

Max's privacy war brings Facebook to heel  - nreece
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/maxs-privacy-war-brings-facebook-to-heel-20111027-1mksg.html

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btn
While it's good to see online privacy issues getting more attention, I think
that the enduring message that people take away from these articles shouldn't
be " _Facebook is evil_ ", but rather " _I should be more aware of the privacy
of my data_ ". (Although, if Facebook is breaking the law, that's a little
different.)

After all, these issues aren't specific to Facebook. They, and companies like
them, are collecting information that has been voluntarily surrendered to them
in the first place, whether explicitly by you (creating an account, messaging
people), by others (friends tagging you, inviting you to events), or
implicitly (visiting websites with "like/share" buttons). People need to be
aware of these issues across _all_ facets of their online life, not just the
policies of a single company.

~~~
vetler
Facebook isn't evil. Perhaps they're a bit naïve, thinking that storing all
this data is ok, but it might not be.

Whenever Max' story comes up, someone usually comments that using Facebook is
completely voluntarily, and people should just not use it if it bothers them
what kind of data Facebook collects and how it uses them.

Whether or not it's voluntary is completely besides the point here.

First of all, as gerggerg mentioned in a comment here, it's not voluntary if
you don't know about it (i.e. what data Facebook collects and what they do
with it).

Second, if a company provides me with a service, I expect them to do it in
accordance with the law. So, when Facebook provides us with their services, I
really don't see why I shouldn't be able to request the information that Max
has requested from them. It is actually my right to use their service, and
then ask them to provide me with the data they have stored about me. Of
course, Facebook will _also_ expect to run their service in accordance with
the law, and be ready to hand over data when it's requested.

It's not like this is something we Europeans suddenly pulled out of a hat, and
I'm sure Facebook knew about it. Any company that decides to open offices in
another country will of course take time to learn about laws that affect their
business. We've had laws for this for a while, actually, and we learn about
how we can request our personal data from companies in school (at least I
did).

But don't feel bad for the companies that have to comply to this law - it's
not like all they do is sit around providing data to people requesting it.
Most people don't actually request it!

~~~
viraptor
> First of all, as gerggerg mentioned in a comment here, it's not voluntary if
> you don't know about it (i.e. what data Facebook collects and what they do
> with it).

Well, that's not some secret. They collect every single thing you send them
and process it as they like internally. Only third-party access to the data is
limitted. Assuming anything less not only from Facebook but any other company
is likely to surprise you in a bad way.

~~~
vetler
> They collect every single thing you send them and process it as they like
> internally.

No, this is wrong.

They are not allowed to do whatever they want with it. In Europe there are
laws on what companies can do with your data. For instance, see the Data
Protection Directive: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive>

------
veyron
"Under European law, consumers have the right to request a record of the
personal information held by a company."

Given that Facebook's international headquarters is in Ireland, does the law
also apply to Facebook when it deals with US users?

~~~
gst
<http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf>

"If you are a resident of or have your principal place of business in the US
or Canada, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook, Inc.
Otherwise, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook Ireland
Limited. References to “us,” “we,” and “our” mean either Facebook, Inc. or
Facebook Ireland Limited, as appropriate."

Wonder what's valid for me. When I created the account I wasn't US resident,
now I am.

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burgerbrain
Unfortunately "1222 pages" is a pretty clumsy measure of data, making this
hard to really get a mental handle on. I'd be more interested in a byte or
word count.

~~~
thematt
Exactly. Look at the margins on the pages in that picture...they look like
they're about 2 inches.

~~~
artursapek
The saddest part is how much easier it would have been to provide a byte count
than to print those out and count the reams he went through (if he even did
so)

~~~
burgerbrain
@jcitme

You've been hellbanned for nearly 5 months.

Also, I don't see how bytecounts could possibly be harder than anything else.
You'd see it before you even managed to get the (probably multiple) files open
to print to pdf.

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artursapek
What an unimportant measure of data. I bet a lot of that '1222 pages,' or up
to 700mb (based on an average CD), is timestamps and other metadata on where
and when he poked, commented, updated, and deleted his friends, photos, and
statuses. You know, the sort of petty activity that Facebooking is mostly
composed of. It doesn't really add up like that. Most of it never matters a
week later.

What would have been more interesting is the KIND of data he got. Like, to
what extent have they been tracking him physically? Today I myself updated to
the Timeline profile and was surprised at the addition of a Map section beside
my photos with 70 markers of where Facebook knows I've been. Looking through
them though I remember authorizing the tracking in all of the ones I saw, and
it's mostly just at school and at home.

Did the data include the websites he visits, speaking lately of the 3rd-party
tracking cookies that the Like buttons got so much attention for? His level of
friendship with his various friends? They have algorithms for this, and the
extent to which they analyze a user is more interesting than how endowed their
database is. Unfortunately the real juicy stuff probably isn't even there
because the article says Facebook isn't required legally to provide any
'analytical procedures' that they run.

I bet most of that 1222 pages is just noise.

------
ddw
> said the spokesman, who did not give a name in keeping with company policy.

So strange...

