Archive for the 'Facebook' Category
Real Questions for Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer
Sunday, April 6th, 2008David Faser points to an article in the Times Online that throws a bunch of softball questions at Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer. Facebook has been at the center of multiple violations of user privacy, and all the Times can come up with are questions like “Do you think that some of the fear […]
Frontline: Growing Up Online
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008I’m sitting in a hotel room in New Haven, trying to finish an article for First Monday, but then I received a call from my wife suggesting I turn on PBS, as Frontline is airing an amazing report on “Growing Up Online.” It is a thoughtful treatment of the topic that, in their words, “takes […]
Does Facebook’s Beacon Violate the Video Privacy Protection Act?
Monday, December 10th, 2007James Grimmelmann has an excellent post arguing that Blockbuster’s participation in Facebook’s Beacon Web tracking advertising service violates the Video Privacy Protection Act, one of the few federal privacy laws on the books in the U.S.
James concludes: “Facebook and Blockbuster should hunker down and prepare for the lawsuits.”
[via Dan Solove]
Facebook Apologizes (Sorta); Creates Global Opt-Out (Supposedly)
Thursday, December 6th, 2007The Wall Street Journal and others point to today’s apology by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for the Beacon fiasco.
However, rather than apologizing for creating a pervasive tool for tracking and collecting user purchasing habits across the Web, or for making default settings difficult to change, or for initially making it opt-out rather than opt-in, for making […]
Beacon (noun): That which gives notice of danger
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007It is becoming increasingly apt that Facebook named their new Web tracking advertising service “Beacon.”
As I briefly mentioned here, Facebook now has admitted, contrary to earlier assurances, that their Beacon ad system tracks users’ off-Facebook activities even if those users are logged off from the social-networking site and have previously declined having their activities on […]
Facebook Beacon Worse than Most Thought (And Still Is)
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007I had a hunch…
Last week we welcomed Wendy Seltzer at the Yale Information Society Project, who gave a talk on “Online Privacy in Context.” Most of our discussion centered on the controversy swirling around Facebook’s Beacon advertising platform, where Facebook cookies are retrieved at third-party e-commerce sites, users are given 20-seconds to opt out (the […]
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