Facebook has been hammered over very real and pertinent concerns that go far beyond mere member tempter-tantrums. The brouhaha began early last year when Facebook implemented, and then almost immediately retracted, new Terms of Service that many believed would give the site perpetual ownership of member information (like photographs).
Over the course of the last year, despite the reversal, those concerns over privacy have only escalated, and some recent revelations by an anonymous Facebook employee should only serve to intensify the cacophony of complaints.
According to the unnamed snitch, those aren’t the only issues, as the employee claims that everything you do is not only permanently stored and saved, but completely available to Facebook staff and associates. The site All Facebook has expectedly and deservedly retaliated to the whistleblower claims, and has dismissed the supposed revelations as common knowledge with which all Facebook members should be completely familiar.
Speaking to the Rumpus, the Facebook worker asserted that when a member makes “any sort of interaction on Facebook — upload a photo, click on somebody’s profile, update your status, change your profile information,” that activity is stored on Facebook’s servers. In order to identify a member’s “best friends,” a feature which quietly debuted recently, the site tracks and stores (at one of four massive data centers) every possible interaction. All Facebook countered by saying this practice is “widely known,” and that “if you don’t want Facebook collecting information about you, don’t give it to them.”
One of the most troubling revelations in the anonymous interview is the claim that any Facebook employee could log into any member account with a single master password. But, according to some, that password issue “isn’t really that big of a deal.” That may not sound comforting, but the site says it has a zero tolerance policy for snooping and it has also created a Chief Privacy Officer position.
News Credit : The Rumpus and All Facebook
12 Responses
Oops… this is quite scary stuff…
‘One of the most troubling revelations in the anonymous interview is the claim that any Facebook employee could log into any member account with a single master password. But, according to some, that password issue “isn’t really that big of a deal.” That may not sound comforting, but the site says it has a zero tolerance policy for snooping and it has also created a Chief Privacy Officer position.’
1. If the servers are running Linux, as I believe they are, there is a “root” password that allows anyone with “root” access to perform any administrative operation. Said password is heavily guarded and just “any employee” will not have it, nor will people who *do* have it in general be allowed to access it off-premises and unsupervised under normal circumstances.
2. The action you’ve described is a felony under Federal law. I’d be extremely surprised if it’s even possible as a result.
In short, I don’t think your “anonymous” interviewee knows what he or she is talking about. The “Facebook privacy issue” is bad enough without spreading half-truths and lies about it!
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php
Felony? Surely, you jest. Please state the federal law that would be broken.
[...] Link: Anonymous Employee Reveals Ugly Details of Facebook [...]
Dear Edward,
I do know that every linux has a Sudo user and a root password, but in this context we arent talking about login in to the server using root password. We are talking about the vulnerability of individual privacy. We are still not sure about the access level to the so called “root password”.
And yeah it has been a widely renowned motto by Facebook ” if you don’t want Facebook collecting information about you, don’t give it to them.” All we can is to keep hoping that they are not monitoring our accounts and information.
I do understand what ever they are doing is morally unethical (may be even a federal offense) but this is what Google and Facebook has been doing whole of the time.
I think You should watch the video we posted few days back .
http://socialmedia.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/here-comes-the-google-toilet/
Enjoy It
Sorry, but isn’t this all stupidly obvious? Of course Facebook remembers everything you do, how else would it show up? They HAVE to persist it somewhere in order for the intended recipient to be able to see it.
This notion of it being unethical or a Federal Offense (?!?!?!) is asinine. Seriously, there’s no conspiracy here.
The only thing that is a little surprising (and I probably don’t believe) is that *every* facebook employee can spoof any user. I don’t think it would be necessary for a facebook marketer or what have you to spoof, but troubleshooters, testers, devs, sure.
If you’re worried about facebook employees seeing your stuff, yea, don’t send it to facebook. I wouldn’t think they’d look at it on purpose though.
It’s irresponsible to spread this sort of FUD.
[...] Show Your True Facebook “any Facebook employee could log into any member account with a single master password” (read more . . .) [...]
Don’t want Facebook to know certain information? Don’t share it. Pretty simple stuff.
I appreciate your views, even we at Global Thoughtz encourage data transparency and use of publicly available data for improving the quality of services in the existing web services.
But there is a certain limit to transparency which is tolerable, beyond which its a incursion into someone’s private life. Here is the link of Pdf released over by MIT CSAIL which enlists reasons and possible threats from Facebook. I hope you wont consider MIT and researchers Asinine.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf
Enjoy reading it
[...] er een master login bestaan waarmee eender welke werknemer van Facebook in eender welk account kan inloggen. AKPC_IDS += "8115,"; Stem of voeg toe aan [...]
[...] VN:F [1.6.1_878]please wait…Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)For a while, we have been following the privacy policies along issues related with unauthorized private data storage by social networking websites like Facebook and Google. Our [...]
yea yeah, why else would we have facebook, if it cant remember?