Facebook Collects Data from any Visits to Pages with "Like" Buttons

Computing guru Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU Project and founder of the Free Software Foundation, points out a feature of Facebook that most of us do not know about.

Facebook does massive surveillance, he argues. If there is a "Like" button on a page, Facebook knows who visited that page and it can get the IP address of the computer visiting the page, even if the person is not a Facebook user.  Privacy issues

Facebook Tracks Users Who are Logged Off

Facebook is facing new regulatory scrutiny after revelations that the application is tracking users even after they have logged out of the application.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Reps. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) wrote that Facebook’s use of “cookie” software should be investigated under the “unfair and deceptive acts” clause of the agency’s mandate.
Privacy issues

Facebook says it has fixed the problem, which had been that every time a user visits a site that features a Facebook "Like" button, a record is sent back to Facebook, even after you log off your account.

The new application programming interface allows applications to post status items to a Facebook timeline without a users intervention. It is an extension of "Facebook Instant" and the privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see. Logging out of Facebook is not enough.

The advice to "log out of Facebook," in and of itself, does not fix the problem. Logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application. A number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to Facebook.com.

Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions, some would argue.

Facebook said the issue has been fixed.

But some now raise further issues about Facebook’s new “friction-less sharing” features, which allow applications to post user activity in real time, without requiring permission from account holders for each update. The apps require users to grant permission once to generate updates, and users have the ability to change these settings at any time. But many users will not.

One Reason Online Privacy Rules Are Coming

An examination of 101 popular smartphone apps by the Wall Street Journal show that that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Not everybody would think that especially intrusive.

Some 47 apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.

Apple says that iPhone apps can’t transmit user data without approval, but the WSJ’s findings reveal many apps that don’t follow that rule. Google leaves it up to app makers to make users aware of the data their apps reveal. Android also gives users specific notes about the phone resources (including hardware and data) apps will use before they’re downloaded.

Unfortunately, there’s little users can do to protect themselves from data-sharing apps, aside from avoiding many popular apps entirely, the report suggests. Many mobile ad companies let users opt-out of their website tracking, but those opt-out lists don’t apply to apps, according to the WSJ. The ad company Jumptap says iPhone users can opt out of app data sharing by emailing their phone’s user ID to them. Apple says its iAd opt-out also applies to apps (but doesn’t prevent iTunes data from being collected).

The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them, and suggest why there will be growing political pressure to toughen online privacy, and mobile privacy by extension, if not formal and specific rules relating to mobile data.

read more here if you aren't a Wall Street Journal subscriber.

IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Google's Wi-Fi Gaffe

As Google prepares to defend itself against allegations of Wi-Fi spying, it has said very little about exactly what kind of personal data it gathered as part of its Street View project.

Last week, Google also declined to provide executives willing to speak on the record about how one of the most monumental oversights in its history occurred: the inadvertent gathering of 'payload' data by Wi-Fi sniffers mapping hotspots while recording street scenes for Google Street View.

Google admitted on May 14 that it had been "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks" for three years. Payload data is distinct from a "header," which contains mostly benign information about the network itself: The payload is the actual data that is being transmitted over the network.

However, Google's store of personal data might not be quite the treasure trove it may seem. Data sent back and forth between encrypted Web sites (password logins, online banking, credit-card transactions, or anything with https:// in the URL) would not be collected. Mobile workers signed into VPNs would also not be affected.

In addition, it's not totally clear how much data Google would be able to capture with a Street View car moving at about 25 miles per hour along the streets of cities and towns around the world. Google said the data was "fragmented," implying that piecing together any coherent image from that data would be difficult.

Deciphering Google's Wi-Fi headache (FAQ) | Relevant Results - CNET News

Facebook Updates Privacy Rules

Basically, users will have more control over their own sharing.

Who is More Careful About Personal Information:Younger or Older People?

Though it is not intuitive, younger users might be more careful and active about curating their online information than older users are, a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests.

Internet users between the ages of 18 to 29 are more likely than older adults to say they take steps to limit the amount of personal information available about them online. About 44 percent of young adult Internet users say this, compared with 33 percent of Internet users between the ages of 30 to 49, 25 percent of those 50 to 64 and 20 percent of those ages 65 and older.

Also, 71 percent of social networking users ages 18 to 29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online. By comparison, just 55 percent of users ages 50 to 64 have done so.

Compared with older users, young adults are not only the most attentive to customizing their privacy settings and limiting what they share on their profiles, but they are also generally less trusting of the sites that host their content.

When asked how much of the time they think they can trust social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, 28 percent of social networking site users ages 18 to 29 say “never.” By comparison, 19 percent of users ages 30 to 49 and 14 percent of those ages 50 to 64 say they never trust the sites.

See all the findings