Mark Zuckerberg: Use Facebook at Your Own Risk!
Facebook is scarier than Google, I underscored upon Mark Zuckerberg’s unveiling of F8 to the world.
Facebook IS already another Google, in fact, seeking to control, for its own corporate profit motives, all the world’s personal information.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WORLD’S SOCIAL GRAPH THOUGH WHEN FACEBOOK GOES DARK, OR WORSE?
Facebook was down today, big time. Despite Facebook’s best efforts to downplay any foul play, or foul security breaches of Facebooker’s vaunted “privacy” promise, the generally command and control Facebook could not deny the privacy leakage facts, even while trying to spin them to save face:
The result was that an isolated group of users could see some pages that were not intended for them.
REALLY? Forgive and forget then? NO; Even when things are running as Facebook intends, Facebook is a social graph privacy nightmare.
It is very telling that on the exact moment that Zuckerberg was on stage that fateful San Francisco afternoon, his corporation posted a (not so reassuring) Privacy Policy, “Effective May 24, 2007.”
First off, Facebook takes no repsonsibility whatsoever for any privacy breaches, despite its claims of being a privacy nirvana.
You post User Content on the Site at your own risk. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other Users with whom you may choose to share your pages and information. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.
The Facebook social graph privacy nightmare is not simply exposure to data leakage. Facebook, itself, is wreaking havoc with users’ social graphs.
Facebook obtains three “types” of data on users; Self-reported user data, user data extracted by Facebook by tracking user activity at Facebook and user data Facebook obtains from third-parties:
Personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site. Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags)
AND, What goes in Facebook’s social graph, stays in Facebook’s social servers. Removing user information at Facebook? Not quite:
Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook.
Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on Facebook, however, (e.g., sending a personal message to another Facebook user) you generally cannot remove such communications.
Bottom Facebook line: Use the social graph at your own risk, as per Mark Zuckerberg.
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