
Are any of your Facebook friends posting status updates about how they've been turned off from drinking Coca Cola after watching some video? Yes, there's the rare chance your friend has gotten sick of the "Buy the World a Coke" jingle, but it's more likely that their account has been hijacked (or rather, "clickjacked") by nefarious, nerdy forces. More »
The WSJ says they have seen a copy of a contract (signed in 2003) giving an investor an 84% stake in the website that was to eventually become Facebook. This contract is now the subject of a new lawsuit against the privately held company. More »
Katie says he friend has been attacked on Facebook. Someone has copied her profile, befriended her contacts and sent them terrible messages in a frame job. She says Facebook has been unresponsive and wants your advice on how to handle the situation. More »
While the rest of you were busy asking friends to join your gang in MafiaWars or doing whatever it is you're supposed to do in Farmville, a mother in California was busy using Facebook for a good reason — to track down her two children who had been kidnapped 15 years earlier. More »
Business Insider says that the usually calm and collected Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg "seemed to melt on stage," while answering questions from industry insiders at the All Things D Conference. They also report that Mr. Zuckerberg told the crowd that he doesn't believe in giving users the choice to "opt-in" to privacy changes because back when Facebook introduced the "news feed" everyone freaked out — but it turned out OK in the end. More »
While the public outcry about Facebook's complicated privacy tools recently pushed the company to simplify its user interface, at least one industry insider believes that peoples' concerns are overblown and that, for all the hype and media coverage, the vast majority of users don't seem to care. More »
Yesterday afternoon, while everyone else was cheering about how Facebook's supercool new privacy settings were going to bring about world peace and end hunger, Marshall Kirkpatrick actually took the time to listen to what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to say about the changes, and noticed something interesting: Zuckerberg, as Kirkpatrick put it on ReadWriteWeb, "said a number of things that seemed of questionable...truth." More »
We saw this coming as soon as Facebook introduced the memorial status for the Facebook accounts of dead people. It was bound to happen at some point. Facebook has begun declaring people dead. Well, specifically, people are having their friends and loved ones declared dead as a prank, but it's nearly impossible to rise from the Facebook dead. That's what happened to Ryan, who has been dead for over a month now. More »
Lifehacker has a handy guide to and analysis of the new, streamlined privacy controls just announced by Facebook. There's also the full version posted on Facebook. The new controls are simpler, but fall short in some respects. More »
The prevailing wisdom about young people is that they are not savvy when it comes to managing their on-line reputations — but a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life project says that the opposite is true. Young people are actually much more likely to actively restrict what information they share and with whom they share it. More »
Faced with a steady stream of criticism from users, privacy advocates, and more recently members of the government, Facebook has announced today that they're simplifying how privacy settings work on the site. The WSJ is liveblogging Facebook's conference call right now. CNET's coverage is coming in faster, though, and offers more detail. Below is a quick summary of what Facebook is changing. More »
Surely some of you remember the item we posted last month about a towing company in Michigan that had filed a $750,000 slander and libel lawsuit against a college student because he'd created a Facebook page for people to voice their complaints about the company. Well, that move appears to have backfired for the towing company, which has since lost a good chunk of business. More »
Echoing (or is that just endlessly repeating?) comments made by his minions last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today said that the company "missed the mark" with its complex privacy controls, and vowed to give users a "simpler way to control your information." More »
Confirming rumors that began trickling out earlier this week, Facebook today said that it would make its privacy controls easier to use. But the company stopped short of adding any specifics, and didn't lay out a timetable for the changes. Oh, and Facebook has also been caught handing over some allegedly private data to big advertisers. And did we mention the hack that could delete all your friends? More »
Facing mounting criticism that its privacy settings have become overly complex, Facebook is now considering changes "for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from." It's unclear, however, whether the planned changes will provide more options for users who don't want to share certain information, or just make the existing choices easier to access. More »
Facebook and Farmville and Mafia Wars-makers Zynga were bickering over in-game currency and the social network took a stand that hampered the game publisher's ability to advertise through pseudo-updated on the site, causing the games to lose millions of players. More »
Theresa over at Consumer Reports Ad Watch took a gander at the latest Kin ad and is kinda skeeved out. In the ad for Microsoft's new social networking phone targeted at teens, protagonist "Rosa" goes out to confront in person "Matty Goldberb" who's been hitting on her on Facebook, despite their never meeting before and not knowing each other besides some "mutual friends" (according to Facebook). More »
Brixx Pizza in North Carolina takes social media pretty seriously, because it fired a waitress after she complained on her Facebook page about a stingy couple who occupied a table for three hours and only left a $5 tip. More »
There's a new Facebook search site out there with a concept similar to PleaseRobMe, a site that demonstrates just how easy it is for bad guys to use social networking crap to tell when you're away from your home. This new Facebook Search allows anyone to search for potentially embarrassing updates that can now be viewed by the public. More »
There have been quite a few trend pieces out there this weekend, all along the lines of "Facebook's privacy issues woes are causing users to quit it... FOREVER!" We've already told you it's not likely you'll decamp — after all, everyone loves Facebook... right? More »
While Diaspora has gotten a lot of attention, and money, as an open-source privacy-centric alternative to Facebook, those four scrappy NYU kids weren't the first to think of a node-based social networking platform where every user owns their own data: It's called Appleseed, and it already has working source code. More »
By the time someone hacks into your Facebook account and sends all of your friends plaintive messages about being mugged in London, it's too late to do anything about it. However, Facebook does have an early-warning system of sorts. Using a security setting, you can have the service alert you whenever your account is accessed from another location, giving you a chance to (hopefully) force the intruder out and change your password. More »
This chart shows how the default privacy settings on Facebook have gotten less, well, private, from 2005-2010. Created by Matt McKeon based off an EFF timeline, it helps visualize how Facebook has grown increasingly permissive with your data as it has grown in size, power, and revenue. What might tomorrow bring? Perhaps in the future Facebook will create placeholder profiles for people who haven't signed up yet, using data gleaned from Zabasearch and LexisNexis. Check out Matt's site for an interactive version.
Facebook is soo fun, right? A place to reunite with old friends, make new ones, a veritable virtual playground just waiting for you to enjoy it — and share your information with the world, for good or for bad, with or without your knowledge. CBS News takes a look at five common dangers Facebook users are at risk from. More »
Al Franken, hater of Facebook's cavalier approach to privacy, has posted instructions for how to keep Facebook from disclosing your personal information to their "partners." Guess what? It's kinda hard! No, really, there's more to it than you might expect. More »
After two security glitches were revealed today, Facebook was forced to shut down chat functions while it worked on a fix. One bug allowed users to see allegedly private chats, while another exposed pending friend requests. Facebook didn't notify users whose accounts may have been compromised, presumably because, hey, they're Facebook, and they don't have to. More »
F**** Facebook! More and more, fed up with ever-disintegrating privacy policies, are saying just that, even going so far as to kill their Facebook accounts. Gizmodo has "Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook," among them, one-sided terms of service, a "war on privacy," the sharing of private data with applications, but perhaps best of fall, "Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted": More »
If you're unhappy with the latest Facebook privacy settings but don't want to kill your account completely, ReadWriteWeb has highlighted two services—both Facebook apps—that might give you back some control. They're not perfect solutions, though. The Green Safe app scrapes all your data into a stand-alone tab that only your friends can access, but it also means a third-party developer will replace Facebook as your data holder (the app will use your data to serve ads as well). The Give Me My Data app lets you export all of your Facebook content so that you don't lose anything if you disconnect your profile from Facebook's pages. More »
Facebook is in a quandary: they want to sell their users' data for cash, but they don't want to look like doucheshnozzles. What's a social network to do? Design a byzantine apparatus for opting out of the privacy-invasions that confuses and discourages the user from using it effectively, while still appearing to be user-friendly and functional. That way they can have their cake and eat it and sell it too. In other words, it's an "evil interface," and Facebook's privacy settings are full of them, argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation: More »
If you've got $45 burning a hole in your special black market fund and have a hankering for a bundle of 1,000 stolen or fake Facebook accounts, you might want to talk to your friendly neighborhood social networking pirate. More »
Recent and proposed changes to Facebook's information sharing policies have Senators Franken (D-MN) and Schumer (D-NY) a little irritated. They've penned a letter, along with Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mark Begich (D-AK), asking Facebook to reconsider their new opt-out procedure, and to take further steps to keep user's personal details, such as their interests and friend lists, private unless they chose to share them. More »
Senator Charles Schumer is upset on your behalf over Facebook's latest loosening of its privacy policies, and yesterday he called for the FTC to step in and provide some guidance, offering to introduce legislation if the agency feels it needs that extra authority. Specifically, Schumer wants three things: opt-out defaults should be switched to opt-in, sites should always disclose where the information is going, and there should be some general "guidelines for user privacy" that sites follow. More »
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook will toss a policy that made developers and partners with access your data to delete it after 24 hours. Now they can just keep it. Turns out the privacy policy hindered growth: More »
Whether you're trying to get a job and worried about snoopy new bosses, sick of maintaining a virtual profile constantly bombarded with increasingly useless updates and pings from people that you decreasingly actually know, fed up with Facebook's attitudetowards their users, disgusted with your addiction to it, or just want you, your personal details and habits, and photos, out, deleting your Facebook profile can be done in a few easy steps: More »
Yesterday, Facebook announced an awesome new feature that lets anyone see your current city, hometown, education, work, likes, and interests, even if you've set your profile to private. Will this benefit individual users and their friends? Not unless the only thing you remember about your dear friend is that they enjoy leather-play and you're willing to scroll through reams of headshots to find them. No, this new privacy erosion is for the real clients of Facebook: advertisers, and the data-mining minions that toil on their behalf. However, there are two ways to be totally private. More »
When you were a teenager, how many times did you wish you could have called the cops on your parents for being too nosy? It may be too late for you to slap some juris prudence on your folks, but a trailblazing teen in Arkansas has filed harassment charges — criminal, not civil — against his mom for hassling him on Facebook. More »
A 12-year-old kid is probably getting his crops slashed and burned by his mum after he racked up $1,400 in Farmville purchases, draining his own savings and running up charges on her credit card. More »
CNN manufactured a trend story about young professionals hiding their Facebook statuses so snooping prospective employees can't find anything to eliminate them from job consideration. The story is based on a Microsoft survey that finds hiring managers use the site to dig for dirt on applicants. More »
If you've used Facebook for more than 30 seconds in the last couple of years, you've no doubt been asked to be a "fan" of a movie, a food product or maybe your favorite consumer news site. But, apparently that didn't work well enough for the companies that invest millions in marketing on Facebook, because the whole "fan" thing will soon be replaced with the more popular "like" option. More »
Newly released documents under the Freedom of Information Act reveal not just the Justice Department's guidelines for how to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for investigative purposes, but which ones are the most friendly to their requests for access to user info. More »
It's official — playing Farmville and tagging friends in photos (and consequently untagging embarrassing photos of yourself from your friends' photos) has become more popular than actually trying to find things on the internet, as a new report shows Facebook edged out Google as the most-visited site on the internet last week. More »
Become a fan of Consumerist on Facebook and get new post updates, connect with other readers, and meetup infos in your news feed. Post your horror stories and consumer spit-takes. Facebook! Or not! Anyway, it's there!
Online advertisers will do anything for clicks, and Facebook will take anybody's money. A Facebook advertiser decided the best way to grab eyeballs was to put a picture of a 9/11 terrorist in his banner ad. Yep, it's good ol' Mohamed Atta, the guy who steered the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. More »
While Google was busy plotting the beginnings of SkyNet on one front, they simultaneously launched their full-frontal attack on Facebook with the debut of Google Buzz, their new social networking tool that puts status updates right on your Gmail page. And, just like Facebook, Google Buzz managed to completely overstep the bounds of personal privacy. More »
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has plans to make Gmail "more social," according to an anonymous source. The idea is to make it easier to post links and share status updates. Meanwhile, Facebook is apparently planning a "Gmail killer." More »
A glitch at AT&T is causing some mobile phone used to be randomly shuffled into other people's Facebook accounts. Apparently the carrier has confused which phones should be logged into which accounts. Whoops. More »
While messing around on Facebook, Ian got this horrifying combination of security words that seems like something straight out of a Final Destination flick. He writes: More »
In an interview with an unnamed Facebook employee, the Rumpus revealed some disconcerting revelations about the privacy, or lack thereof, in the social network. The most eye-popping of these is that Facebook keeps track of the profiles you click on the most. More »
Mark Zuckerberg thinks you don't even really care about your privacy anymore because the "social norm" has changed. This makes it OK for his company to change the privacy settings of 350 million users. More »
Facebook has shut down the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine's access to the site, claiming the service violates Facebook's "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities." More »
Supposedly the most depressing day of the year is just a few weeks away, and that sucks. But if you off yourself, you can't drink, so it's a conundrum. What you can do is use the website suicidemachine.org to remove yourself from unnecessary social media sites that either you've stopped using or don't really enjoy anymore. More »
Frustrated with a room mix-up and subsequent bad customer service at Planet Hollywood's hotel/casino in Las Vegas, Brad expressed his frustration in a note on their Facebook fan page. More »
The next time you don't get that job because someone in HR saw your Facebook pics of you at the weekend cosplay orgy, you'll have only yourself to blame. (But not for the orgy, which sounded like a really good idea at the time.) Starting soonish—it's being rolled out now—you'll have the ability to set privacy levels for each status update. That sound you hear is the collective wail of moms everywhere who are about to be shut out of the more salacious aspects of their kids' lives. More »
—>Apparently the new generation of med students aren't as concerned as you might like them to be about sharing your medical information on Facebook or Twitter, says Time. More »
—>What do Facebook applications know about you and your friends? What do you know about what Facebook applications know about you? If you have Facebook, you can take this handy quiz from the ACLU of Northern California that tests your knowledge of Facebook, privacy, and outside developers. More »
—>Here's a company that will help those who really, really need more help killing Col. Mustard in the parlor with the candlestick in Mafia Wars: Australian company uSocial is selling Facebook "friends" and Twitter followers by the batch. If you want 5,000 more adoring Facebook minions checking out your status updates, you pay $654.30. More »
—>If you're suspicious of Facebook's use of your personal data, the social networking site has made some recent changes that may make you very happy. And for this, you can blame thank Canada. More »
—>Watch out for "[A friend] commented on a photo of you" notifications on Facebook. If you click on the notification and it asks you to install an application called "Your Photos," RUN AWAY. Your friend didn't comment on any photos of you, and the application exists to coax people to click on banner ads. More »
—>How long will it take for Coke to give up on its Facebook page? That depends how long its PR machine can keep deleting the "fun facts" on its Wall: More »
—>Marsh, a grocery chain in Indiana and Ohio, made a special coupon available to their fans on Facebook. The coupon was good for $10 off a purchase of $10 or more. Great deal, right? Until the promotion got out of hand, and the store stopped accepting the coupon on Friday, with no warning to customers. Based on past similar experiences, you can guess how well this turns out. More »
—>If you think 20th Century Fox was cruel to Dark Angel, canceling the show after just two seasons, get a load of what Facebook did to Dark Angel. Not the show, the person. Yes, there's a guy out there who legally changed his name to Dark Angel. And on top of the gloom of instilling massive disappointment in everyone who meets him hoping he'll be Jessica Alba, Dark Angel was deemed too fake of a name by the Facebook cops. So they booted his account twice. More »
—>One thing I personally hate about Facebook is how the ads co-opt my friends' pictures and use them to try to sell me stupid stuff. Dan received one of those types of ads yesterday, only the combination of text and photo selection was a little... um, let's say "open minded." More »
—>This morning, I woke up to find an inbox full of readers freaked out about Facebook friend suggestions. What's the big deal about that? Privacy-minded Facebook users can't figure out where these suggestions are coming from, and aren't happy with the possibilities. More »
—>ReadWriteWeb has a scary article about the city of Bozeman, Montana. It doesn't sound like a scary place, but if you want to say, work for the City, you'll need to give them all your social networking usernames and passwords.More »
—>Matt was kicked off of Facebook for no reason in March, got the social networking site to admit its error and reinstate him after a few weeks in April, then got the boot again and has been floating around in outer darkness ever since. His tale of despair: More »
—>The Army's network administrators have stopped blocking base access to social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, as well as personal e-mail accounts, Wired reports.More »
—>Facebook has prided itself on forcing users to stick hard and true to their real names, eliminating the zany, anonymous nonsense on other social networking sites. The real-name policy isn't changing, but Facebook is finally letting wacky nicknames into the mix, announcing that it will let you choose an alternate name for your profile page, letting friends who know you only as "Spanky" find you without having to recall your given moniker. The new name can also replace the nine-digit number assigned to you on your Facebook URL. More »
—>Look, another update! I think I misinterpreted the point of the legal threats yesterday when I wrote this post. As Savage listeners point out in the comments below, Michael Savage has never hidden the fact that his son is the CEO of Rockstar Energy Drink. The legal threats seem to be against people who are claiming that Michael Savage is directly involved in the company, which he is not. And no, there's no behind-the-scenes shenanigans at work here making me post this; I just feel I need to clarify it after reading the comments. More »
—>Jacob got engaged last weekend. Yay! Mysteriously, before the wedding plans could even begin, his fiancée received an e-mail from Pottery Barn inviting her to start a wedding registry. Except she never signed up with them, or told any other retailer that she was engaged. What she did do was...change her Facebook status. More »
—>It's difficult enough to parse a lengthy TOS for one web-based service, let alone for dozens, or to keep track of when and how they update them. It would be nice if some public-service website out there would keep track of this stuff for all of us, wouldn't it? Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) did just that with the launch of TOSBAck.org, "the terms-of-service tracker." It tracks TOS agreements for 44 different services, including Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Twitter, and eBay. More »
—>If you're managing cellphones for a family or your parents, or let's say hypothetically you have a boyfriend who says he reads Consumerist but really he doesn't or else he would have known better, you'll probably run into stupid subscription and content fees from time to time. You know how people are when it comes to fake "free" offers. More »
—>Good news for gamers, bad news for anyone who count the pixel-obsessed among their social media friends: This Fall Microsoft will bring Facebook and Twitter applications to the Xbox 360, allowing gamers to more easily stalk acquaintances from their couches and brag about their gaming accomplishments. Gaming blog Joystiq covered the announcement, which came at Microsoft's Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference in Los Angeles Monday: More »
—>Eric just graduated from an MBA program Monday and landed smackdab in the middle of our job-shriveling recession. So what did he do? To try to land a job at Microsoft, he bought Facebook ads that specifically targeted employees at the companies he wants to work for. It cost him less than $50, and he got over 20 Microsoft employees to contact him offering their help. Here's how he did it: More »
—>When some lowlife tried to scam Andy the other day through his friend's hijacked Gmail account, Andy tried to get him to use PayPal, and he came up with a great reason why. "It's the fastest way to send money," Andy told the scammer. "Once I deposit the funds, you can print it out of any color printer and it's real money!" Another reader was so amused by it that she decided to use it on her own Facebook scammer earlier today. More »
—>Everybody knows that Smutslayer, omnipotent Facebook god of purity, is responsible for smiting pornographic images that mortals foolishly try to upload to the site. More »
—>Debt collectors are using cute chicks as bait on Facebook to track down and keep track of debtors. For some reason, someone at CBV collections decided to out the truth behind the online construct "Jenny Anderson," that she was the tool of professional skiptracers, to all 658 of her "friends." Reader Bryan, who happens to be a reporter, was one of them, and he took a snapshot and interviewed "Jenny" a bit. The story, inside... More »
—>When voting ended yesterday on the Facebook terms of service, around 600,000 people had voted, and about 70% of those votes were cast for the new documents drafted over the past couple of months. Although the voting total was nowhere near the 30% of active Facebook users that Facebook said would be required, the site is still considering validating the vote and implementing the new terms after the audit is complete. More »
—>PC Mag has assembled a list of instructions on how to wipe your account from a long list of websites, including Classmates.com (you'll have to call), Windows Live ID (it's complicated), and Friendster (ha ha ha). In many cases, canceling is as straightforward as clicking a link and authorizing the cancellation, but it's nice to see all the phone numbers and tips collected in one spot. More »
We are open to putting the documents up to a vote. The rules people must do when on the site and what we must do, a two way thing. There will be Comment periods, a council that will help on future revisions. More »
—>Stephanie Bemister says that after our post went up Facebook contacted her and agreed to take down the facebook page of her dead brother, an award-winning investigative journalist and Nazi hunter. "Thank you again, Ben," she wrote. "My family has no words that truly express how we feel." Previously Facebook told her they wouldn't remove the page because... More »
—>UPDATE: Facebook Agrees To Take Down Dead Relative's Page. Facebook thinks it knows better than the sister of the deceased journalist Bill Bemister about what to do with his Facebook page. Stephanie Bemister sent them a copy of his death certificate and asked it get taken down for privacy and respect purposes. Unlike every other single social networking site she dealt with, Facebook said no. They have a better idea. Stephanie's letter inside... More »
—>It appears in the wake of global attention and outcry, Facebook has, as of at least 12:27 am, reverted back to the previous Terms of Service. Phew, now we can all go back to sending each other digital cupcakes without Big Brother watching us. This is a temporary move until Facebook can draft a new Terms of Service that addresses the users' concerns. CEO Zuckerberg wrote a new blog post, and Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt released this statement: More »
—>Concerned about how discreet your bits are over at Facebook? The All Facebook blog has 10 privacy settings ever user should know about, from removing yourself from Facebook and Google searches, to who can see your tagged photos, and other basic ways of controlling your content. More »
—>If you've been following the Facebook story over the past couple of days, you know by now that Facebook has said that they are not claiming ownership of uploaded user content: "We certainly did not—and did not intend—to create any new right or interest for Facebook in users' data by issuing the new Terms." But blogger Amanda French decided to actually compare the fine print for several social networking sites—MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Picasa—and she concludes that "Facebook's claims to your content are extraordinarily grabby and arrogant." Read her side-by-side comparison here. More »
—>Well, yesterday's Facebook post certainly blew up today, and it looks like Facebook is currently preparing an official response. In the meantime, a Facebook rep has written to the Industry Standard to emphasize that all rights are subject to your privacy settings, so even if they don't expire when you close your account, they'll still be subject to whatever restrictions you had when the account was active. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has also posted a more philosophical response on the Facebook blog saying that while the new Terms of Service are "overly formal," they're only meant to give Facebook the legal ability to enable content sharing among users. More »
This revelation is totally appalling and unacceptable, and this shocking revelation, resulting from our subpoena, also provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain ripe with sexual predators." More »
—>The Senate's Sergeant at Arms, Terry Gainer, joined Facebook to deliver a picture perfect apology to the survivors of the so-called Purple Tunnel of Doom, a group of several thousand people who were kept out of President Obama's inauguration even though they had tickets. It takes a superior apology to address a colossal failure, and Gainer certainly delivered. The sincerity and completeness of the apology easily make it one of the best mea culpas we've ever seen. More »
—>"They've been downgraded from evil to bumbling." - Me in FORTUNE about Dell's online thrusts that attempt to repair their image and listen to their customers more. What do you think? Do you feel any better about them than you did two years ago, or are do their customers still writhe in the eternal flames of "Dell Hell?" Would you add Dell to your Facebook? More »
Another article about Facebook applications and their scary privacy implications. Why does a Sudoku puzzle need to know that you have two kids? [Washington Post] More »
—>Feel wary about giving applications access to your Facebook page? Worried one of those quizzes or games might be maliciously harvesting your data? You were right to worry. The BBC had the same idea, so they decided to write a program to do just that. And it worked. Not only did it steal the data of Facebook users who installed the application, it also victimized all of their "friends." More »
—>Facebook's Beacon has finally resulted in a lawsuit. A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster for participating in Beacon, claiming that "Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent," says MediaPost. More »
—> Gregory writes in to point out that Facebook does a lousy job of monitoring the development of its third-party Platform applications—and in fact many of them are written so badly that they can be easily hacked. The examples he cites, which are listed in the winter issue of the hacker magazine 2600, are all fairly mild stunts like spoofing user IDs, changing the moods of another user, and re-routing gifts, "but this information could be used to mount large scale social engineering attacks if automated and coupled with other information." To illustrate how easy it is to change another user's settings, he pointed us to a YouTube example of how to change another users "mood" via the Mood app. More »
This is round 2 in our Worst Company In America contest, Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association. Their major crimes: The American Arbitration Association is the main supplier of kangaroo courts to companies who want to deprive consumers of most of their rights in the event of a legal dispute. Most contracts you sign with companies these days contain a mandatory arbitration clause. Facebook is a social networking site for yupsters that for a while was spying on all your purchases and selling the data to big big advertisers so they could sell you more ads. Which is the greater threat to our way of life? Choose! More »
On Monday, Facebook modified its help pages to tell people that if they wanted to remove their accounts entirely, they could e-mail the company to have it done. But on Tuesday, representatives of Facebook stopped short of saying the company would introduce a one-step delete account option. More »
"It's like the Hotel California," said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." More »
—>How's this for twisted: An insurance company, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, have demanded that the parents of minor children who suffer from anorexia turn over their children's writings on MySpace and Facebook, as well as any emails where they discuss their problems. More »
—>Hey St. John's Dairy Queen workers, you forgot to make your Facebook group private. Now your hilarious little videos of each other mooning the drive-thru and waging indoor snowball fights are all over Canadian television. They just don't understand your jokes about "using meat the next day that wasn't kept overnight in the cooler." Neither do the health inspectors. More »
Quick, type in all of your credit card information before he runs out of inventory! Omgwtf $99 Wiis! The website, www.wiifor99.com—which is being advertised on Facebook, according to a reader—consists of the two screens shown above and that's it. What a lazy con. More »
—>Seth Godin thinks that for all the talk about privacy, what people really object to is being "surprised."
If your credit card company called you up and said, "we've been looking over your records and we see that you've been having an extramarital affair. We'd like to offer you a free coupon for VD testing..." you'd freak out, and for good reason. More »
Buckling under a blistering poopy pile of criticism, Facebook will now let users turn off Beacon completely. [Facebook] More »
—>Don't like Facebook secretly tracking your online purchases and telling your friends what you bought? Users of the Firefox we browser can use an easy add-on that jams the beacon's signal. Just install the BlockSite add-on, and then add http://*facebook.com/beacon/* as one of the blocked sites. Make sure to keep those asterisks in. If that sounds a little complicated, this step-by-step walk-through at Wikihow shows you how it's done. Alternatively, you could also add the same url to AdBlockPlus, another Firefox extension. More »
—>In a funny twist of fate, last week Facebook failed in its attempt to force a site to remove incriminating and/or embarrassing personal information about Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. We think Facebook missed a real opportunity here—they should have distributed the documents personally and attached ads to them. More »
—> One of our readers yesterday left a couple of interesting links in the comments section of our Beacon post. They provide the names of the companies that Facebook says are participating in its poorly conceived spy program Beacon. Here they are: More »
The New York Times says that Facebook will be making a slight change to "Beacon" the feature that tracks users purchases throughout the web and broadcasts them to their friends.
Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time. More »
—>MoveOn.org is annoyed with Facebook over privacy issues. Apparently, people on Facebook can see what you've been buying on sites unrelated to Facebook and share this information with your friends. According to MoveOn.org, this is not only a violation of privacy (the feature is opt-out rather than opt-in), it's been ruining Christmas/Holidays/Birthdays/Whatever for Facebook users. More »
—>Today's free gift that social network site Facebook users can electronically give to each other appears to be a frosting-coated ghost cookie in a plastic bag. Oh, and the cookie says Walmart on it. Spooky. Now is time for a fun Halloween game. Make this simple marketing ploy into a metaphor, and then read a lot into it. More »
—>According to Wired, Facebook users have hijacked Walmart's dorm decoration discussion page, choosing instead to discuss the way Walmart "destroys communities and prevents unionization." Oh, my! More »
—>Like to tell the world your business on Facebook? Get ready for some heavily targeted ads. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is working on a system that will use all of your personal information to target its ads. Currently, Facebooks advertisers are only allowed to target ads based on age, gender and location. The new system will consider things like favorite activities and preferred music, without exposing the data to advertisers. More »
