Facebook gives users' names to advertisers
Violates own privacy policy
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Facebook has been giving advertisers data that they can use to discover users' names and locations, contrary to its privacy policy.
The dominant social network tells users it won't share their details without consent, but according to the Wall Street Journal, it has handed over information that advertisers can use to look up individual profiles.
MySpace had a similar loophole, it's reported. Both sites said they were making changes to stop the handover.
Advertisers were getting reports whenever users clicked on their ads, as is typical across the web. However, Facebook and MySpace's reports contained the URL of the user's profile page, which often included their real name or user name. Neither site had bothered to obscure the data, in breach of their own privacy policies.
It's just the latest privacy failing by Facebook, which has suffered heavy criticism this month. Major changes to its privacy settings are expected after it decided to publish users' private information, and IM transcripts showed CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling those same users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Seriously
You are Mark Zuckerberg, and I claim my five pounds.
Learn?
I think the reason this "dumb fucks" thing keeps getting repeated is because it shows His Zucker-ness's attitude, to people who trust him with their projects and data for him to exploit, from an earlier age. This is an attitude that doesn't seem to have changed in the last five years. All the various Facebook Privacy stories, go to show that although Mark continues to "Live", he probably hasn't learnt or changed much and continues to see users' data as his own to milk for revenue as much as he likes regardless of their privacy settings, or indeed Facebook's own privacy policy.
I have some sympathy with the view that if you don't want it public don't put it on the web, but its the way Facebook keep moving the goal posts by changing settings and reducing privacy options to serve themselves and at the same time against their users.
Its the same as Willy Schmitt at the Chocolate Factory and his comment about users who complain about privacy clearly have something to hide. Utter BS, and worth frequent reminders because if we apply similar logic we can assume that he stands by it until such time as he decides to retract it. I've not seen him keen to step up and provide chapter and verse on all of his personal details, so we can assume either he has something to hide, or its do as I say not as I do...
I can only imagine you're a Troll, or the Zucker himself?
Does that include email too?
While I agree with you to a point, the issue here is that Faceboob is supposed to lock down whichever details you want to whichever audience you want -- in other words if it worked as advertised then it would almost be as private as webmail and could actually be the email replacement some seem to think it is. My email is hosted on the web -- does that mean I should expect it to be shared with the world?
Yes, there's a valid argument that you shouldn't sign up for anything like this because of the potential fro privacy breaches and lots of IT people and other paranoid and/or techy types I know won't use this kind of thing, myself included.
But Facepalm appeals to those who aren't as aware of these potential problems so they have to go by the Ts and Cs -- which are evidently lies. This is the problem here.
People are not complaining that their details "are on the internet" they're complaining that things they were told would not happen have happened.
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