Read it and weep (or adjust your behaviour?)

I first ‘made’ and used the graphic to the right (FACEBOOK MEANS NO PRIVACY) for a post called Facebook — leaks like a sieve in April 2010, and we’ve discussed the treacherous descent of the social media behemoth down the slippery slope several more times since.
Lesson: treat whatever you put there as PUBLIC.

But it gets worse. Recent changes to Facebook can give them (and their partners) a proactive spin on ‘sharing’ … Dave Winer says in Facebook is scaring me:

They [Facebook] are seeking out information to report about you. That’s different from showing people a picture that you posted yourself.

Further, according to Nik Cubrilovic, even logging out of Facebook won’t stop it tracking you …

Dave Winer wrote a timely piece this morning about how Facebook is scaring him [Comment: Dave’s article is worth reading] since the new API allows applications to post status items to your Facebook timeline without a user’s intervention. It is an extension of Facebook Instant and they call it frictionless sharing. The privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.

The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Bleurgh!

As I said in my comment about Facebook posts now featuring in legal agreements around matrimonial splits Facebook’s tentacles now part of divorce settlements! and court injunctions Welcome to the mainstream, social media (like, again) … Don’t let anybody tell you Facebook doesn’t matter.

– P