Facebook Kerfluffle
Why do I care about Facebook’s privacy issues? After all, as Rob pointed out, I already have a blog, have posted on Usenet, and various public web forums in the past. I’ve been engaged with the Internet since 1993 there’s a LOT of me out there if someone wants to go looking for it. He’s right. There is. I’m also very careful about what I put out there online. I always have been. Even with the things like foursquare and twitter.
So why do I care about Facebook if I’m so careful about what I do on the Internet? The most common thing I hear about people when I bring up privacy concerns is “If you don’t have anything to hide what do you have to worry about?” My answer to them is, “Why do you use curtains or walls? Why do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom stall?” There are times when you don’t want the whole world up in your business. If I have co-workers and bosses who follow me on facebook, and I did, and they didn’t like what political sites I visited that suddenly showed up on my facebook page could that have consequences? Of course it could. Should it? Nope. But it could. What if it showed that I was on facebook while I was supposed to be working. Would they know I was on hold for the weekly conference call? Of course not.
Those are just the easy work related issues. The thing is. What I do on the Internet is no more Facebook’s business than it’s my phone company’s business if I go to the mall or to Wal-mart. It’s not their business. They don’t need to know it. Just because they CAN know it doesn’t mean they should know it. If they wanted to enrich my Internet experience they’re welcome to it, but ask me first. Let me CHOOSE to ask for it. Don’t opt me in.
I don’t really feel like I should have to explain my expectation of privacy honestly. The part where I expect and want it and am being asked to defend it is almost as offensive to me as my perception of Facebook’s violation of my privacy.
From a social hacking point of view what can we find out about a person from their facebook profile? Often they list their parents’ names which may include “mother’s maiden name” or “Father’s middle name” as appears in some security questions on some websites. Perhaps they show you graduated from Monkeyspanker High School and that security question is also asked, “What was your high school mascot.” Now decent social hackers would know that. That’s sort of my other point. Why should all that information be gathered up by the fine folks at Facebook for the social hackers out there to use? Maybe I don’t list my Mom’s middle name, but perhaps my sisters do, or my brothers, or my trans-gendered first pet whose name was “Sieze-her” and with all the information out there linking back and forth whether I put it out there or someone else does it’s out there.
I won’t deny that I greatly enjoyed re-connecting with my friends on Facebook. That added value to my life in general, and to my enjoyment of the Internet specifically. It was really good to meet them again as adults after having not seen them since high school. There are some really interesting people out there that I knew back when we were just high schoolers. 
I will miss them. If Facebook were to decide that our privacy were important I’d gladly be back, but as much as I love re-connecting with everybody I feel like staying says it’s OK if a company has no respect for their customer’s wishes. It’s my saying it’s OK to treat my personal information as a publicly tradeable commodity. I’m not OK with that. My leaving may not make a difference to Facebook, but it will make a difference to me.
Thursday I’m going to be on Farmville meeting a friend of mine to watch Survivor together and then I’m going to log off my account, perhaps deleting it if I can find a way to do that.
The Facebook Kerfluffle by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
May 11th, 2010 at 1:20 AM
To answer your question, why do I use curtains? Because my neighbors, the homeowner’s association, the Las Vegas Metroplitan Police Department, the Clark County District Attorney’s office, and a Clark County judge have all told me that I either had to buy curtains for my windows or I had to restrict my activities in my home. MY OWN HOME!
My original comments were meant to question you as to whether there was some negative thing I missed concerning facebook privacy, or if this was more about ‘the point of the matter’ and not the actual effect.
Personally I’d say not to connect with bosses or subordinates at all on social networking sites. I know places I worked at in the past this was frowned upon and could even be grounds for termination (for the superior), because they didn’t like fraternization between employees and their bosses outside of work.
I do have a lot of things online which may negatively affect me at work (it shouldn’t, but it could), so I’m very careful about who I connect to what online. I never mentioned a lot of my activities (including my blog) on Myspace because I had both coworkers and family members in my friends list. So far I don’t have anything damning on my facebook page either.
You make a good point about password retrieval questions. It’s not something I find bad with facebook though, it’s something I find bad about password retrieval. Personally I only use the things if I have to, and if I do its a gibberish string more complicated than my password, and quickly forgotten. The thing is, a lot of people know the name of my first pet, my favorite book, and my mother’s maiden name. None of that is information I’ve kept particularly guarded through out my life. It’s also absurd to require a password that contains at least eight characters and two numbers not in sequence so it can’t be cracked, but let it be retrieved with a three letter common word answer to a specific question.
I also know you very well, and I find it very hard to believe that you have things you care about people hacking protected by honest answers to these questions.
You talk about Facebook monitoring Internet usage. It’s not the best thing, but there is a solution. Only use Facebook when you aren’t websurfing. Close facebook prior to websurfing.
I know I’m a little bit careful about what I put online, especially in places I know friends and coworkers are going to look. I don’t see how facebook’s privacy settings are going to hurt me.
To me the issue comes down to this. You enjoy facebook and you believe it enriches your life. Your upset about some changes that have happened, although you already know how to keep yourself protected with these changes, and it is not actually damaging you, except maybe by adding new restrictions to your facebook activity.
If enough people leave they might change some things, but by the look of things most people don’t even know or understand what is going on, so there’s not a good chance of that happening. So if you leave whatever positive things facebook has brought into your life you’re now denying yourself, and the negative stuff you’re saving yourself from was manageable anyways.
As you’ve said, it’s not a matter of utility (positive contributions versus negative effects), it’s a matter of principle. I think I understood these things better when I was younger. But now that I’m older, things like facebook privacy settings which really don’t affect me either way don’t concern me much. I’d ratherbe concerned about more practical things, like working up the courage to ask out the cute gamestop clerk so I don’t have to keep buying $60 worth of video games every week.
My perspective is I currently like Facebook, it’s fun and popular, and as of yet it isn’t hurting me in any way. Until they do something that actually effects me, or I get bored, I’m going to stay there.
I don’t really think it’s a question of defending your privacy either (and I’m sorry if I offended you, my original questions were meant to draw you into an argument to figure out if there was some reason for leaving facebook that might actually concern me). Of course you have the right to your privacy, in the same way you have a right to leave facebook, and I don’t think anyone is going to tell you that you can’t or it’s wrong for you to make a personal decision to leave. The main point of my argument is, is it worth leaving over? Yes I know you have some good reasons, but especially since I know you also know how to fix those things (like don’t play farmville at work), I don’t see any concrete cons to staying, so ultimately it comes down to a personal decision.
.-= Rob´s last blog ..Profaning the Gods for Entertainment: Who Put the “Glad” in Gladiator? =-.
May 11th, 2010 at 8:21 AM
Quick answer up front, longer later.
You didn’t offend me. You’re a friend. I don’t get offended by friends really. The cultural expectation that I should have to explain why I’m pro-privacy is what is offensive. It’s my opinion if the government would need a warrant to get at the information then businesses should as well, anybody else should come to that. If the FBI were smart it’d break off from government, incorporate, buy facebook, and have most of their work done for them.
You know what… they probably have a dummy corporation out there right now doing that very sort of data-mining thing selling it back to the FBI so they can get around that pesky Bill of Rights.
.-= Rich G.´s last blog ..Facebook Kerfluffle =-.
May 11th, 2010 at 11:48 PM
OK. I’ve found an alternative to leaving Facebook.
I’ve installed a browser that I’ll only use for Facebook. If I go to no sites other than Facebook it can’t harvest any other data from me.
I then deleted my facebook cookies, blocked them from resetting in firefox, and finally blacklisted facebook.com/* so that even the Like It buttons on other sites don’t show up any more in my primary browser.
This way I’ll be able to remain in contact with my friends and family. My information will be as private as I want it to be and my browsing and other nonsense will be my own.
.-= Rich G.´s last blog ..Facebook Kerfluffle =-.