The Podium
Blog posts tagged with 'Facebook'
Wednesday, July 28
By Brad
Yesterday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced he was introducing an online privacy bill aimed at giving Internet users more control over how their data is collected and used. From the Washington Post:
The legislative proposals add momentum to a push by consumer groups to create stronger federal rules for how companies such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google can track user activity and place ads based on that information. Facebook faced criticism for creating complex changes to its privacy polices late last year that made some information more available to the public. Apple and AT&T were criticized for a data breach that revealed the network identities of its iPad users. Google said it accidentally snooped on residential Wi-Fi networks around the world as it collected technical information for location-based applications.
“Our ability to control what information is collected, used and disclosed about us is central to how we want the world to view us, and that, in turn, affects our ability to seek out opportunity in both social and economic spheres,” Kerry said in a statement. “But currently, there is widespread confusion among our constituents and colleagues about what power we have over those practices.”
In other privacy news, it has been revealed that the profile pages — including data such as addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth — for more than 100 million Facebook users has appeared on an Internet file-sharing site. While the release of the data doesn’t break any laws, since its all publicly available, it highlights the increasing need for user vigilance when posting information online.
Friday, July 09
By Brad
Facebook has faced heat recently over its privacy policies. And now, Computer World reports, the inevitable class action lawsuit has been filed:
Merchant Law Group LLP filed the lawsuit on July 2 in Queen’s Bench court in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The law firm, which has class-action lawsuits as a large part of its business, filed the suit on behalf of Donald J. Woligroski, a Winnipeg resident and a registered Facebook user, and other class action members for an unspecified amount of damages.
The suit contends that Facebook subjected Woligroski to a breach of privacy and the misappropriation of his personal information. It also alleges that Facebook intentionally used his information for commercial purposes, calling the company’s actions “malicious, deliberate, and oppressive.”
Wednesday, May 26
By Brad
With government interest in online privacy increasing, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg penned a letter for the Washington Post on Monday in an attempt to calm the waters. From said letter:
We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We hope you’ll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we’ll be eager to get your feedback.
Today, on the heels of that letter, Facebook held a press conference to outline its new privacy changes, and the New York Times is live-blogging it:
A reporter asks: The problem we’ve had with Facebook is that Facebook is changing from being a person-to-person network, creating problems with trusting the site. How are we supposed to trust the company again?
Mr. Zuckerberg says: “We’re trying be innovative and iterative with our development. Today, Facebook is very different than it was when he we first started. The key to how we approach this is that we always listen.”
Mr. Zuckerberg: It’s interesting to see which issues people care about the most. A bigger meme among the user base has become this assumption that we are going to start charging for the site. There have been blog posts saying that people are going to cancel their accounts, but we haven’t seen this happen.
Update: The press conference is over, and the Huffington Post has a handy wrap-up of privacy changes.
Thursday, May 20
By Brad
To crack down on what they view as sacrilegious content, the government of Pakistan has blocked access to both YouTube and Facebook. From the Huffington Post:
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority did not point to specific material on YouTube that prompted it to block the site, only citing “growing sacrilegious contents.” The government acted against both Facebook and YouTube after it failed to persuade the websites to remove the “derogatory material,” the regulatory body said in a statement.
Monday, May 17
By Brad
Facebook has been taking a lot of heat over privacy lately. with many users complaining that the sites privacy policies are bloated, complicated, and impossible to make sense of.
Now a new group is encouraging users to dump the social networking site on the same day: May 31. And the group’s site, Quit Facebook Day, has already received over 3,000 commitments.
Thursday, May 13
By Brad
Popular social networking site Facebook has received a lot of heat lately over its privacy policies. (In fact, as the New York Times notes, if you type in the words “how do I” into Google, the result “how do I quit Facebook” currently ranks fifth.)
Part of the problem, as the Huffington Post reports, is the fact that Facebook’s privacy policy has become absurdly bloated and complicated:
Facebook’s 2010 privacy policy is now 5,830 words long—several thousand words longer than the privacy policies for sites like Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, and Friendster. It’s even longer than the Constitution (4,543 words).
While Facebook argues that their settings offer the “most comprehensive and detailed controls” for their users, the dizzying array of options might also prevent many Facebook users from making any changes at all.
Wednesday, May 12
By Brad
According to the latest numbers from comScore, there’s a new king of the hill when it comes to online display advertising. Via Read Write Web:
Facebook has delivered 176.3 billion display ads in the first quarter of 2010, pulling well ahead of Yahoo’s 131.6 billion banner ads and Microsoft’s 60.2 billion ads
Oddly enough, while Facebook beat Yahoo and Microsoft in number of ads, they trailed far behind in revenue produced by those ads.
Wednesday, April 28
By Brad
Facebook’s growing influence on the Internet — and its increased gathering of personal information — has not gone unnoticed by the Senate. From the New York Times:
Four senators are raising privacy concerns over new features that Facebook introduced last week and have asked the social networking company to roll back some of the changes.
In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, the senators took particular issue with Facebook’s “instant personalization,” a feature that allows a handful of Facebook partner Web sites like Yelp and Pandora to gain access to personal information about Facebook users.
Responding to the letter, Facebook’s vice president for global communications defended Facebook’s new features, stating that the service gives users “unprecedented control over whatt information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom.”
Thursday, March 25
By Brad
Via Mashable comes the story of a rogue monkey, a Facebook page, and the more than 44,000 fans who are tracking the primate’s every move.
Wednesday, March 17
By Brad
According to the analysis firm Hitwise, Facebook has for the first time toppled search giant Google from its perch as the most-visited website in America. CNN Money reports;
Facebook accounted for 7.07% of U.S. Web traffic that week, while Google received 7.03%.
While this is definitely good news for Facebook, it comes with one major caveat:
The study compared only the domains Facebook.com and Google.com—not, for example, Google-owned sites like Gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 02
By Brad
Via Ars Technica comes the story of some tech-savvy thieves, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the $150 thousand bridal show scam.
Friday, February 12
By Brad
On Wednesday, tech site ReadWriteWeb posted an article on Facebook’s recent partnering with AOL’s Instant Messenger. But when the article—which is titled “Facebook Wants To Be Your One True Login”—started ranking high in Google search results for the term “Facebook login,” something strange happened: Scores of people trying to log in to their Facebook page instead arrived at ReadWriteWeb and believed their favorite social networking site had received a major design overhaul.
The confusion from Facebook users got so bad that Read Write Web was forced to insert a note into the original article:
Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services… For future reference, type “facebook.com” into your browser address bar or enter “facebook” into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.
Apparently, for many people Internet literacy starts and stops with search engines.
Friday, February 05
By Brad
When it comes to where people get their news online, a new report finds that Facebook is now fourth behind Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Wednesday, February 03
By Brad
Post Tech looks at a new survey from computer security company Sophos on social networking sites and cyber attacks:
Sophos said that reports by companies of spam and malware derived from social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter were up 70 percent from a year earlier. And of the 500 companies surveyed, 60 percent said Facebook—by far the largest social network internationally—posed the biggest security risk.
“2009 saw Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites solidify their position at the heart of many users’ daily internet activities, and saw these websites become a primary target for hackers,” according to the report. “Because of this, social networks have become one of the most significant vectors for data loss and identity theft.”
Wednesday, January 27
By Brad
GigaOm highlights a survey from Microsoft that finds when it comes to interviewing for a job, your Facebook page might pose a problem:
As part of Data Privacy Day on Thursday, Microsoft says it conducted a survey of 2,500 people that included, consumers, HR managers and recruitment professionals in the US, the UK, Germany and France, with the goal of learning more about attitudes toward online reputation and how this information can have real life consequences. The survey found that the top online factors for rejecting a job applicant are unsuitable photos/videos, concerns about a candidate’s lifestyle and inappropriate comments written by the candidate.
Social media has made our society more open, which is a good thing. But it’s always wise to remember that once something is on the Internet, it’s there to stay.
Monday, January 04
By Brad
Via the New York Times, even someone as tech savvy as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is not immune to the occasional Facebook scammer:
On Thursday at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no longer active. The message blitz indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send out spam.
As of Thursday afternoon, Mr. Genachowski’s Facebook profile was no longer visible on the site. A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the company learned of the problem this morning and suspended the account, as it routinely does in such cases. An F.C.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.
Wednesday, November 11
By Brad
Via the New York Times comes the story of a 19-year-old arrested for robbery, a question about pancakes, and a Facebook status update that served as an alibi.
Tuesday, October 27
By Brad
Social networking site Facebook is flirting with the macabre by allowing the pages of deceased members to remain active. Reports PC Pro:
The company says it will give previously confirmed friends of the deceased access to their “memorialised” Facebook page, which will continue to display photos and wall posts, but remove “sensitive information” such as status updates and contact information.
“When an account is memorialised, we set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search,” the company’s Max Kelly writes on the Facebook blog. “Memorialising an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.”
Friday, September 18
By Brad
Count the White House’s proposed health care plan as one of the now 300 million Facebook users worldwide. Reports Read Write Web:
In an effort to personalize healthcare reform benefits, WhiteHouse.gov launched a “Reality Check” Facebook quiz application to rally for President Barack Obama’s widely disputed Health Insurance Reform Plan. While the application was only shared with Facebook users 6 hours ago, 350 people have already commented on everything from education, to war, to congressional travel records to general partisanship.
Wednesday, September 16
By Brad
Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the insanely popular social networking site now has 300 million members worldwide — an increase of 100 million users in just five months.
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