

Personal Analytics for Facebook - sparshgupta
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2013/01/23/introducing-expanded-personal-analytics-for-facebook/

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skram
If you can edit the title, it'd be better as "Wolfram Alpha updates their
Personal Analytics for Facebook" or something since it is indeed an update and
not totally new.

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jcburnham
Agreed.

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sparshgupta
Unfortunately I don't think I can.

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jcburnham
No worries, thanks for posting it so quickly!

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oboizt
This looks like fun. I'm totally cool with them having my data. Just give me
pretty graphs. :)

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HaloZero
Is there any plans on setting it up so you only do analysis for a certain time
frame? Who are my top comments in the past year vs all time?

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jcburnham
Yes! We call it Historical Analytics. We're waiting till the next release to
enable the visualizations, but you can start collecting data now by enabling
it.

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whocanfly
Does it save all my fb info on Wolfram Alpha's server or run the analysis
every time ?

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skram
I feel like this is a question I ask myself with every FB app I "connect"
with. You never really know what they're actually doing with your data unless
you read all their policies and that's just what they _say_ they're going to
do.

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whocanfly
Well, I gave it a try with a temp id. The analytics is impressive. But, I am
pretty concerned abt privacy despite their claim of not storing any personally
identifiable info.

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orangethirty
You are worried about privacy yet use FB?

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jmix
It used to be that, in order to get access to someone's rolodex, you'd have to
befriend them and do a ton of things with them to maintain that said
friendship. And even then, you still had to go through them to take advantage
of that rolodex of connections, where they would keep rough tabs on who you
were and how often you took advantage of these connections, so that they could
come back to you when they need to take advantage of your connections in turn.

Looks like these days, someone like Wolfram can get full access for the price
of a few cute graphs.

At least, the data that the egomaniacal Wolfram gets his hands on is limited
to those people who are easily fooled by shiny gifs.

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jcburnham
Unless you enable Historical Analytics, we delete your data after one hour.

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html>

"I’m concerned about the privacy of my account information. What is done with
my Facebook data?

We value the trust that our users put in us, and are committed to maintaining
the highest standards of privacy protection.

In order to do analysis on your Facebook data, it is necessary to cache it
temporarily on our servers. We acquire the data through the Wolfram Connection
app using the Facebook API, respecting whatever privacy settings you and your
friends have given to Facebook. Our system is set up to cache your data on our
servers for one hour, which allows you to perform queries efficiently. The
default behavior is to delete personally identifiable data after one hour."

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jmix
Great, then you can respond to some observations and answer some questions:

1\. Your FAQ is at odds with your privacy policy
(<http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html>) which states that you can
collect and retain Personally Identifying Information. How do you explain the
discrepancy?

2\. In a conflict between a "FAQ" and Privacy Policy, which one is the
officially binding document? Why should I entrust my data to comments made by
a pseudonymous user or to something that is called a FAQ?

3\. Your privacy policy is subject to change without notice. How can I be
assured of any guarantee given that you have this blanket clause? Why would
you not offer your users to opt out of any changes that weaken their privacy?

Please back up your responses with URLs to legally binding documents that
provide strong guarantees we can rely on.

Thanks.

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jcburnham
I'd be delighted to answer your questions:

1\. I don't believe that the two documents are in conflict. Our privacy policy
states:

"When you use any Wolfram|Alpha application associated with a Third-Party Site
("TPS"), including but not limited to social networking sites such as
Facebook, we may collect personally identifiable information about you from
the profile you have established at the TPS."

When you use Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook, we do access your
Facebook data, which you have to authorize through Facebook. That data does
contain personally identifiable information. That isn't in conflict with the
FAQ. The FAQ states (apologies if this is repetitive):

"In order to do analysis on your Facebook data, it is necessary to cache it
temporarily on our servers. We acquire the data through the Wolfram Connection
app using the Facebook API, respecting whatever privacy settings you and your
friends have given to Facebook. Our system is set up to cache your data on our
servers for one hour, which allows you to perform queries efficiently. The
default behavior is to delete personally identifiable data after one hour."

We do collect personally identifiable data from Facebook, but we don't save
this data for more than an hour (unless you specifically enable Historical
Analytics which tracks changes to your Facebook over time).

2\. There shouldn't be any conflict between the FAQ and the Privacy Policy,
the FAQ is specific to Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook whereas
the Privacy Policy is global to all of Wolfram|Alpha. As far as my being
pseudonymous, my name is John Burnham and the above link is to my blog post.
Send me an email at johnb@wolfram.com if you like.

3\. & 4\. Yes, the privacy policy is subject to change, which is standard for
many TOS's. I'd like to point out though, that our Privacy Policy also states
at the bottom of the page that we haven't changed it since March 2009. If we
do change it, you can refresh the page at any time and check the bottom of the
page for the date of previous change. What's currently on the web is the
current legal document.

Links: FAQ <http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html> Privacy Policy
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html>

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jmix
These is non-responsive PR:

1\. The PP explicitly says that Wolfram can collect and retain data
indefinitely. The FAQ promises a horizon of 1 hour. 1 != ∞. Which of these
documents is to be believed? Which of them constitutes a legally binding
document?

2\. I don't want reassurance from some Joe Random Shmoe. Your users have a
relationship with Wolfram LLC (or whatever the legal entity is). So any
meaningful guarantee needs to come from that entity. But until now, Wolfram
has only provided weasel wording and cagey language. I appreciate you sharing
your name, but then again you have a product to peddle, and we both know that
nothing you say here is legally binding for Wolfram, so you could say
anything.

3 & 4\. PP provides no meaningful long-term guarantee. Saying that this is
standard for many in the industry is a cop out. If your company is really
committed to these principles of privacy you espouse and claim here in this
forum, it certainly has the legal staff to get it written into those two
documents to which you linked.

Time to get your principles in your legal documents. It's duplicitous to claim
the high road while peddling agreements that sign away so much PII to Wolfram.

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taliesinb
1\. Two different meanings of data: connecting your Facebook account to your
Wolfram ID, which is necessary to do the analytics, is by definition PPI (your
Facebook account IS your name and email address). That's why the privacy
policy says that.

However, the actual data retrieved from your Facebook profile (wallposts,
friend lists, etc) is deleted after 1 hour -- unless you enable Historical
Analytics, obviously.

There is no contradiction here.

2\. This question is phrased in such an insulting way I can't imagine you
aren't deliberately trolling.

3&4\. We've been quite upfront about what we do with your data. All your
Facebook data goes away unless you opt in to Historical Analytics. Otherwise
there is no PII derived from your Facebook data that we keep. You can disable
Historical Analytics at any time, and you can disassociate your Facebook
account from your Wolfram ID at any time, too.

To sum up: we've taken the high road from the beginning. Unlike many FB-based
businesses, users aren't the product here, they're the customers.

Have a nice day.

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jmix
Yes, we all follow what _you_ have said, but I see no guarantees offered by
Wolfram, the service provider. You can pretend to be offended and avoid the
question, but at the end of the day, the assurance you are trying to provide
here is not legally binding and you know it. If you really believe in your
last paragraph, why don't you have the Wolfram legal staff put these
guarantees in writing, into the ToS and Privacy Policy?

At $600/hour for a lawyer and 30 minutes of their time to add a sentence or
two, it'll cost $300 to make the changes. That's well under however much your
time cost to make unbacked assurances online. And at the end of the day, your
service and your users will be better off for it.

