kmakice says: Chris's gripe against this potential security hole is that the default isn't to close it. any and all information you input on your facebook profile is on a purely voluntary basis. anyone who actually thinks uploading sensitive info (however you may wish to define that) onto the internet and having that information "protected" by national (or regional, as is the case in the EU) privacy networks clearly hasn't spent a whole ot fo thought on the nature of the internet. The argument in the post assumes that not everyone makes that connection. Chris refers to a post he did last fall showing how easy it is to find out information about people that was marked as private by using this hole in the search logic and default profile settings. On many levels, I would agree with a statement that argues if you want it private, don't post it. On the other hand, if a service claims privacy, then it is there responsibility to make sure it is. That should include not only giving people the option to configure privacy how they want but also to understand the culture of users enough to know what they consider good privacy protection. This post would make the claim that Fa... This post would make the claim that Facebook isn't thinking about Europeans deeply enough.So we (Europeans) want, essentially, to share our innermost secrets with the world on a global social networking platform - but GOD FORBID anyone finds out about them! Because, of course we didn't INTEND to actually make any sensitive information public. <sigh> i knew there was a reason i never went into the legal profesion! replacing common sense with "hard facts" based on legal documents and regulations would just be too stressful for me to bear in the long run! (sincere apology to any lawyers out there - i'm glad you exist, but i'm equally glad i'm not one of you!) Here's some followup: * Chris posted today that Facebook fixed the problem after his post made it to Boing Boing. http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2007/06/facebook-cares-more-about-privacy-than.html * Probably more influential was the Wired News article by Ryan Singel. http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/06/facebookprivacysearch |
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