Facebook stuff--whoa!

[Shawnee123]

Next thing you know, they'll be trying to stuff the entire government into one small facebook page.

[classicman]

10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided. Let's start with the basics. Facebook's Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don't keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14).

9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior. From the very beginning of Facebook's existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg's ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals.

8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy. Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook's privacy changes last January: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch. At the same time that they're telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available.

6. Facebook is a bully. When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the "default is now social."

5. Even your private data is shared with applications. At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you're not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure.

4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted. Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network.

3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you've used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing.

2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web. The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It's bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you.

1. The Facebook application itself sucks. Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point.

Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn't the most usable thing in the world, at least they've tried to stay focused and aren't trying to be everything to everyone.

Link

[Cloud]

I find it not user friendly at all. Anyone know of a helpful, current guide?

[richlevy]

I don't give them too much personal information, especially not my birthdate.

BTW, this is funny. It uses your name and Facebook photo.

http://beck.cnnbcvideo.com/index.html

[Undertoad]

You can limit your birth date to friends only.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

You can limit your birth date to friends only.

I don't trust them to keep it that way. My closest relatives know my birthday, and it's not worth it to receive birthday greetings from acquaintances. I generally make it a rule to lie about my birthday to all sites except those that have a real need to know (insurance quotes, banks, etc).

Name + birth date + SSN = Identity theft.

BTW, sorry for the deception,UT, but I'm not actually 25 years old.

[Undertoad]

Aw shit I left my SSN setting on "friends of friends"!

Well if somebody wants my identity, they can have it. They can't fuck it up any worse than I have.

[Cloud]

if you deliberately lie, you're violating FB's policies which you agreed to though. Why fill stuff in at all? Just leave things blank.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Cloud

if you deliberately lie, you're violating FB's policies which you agreed to though. Why fill stuff in at all? Just leave things blank.

I do leave my birthday blank on Facebook. It's the sites that don't need to know and ask anyway. All they should care about is that I'm over 13.

[Cicero]

I can't believe how open they are about selling our info. We have to remember that share means sell.
They are becoming too complex and shady. I'm thinking of deactivating as much as possible, as I also have become too addicted to f b!

[TheMercenary]

New FB virus/worm:

http://www.net-security.org/malware_news.php?id=1360

[Cloud]

serves people right for clicking on weird shit. just keep it to people you actually KNOW, don't play the stupid games, and keep the personal info to a minimum.

Oh, and don't post ANYTHING work related at all.