Facebook Crapping on Privacy?
December 4, 2007 by Jason Bean
Filed under Shopping, Social Networking, b5media & Admin
After just stopping by both Jeremy Wright’s and Aaron Brazell’s blogs I read stories about them moving (or already have moved) to deleting their Facebook profiles. Reading on to figure out why, it turns out that the Facebook Beacon service, a Business-to-Consumer marketing tool is seriously whizzing all over privacy concerns for individuals on Facebook. This is a clip from Aaron’s Technosailor blog:
The privacy concerns that have been demonstrated by the Beacon program is well documented. One guy bought his girlfriend a an engagement ring on Overstock.com and she found out about it by reading his Facebook profile where Overstock had posted this fact on the guy’s profile without him knowing. Personally, I’ve been dismayed to find my Gamefly activity documented as well as a car rental I purchased through Hotwire for later in the month.
That’s just downright idiotic! What in the world are they thinking?
If you’re concerned, it may be time to ditch Facebook until this gets cleaned-up, or perhaps more likely, FOREVER! Dang it! and I just stumbled across the Scrabulous application too!
In Facebook’s defense the guy who bought the engagement ring added the overstock.com application to his profile and did not uncheck the “add activity to my public timeline” or whatever it’s called. He’s an idiot for even adding a stupid application like overstock.com to his facebook anyway.