p2pnet - rss feed: Facebook reels under CIPPIC privacy attack
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, and similar corporate entities, are the snake oil salesmen of the 21st digital century and yesterday, p2pnet was quite probably the first to report the story of CIPPIC’s demand for a Facebook privacy investigation.
“Facebook isn’t being up-front with users about its use of their information for advertising and other commercial purposes,” CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic) director Philippa Lawson told p2pnet, said our story, going on >>>
With the third largest Facebook user base after the USA and the UK, it, “purports to give users more control than they actually have over the sharing of their information,” she says, going on:
“It shares more information than necessary with third parties, and it fails to obtain informed consent from users to its sharing of often sensitive personal information with third parties.”
All of these are violations of Canadian privacy law, Lawson declares, stating, “It’s time that Facebook faced up to its legal and ethical obligations to protect user privacy.”
Law students Lisa Feinberg, Harley Finkelstein and Jordan Plener analysed the company’s policies and practices as part of a clinic course and identified practices which appear to violate the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), we went on.
But the p2pnet report didn’t come because of my amazing investigative abilities: it was because like scores of other people, I had an embargoed copy of the statement ready to go and I posted our story literally as the designated release light went on.
‘A fragrant example of disingenuity’
“Facebook said it looks forward to working with the Privacy Commission ‘to set the record straight’ on the complaint,” says the Ottawa Citizen.
Translated, that means highly paid teams of lawyers and spin doctors are now working to produce plausible media bites on why it’s in the very best interests of Facebook users for owner Mark Zuckerman and his crew to know everything about you and how they’d never, ever pass that information on.
Except under certain circumstances.
The BBC has Facebook saying, in a fragrant example of disingenuity, “We pride ourselves on the industry leading controls we offer users over their private information. We believe that this is an important reason that nearly 40% of Canadians on the internet use our service.”
They believe nothing of the kind.
The issue only arises because users have become deeply worried their privacy is being consistently and cynically violated by such as Facebook, and Facebook knows it.
“We’ve reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors, most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users,” says Facebook in the BBC story.
But CIPPIC intern Finkelstein disagrees.
In the statement, Facebook, “purports to provide users with a high level of control over their data,” he states clearly, but, “our investigation found that this is not entirely true - for example, even if you select the strongest privacy settings, your information may be shared more widely if your Facebook Friends have lower privacy settings.
“As well, if you add a third party application offered on Facebook, you have no choice but to let the application developer access all your information even if they don’t need it.”
‘Educate users and the public’
Lawson told the BBC she and the youthful CIPPIC team went after Facebook publicly because, “past issues they have tried to discuss with the company went nowhere,” and, “We don’t see the point in going down that route again.
“Our experience is it gets dragged out and they might make a few changes but they are making representations about their privacy controls and they need to be held accountable. That would be difficult if we did it through private conversations.”
Facebook’s response?
“We look forward to working with Commissioner Stoddart to set the record straight and will continue our ongoing efforts to educate users and the public around privacy controls on Facebook, including a brochure and video project we have completed with Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian.”
This is remarkably similar to snake oil tactics used by the entertainment cartels to convince the public at large they (the cartels) are honest, caring corporations with only the best of interests their customers at heart when in fact, the interests of the people who keep them alive come last and least.
With the help of politicians who by one means or another have been drafted to the corporate side, they’re able to create multi-million-dollar “public education” [read illusion] campaigns which literally flood the print and electronic media and information outlets in a way organisations such as CIPPIC can never hope to match.
It’s the never-fail dripping tap principle developed by Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels during World War II.
Say something often enough and loud enough, and disseminate it widely enough, and people will come to believe it’s true.
‘Targeted’ and ‘behavioural’ advertising
However, Lawson sees the CIPPC complaint, “as a shot across the bows of all social networking sites,” says the BBC, going on she said the only reason the clinic is focusing on Facebook at the moment is because they don’t have the time or resources to look at others.
But, “They are all suspect,” she says in the story. “Facebook is the most popular site in Canada and so that is why we looked at it particular but I am hoping to be able to do an analysis of MySpace later this year.”
Hopefully, when that happens, CIPPIC will also take a long, hard look at the means.
As Lisa Feinberg, another law student behind the complaint, states >>>
We’re concerned that Facebook is deceiving its users.
Facebook promotes itself as a social utility, but it’s also involved in commercial activities like targeted advertising. Facebook users need to know that when they’re signing up to Facebook, they’re signing up to share their information with advertisers.
‘Targeted’ and ‘behavioural’ advertising go together, as Facebook knows. It, together with shady promoters such as Phorm, are leading proponents of both.
Facebook was caught red-handed secretly trying to use the techniques and is still trying to figure out a way to employ them without again generating huge amounts of use anger and negative PR, as it did recently with its Beacon sneak attack.
Says Search Engine Journal blandly >>>
Behavioral targeting technologies work by anonymously monitoring and tracking the content read and sites visted by a designated unique user or IP as that user surfs the Internet. This is done by serving tracking codes, which are implemented as cookies, on a user’s computer as s/he is served ads from various online advertising networks. Sites visited, content viewed, and length of visit are then all databased and analyzed to predict an online behavioral pattern for such a user, thereby classifying that user by his/her online demographic. Behavioral ad networks then serve targeted advertising related to that user’s behavioral classification, regardless of where s/he then visit.
‘Anonymously monitoring’ means they’re spying on you and where you go, hoarding the information so they can re-sell it to advertisers.
“Reach the exact audience you want with relevant targeted ads,” says Facebook.
Meanwhile, the social engineering site is good for some things, posts Drew under a Wired story.
“I think this is all fine and dandy,” he says, “but I find Facebook a useful law enforcement tool not only to generate leads about crimes committed in Canada but it is also a good tool for gathering intelligence and finding suspects who committed in Canada,”
“You know everyone and their uncle has Facebook these days and I know first hand of cases where Facebook lead to a suspect and an arrest as he had his phone # listed.”
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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