I was up talking to a friend a couple of days on how writing about Facebook was the biggest pain in life and the adverse psychological problems it got me into. But you can’t help not talking about it, given that the third of everyone online is on the social network. Plus Facebook has more to do with simply connecting people, its more to do with their lifestyles and their privacy, which is the biggest concern.
I had been reading about the latest turn of events on Facebook about Ron Bowes making user data publically available. That data was of over 100 million users who are a part of the social network. But before I proceed let me state that Ron Bowes is not a hacker in my opinion. Why? Well
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He hasn’t broken security on social network
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Didn’t hack any account
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All he did was make use of publically available data on the social network
We are well aware on how boldly Facebook emphasizes users to share their data publically on the Web. If you aren’t aware on what I am talking about, try and explore your privacy settings or simply make you share a status update with everyone. Once done, this information is available for anyone to make use of, what’s needed is simply a smart brain to compile the data and out it out to public. Of course it is unethical but things as such are important to slap back at Facebook. Something which Facebook must learn from.
Bowes hasn’t taken up any user data, simply put public information together in one piece and that for me is not enough to accuse him or label him as a traitor. what needs to be told here is that your data is not yours the minute you signed up for it and no matter how strict your privacy settings are, all of it is at Facebook’s disposal. need an escape? Quit Facebook.
You’re wrong. Ron Bowes violated the law. He took the information he gathered and published it on his website, without the explicit consent of the users. I do not care how much you preach about how Ron Bowes is not a hacker. How else could he have gotten the information he obtained. If he was smart, he would have handed over the information to Facebook saying “Hey, you’ve got some security issues that need to be taken care of, and I’d be glad to help” but no, instead he published that data into a downloaded file for anyone with a computer to download to see who got hit.
Number one: That is an invasion of privacy, no matter how much you say you give up personal information once you sign up.
Number two: After he committed number one, he published the information without the explicit consent of the 100 million users.
so, in my opinion, he should go to prison for hacking, which is a crime, and he should also go to prison for publishing the information instead of handing it over to Facebook.
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Jochen L. Leidner, Ph.D. Reply:
July 29th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Nobody needs anybody’s consent to publish a crawl of a Web site for
“research purposes” if the data is already public.
Search engines do such crawls already, they also not only republish the
data but make it searchable, which is making it a lot easier for evil-minded
people to obtain the information about their targets in a more focused way
(Ron Bowes’ file isn’t as easy to search than the same data indexed by
Google).
What people forget in the current debate, by the way is that changing
your privacy settings may stop expose your Facebook page to Google
and people like Ron Bowes, but it cannot stop Facebook from selling
your data, and users explicitly consent to this when signing up (whether
they read the small print or not, they have to click on “accept”).
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Sardar Mohkim Khan Reply:
July 29th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
@someone – i would agreed with you totally had Ron Bowes hacked into my personal account or someone else’s to access all the data – i would blasted both Facebook and Ron but that’s not so.
I have certain bit of information on my profile available to public search engines, and if you happen to use that, i have no right to complain. This is exactly the case here.
@Jochen I agree with you, once you sign up for anything on the Web, your information is at their disposal. So we all have little to complain if we have already “accepted” the terms and conditions to sign up for Facebook, etc.
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Wow so if I steal a phonebook I go to jail? Pretty bogus, I mean you decided to list you r number in the phonebook, if you don’t want people to keep in touch with you then why make a facebook page? Facebook is supposed to be a public place a meeting ground for employers, employees, business, welfare, and commerce. All the social aspects are just added bonuses.
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As far as social media are concerned, Facebook is in a class by itself. The problem with Facebook is that it requires you to use your real name. Twitter doesn’t require that, and neither does google. This makes all the difference. I actually gave Facebook my real name, and then filled out the space for username. They went ahead and published my real name. What the hell was the point of a username? Facebook is relentless and obnoxious in trying to gain as much of your information as it possibly can and share it with as many people as they can, so they can get those people to share more information in turn. You can feel Facebook watching you, memorizing every choice you make to make sure you have “a richer online experience.” Give me a break.
Quitting Facebook was hard. It felt like I was turning my back on friends, and passing up opportunities to advance my career. But I’m pretty sure that something better will come along. It mmay not be diaspora which seems to require users host their own server. I’d like to see a social networkk based on email. Everybody’s information is decentralized, you get to choose a provider that you trust, email is not usually available to search engines, your information only goes where you send it.
Anyway, I think the rule of thumb is to be very very cautious about USING YOUR REAL NAME on the web, especially where search engines can find it.
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i am leonardo. i am 18 yeas
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