I am increasingly wary of Facebook. I don’t trust them with my photos, phone number, or full name. I worry about all the information they can extrapolate from my web of friends.
My hope is that Disapora will emerge as a less evil social network – one that supplies the considerable benefits of social networking, but with real respect for the privacy and interests of users.
Thanks to my friend Alison, I have an account on the alpha version of Diaspora. I have some invitations, so if anyone is especially keen to give it a try, they should let me know.
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
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“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use. Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”
Facebook may have leaked your personal information: Symantec
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/facebook-may-have-leaked-your-personal-information-symantec/article2017979/
Facebook users’ personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, Symantec Corp. said in its official blog.
Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, the security software maker said.
Nothing is happening yet on Diaspora.
Facebook Changes Privacy Settings to Enable Facial Recognition
Facebook is pushing the privacy line once again, according to a new report from a security and antivirus company.
According to the report, from Sophos, Facebook recently began changing its users’ privacy settings to automatically turn on a facial recognition feature that detects a user’s face in an image. Once the person’s face is detected, the Web site then encourages Facebook friends to tag them. Facebook introduced this feature last year for its North American users; it is now rolling it out globally.
Facebook also doesn’t give users the option to avoid being tagged in a photo; instead, people who don’t want their name attached to an image must untag themselves after the fact.
In response to a reporter’s inquiry, posted on a Facebook blog, the company said, “We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them.”
More Users Are Shunning Facebook
Blake Snow writes that evidence suggests that a small but increasing number of users — at least in North America, where Facebook use is especially saturated — may be shunning the site with Facebook losing nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of the month, the first time the US has lost users in the past year. Some users complain they’re spending so much time on Facebook that they’re short-changing the rest of their lives.