As Facebook prepares to go public on Friday, there have been numerous news stories this week focused on Facebook. These news stories discuss privacy concerns to how Facebook is losing GM as an advertising customer. I will admit I am not a Facebook users, but I would enjoy hearing from those of you that are about the privacy concerns raised in this video. If the majority of Facebook users do not trust it than what does that say about the future of the company? Should we be equally as concerned about Google? They also collect a wealth of information from people using their search engine.
The video is about five and a half minutes long, but the link also include a transcript of the video.
Enjoy!
I had no idea that Facebook has the ability to "follow" users to other sites and keep a listing of URLs that users visit. I was also shocked to know that surroundings of mobile users are tracked as well. Facbook uses gps to determine what ads to broadcast based on the location of the mobile user. To me, this is way to much "big brother" activity. I feel as if my privacy is violated.
ReplyDeleteI knew they were doing this stuff and they've been doing it for a long time, but Facebook is not the only one that does it. Lots of internet marketeers use tracking script and applications use GPS data to log information. Facebook's biggest advantage is that people volunteer their more personal information voluntarily. I think the scariest part about the whole thing is that as you give Facebook more information they will try to predict what you will do during the day more often and try to send you information before you even decide to do it. Yes this sounds science fiction like or even a little paranoid, but people work in patterns and the more information a person has the better they can predict things to come.
ReplyDeleteI don't trust FaceBook at all. I now have the settings where I have to approve things before people tag me in them. The problem with that is people, my "friends", can still post pictures with out my permission and just not tag me in any of them. You can also customize who sees what information within your own friend list. I've contemplated deleting my FaceBook many of times and now that they are going public I'll likely think even more about deleting FaceBook.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of facebook but I wish it wasn't considered rude to dump people. Most of the people that I care about where they are and what they are doing, I already keep up with. Those few people I just want to know where they are in life I would like to just see and then dump them. Most of them I realized I didn't keep up with for a reason. It seems that Facebook is becoming more trouble than it is worth and like Jennifer I try to limit as much information as I can but I assume they will find ways around my limitations. In addition they change their setting so many times I never know if what I limited is still limited. Once again, it is my wife's "thing" so I let her deal with it as I am not allowed to give my opinion on there as often as I would like in fear of destroying my "brand" and most importantly her "brand".
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tyler. Do I really need an online presence to keep up with the people I really care about. If I wanted to know what an old high school buddy was doing now I would have stayed in touch with him.
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