I was thinking about joining FB

[abendgules]

...I just changed my mind.

http://www.identityblog.com/?p=1201

Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues.  In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it.  That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection.  He argues that the record Facebook provided him finds them to be in flagrante delicto.  

The logical next step was a series of 22 lucid and well-reasoned complaints that he submitted to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (Facebook states that European users have a relationship with the Irish Facebook subsidiary).  This was followed by another perfectly executed move:  setting up a web site called Europe versus Facebook that does everything right in terms using web technology to mount a campaign against a commercial enterprise that depends on its public relations to succeed.

http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

No, I don't have any dark secrets to hide - my biggest vice is a medieval society where I wear funny clothes on the weekend. 
I just resent the way this company has treated its customers, and has not been honest about their data collection and data farming.

'You can check out anytime you like/but you can never leave'.... (cue Eagles' guitar solo)

Comments

[exmoor-cat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links. Also, apt music, esp as they never really let you fully delete your profile.....

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Arsebook really do deserve a damn good kicking, because they absolutely blatantly do not respect privacy. They don't even honour the settings I've selected saying I don't want to know when my friends comment in somebody else's journal, and I'm sure they are showing me entries that I should not be able to see.

I'm all for freedom of speech. But if I say "don't show this to xyz", then this should be respected.

(Of course Perrott's Law always applies, which states that if you put anything in writing - especially electronically - you should assume that it may be read by absolutely anybody. But that's similar to saying "don't walk down a dark alley on your own", i.e. it isn't saying that it's RIGHT to attack the person, just that this is how to protect yourself. I hope that's comprehensible...)

[mariedeblois.livejournal.com]

About all that keeps me on FB these days is promoting my website.

I feel about the same way about Google/G+ (not that they allow business accounts yet, but when they do, I'll need to be there).

I do wish that Diaspora* had enough people on it to be useful, since it has solving the data protection problem as a serious goal, but ... not yet. (I do have invites, tho.)

[ethnowoman.livejournal.com]

I don't have time today to check out the link, but I think that the relative good/evil of FB depends a lot on what you want it for. All my Romani contacts in Montreal used it as a promo tool for their music. They wanted people to find them, which meant releasing info. In that light, FB is simply amazing.

I use FB but simply don't release any personal info that I wouldn't tell to a stranger. I'm quite happy to tell them I'm a grad student at UA, but I don't see a need to put in my birthdate or phone number. If you don't put it in... FB can't get it.

[ethnowoman.livejournal.com]

And if it's something that I wouldn't be comfortable telling to a stranger in a lineup, I don't make it a status. FB is a WALL. Like a bus shelter wall. Why do people not get that?

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

I've never told FB anything you can't find out by googling me, basically. Thus, not unduly fussed.

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Wherever you google yourself from, your info is probably there with your consent. If you argued, the website would probably say, yes, it's your information, and you have the right to delete it.

FB is saying that the user data is *their* property, forever, and when you ask for it, they don't hand it all over. They also conceal how much they keep (deletion isn't really deletion). That's what really gets on my thungas.

[hobbitomm.livejournal.com]

Whilst FB doesn't let you _delete_ information, it does let you edit it. Repeatedly. To anything you like..... Eventually you can hide the wood amongst the trees.