A note for your non-geek friends about the new Facebook features and privacy | Hacker News Reader

A note for your non-geek friends about the new Facebook features and privacy

sandywalsh.com

47 pointsTheSandyWalsh19 comments

This "Instant Personalization" feature - isn't this far worse than what Google did with Buzz?

Without notifying or consulting me, Facebook has decided it is now in their best interest to tell every website I visit who I am, who my friends are, and everything I'm interested in, and have buried the option to disable this 3 screens deep.

This is such an unfathomable breach of privacy and trust, I feel like I must be missing something, that they can't really be doing this. What am I missing?

I haven't looked at it in detail but I assume this is done with javascript so that the site doesn't actually see you or your friends, Facebook just includes a bit based on the site you go to. This not the case?

That's not the case. With Instant Personalization, "partner sites" do, in fact, get access to your information just from you visiting them while logged into Facebook. With Social Plugins, any site can embed a widget that works like you described, but as soon as you interact with it, that site will be able to find that interaction by tracking back to the page that Facebook sets up.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/help/?page=1068

Hmm, well it's not so bad then. If I want to stay anonymous then I'll not click on the like or comment or whatever. Seems reasonable.

That only works for Social Plugins, though, not Instant Personalization-approved sites.

The issue isn't that there aren't ways to protect yourself (there were for Buzz, as well). The issue is that you have to be aware this is happening at all (FB doesn't go out of its way to tell you), and then you have to opt-out, rather than opting-in.

Any change that reduces privacy should be strictly opt-in. Period. The fact that Facebook, Google, and others are trying to push for an opt-out model because they're afraid of not getting widespread adoption otherwise is pretty disturbing.

Sounds like a good time to delete all of the data about me on FB which isn't necessary. I barely use the site so I really can't be bothered to try to keep up with the privacy settings du jour.

I know I'm in the wrong camp to ask this question, but reading article after article for over 2 years which all have this same theme, I have to just ask again: Why do you need for others to know what you "like"? Why is that so important to people?

The real feeders off all this are people's egos, and advertisers. Oh, I just answered my question, I'm afraid.

More proof of the reasons for which I deleted my account.

Facebook seems like it's out to kill any and all privacy on the internet. And I certainly label that a Bad Thing™.

Your account isn't deleted. It's just resting..

More proof for the reasons why I refused to ever create an account, then.

You can always try this:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_ac...

Claims to "permanently" delete the account. We can hope they keep their word, though I don't trust it much.

Edit: Thanks for question from @BradFraser. "Can you turn it off?" ... No, you can't turn it off, unless you log out whenever you leave FB. This also means that simply by looking at an "enabled" external page they know it. There is a new privacy option under "Privacy | Applications & Websites | Instant Personalization" that is enabled by default, you should turn it off so the site doesn't read your profile on visit. This can't stop Facebook however.

I'm curious about who the "them" is in this second sentence. According to Facebook's FAQ about this, no personal info is shared with sites using social plugins (http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17092).

Is the fear that Facebook will be collecting which third-party sites I visit?

But then again, a later FAQ question (http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17100) states that the third-party sites have full access to all of my non-public FB data.

Sorry, I should have made that more clear. Facebook knows about it. To get the plug-in, the browser has to hit the Facebook servers so all the context has already been passed along. I will edit. Thanks.

Thanks. The Facebook FAQ seems contradictory about this:

1) "Social plugins are engineered in such a way that no personal information is shared with websites using them."

2) "When you and your friends visit an instantly personalized site, the partner can use your public Facebook information, which includes your name, profile picture, gender, and connections. To access any non-public information, the website is required to ask for you or your friend's explicit permission."

This seems contradictory unless "personal information" is taken to mean "non-public information".

Or are "social plugins" and "instant personalization" not the same thing?

The way I understand it, if you have the "instant personalization" feature On (and it is by default), when you visit an enabled site, they can request your personal/non-public information to give a better experience. If you turn that feature off, they can only access your public info ... Pages and whatever else you leave open. Again, all this stuff is public by default.

I'd like to hear some backup of this theory though.

The big winner here is Facebook. Comments, likes and all that stuff all make they way back to the Facebook mothership. The external websites may or may not get access to that info.

I suggest looking at the Facebook social plugins on the developer's site. Play around with them for a few minutes and you'll see that they are somewhat benign. I may be wrong and am open to someone telling me that if they present examples.

I don't get this article. When I Like something, it shows up on my profile with the ability to easily remove it, and I can restrict who it's shown to (currently only Friends + Network)

Regardless, you don't have to hit the Like button, or share stuff on Facebook, or post on peoples walls. If you want your private information to be well, private then don't post it.

If you are logged into Facebook and simply go to the CNN site you are presented with a list of your friends that already Liked or Recommended that site. This means that Facebook already knows you are watching this page even though you took no action.

Yes, you can remove the item from your news feed, but it also appears in your Page | Info list as well. This can only be removed from the original site (AFAIK).

My concern is that it's getting harder to have meaningful discussions for fear of future ramifications. Abortion? Gay marriage? Stem cell research? Can I only talk about those topics offline now? Can I read online articles on those topics if I'm logged into Facebook without it being tracked?

The article discusses a new feature that's different from the "like my friend's wall post" feature you seem to be talking about.

This new feature provides "Like" buttons on third party web sites, like http://cnn.com. If you are 1) logged into FB and 2) click one of these "Like" (or "Recommend") buttons on a third-party site, that information shows up on your Facebook profile and is visible to everyone and all applications, regardless of your privacy settings. You also cannot remove such a "Like" from your profile without returning to the third-party site and un-liking the article.

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