It’s one of Facebook’s dirty little secrets, even though it’s been publicly available information for more than a year. Facebook takes information that you post, and sells it to advertisers who can use it in ads that are displayed to your friends. For example, if I posted “Eating Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream”, Ben & Jerry’s could then show an ad to all of my Facebook friends saying “Anne is eating Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream – shouldn’t you too?” The service is part of Facebook’s “Facebook beacons” service for advertisers, and the ads in which your Facebook info is displayed are called “Facebook Social Ads”. And if you don’t explicitly opt out of them, then you are fair game.
Category: Facebook
Gary Waters is one lucky perp. Already on parole for a burglery rap, he was arrested for gun possession, and went to trial. And then, he was acquitted because of comments that the arresting officer Vaughan Ettienne had made on Facebook and MySpace.
Less than a week after Facebook announced its new Terms of Service (TOS), Facebook has announced that they are going back to the TOS drawing board, and have reinstated their old Terms of Service in the meantime. They are also requesting user input via the Facebook group called “The Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”.
Facebook has responded to the concern engendered by the new Facebook TOS with a post by none other than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself. In his comments, Zuckerberg tries to allay the fears of Facebook users by saying that even though the new Facebook TOS says that Facebook can use all user-generated content however they want, and forever, they wouldn’t really do so. Unfortunately, that doesn’t cut it.
Facebook (FB) has recently updated their Terms of Service (TOS), and among the new changes is this dandy: once you post something to Facebook you can’t take it back. Meaning that even if you close your account, by using Face book you have granted them a perpetual, eternal license to do whatever they want with your content.
An 18-year-old boy has been charged with blackmailing as many as 31 teen boys into having sex with him. Anthony Stancl – who calls himself Tony Stancil – of New Berlin, Wisconsin, tricked his victims by posing as a girl on Facebook, and having his victims send nude pictures and videos of themselves to “her”. Then Anthony Stancil told them that if they didn’t have sex with him, or let him perform a sex act on them, that he would post the pictures and videos to the Internet.
As early as 2007, Facebook began quietly censoring pictures of breastfeeding babies which members had posted to their Facebook profiles. They did this by simply removing the pictures of the nursing babies after they were posted. In some cases, users were warned if they continued posting such “obscene” content, they stood to lose their Facebook accounts. Now the issue is heating up, and Facebook is not backing down. Facebook – you win the booby prize.
An Australian court has allowed someone to be served with notice of a lawsuit – by message on Facebook!
Inq Mobile has released the INQ1, which is being touted as “The Facebook Phone”. That is because the Facebook Phone’s functionality is actually built around Facebook, and other social networking. In essence, it’s a social network device first while, oh yeah, it’s also a mobile phone.
Facebook the Movie? Can it be? Yes, it can, and it is. It’s true. Aaron Sorkin, creator of the awesome television series “The West Wing” and the movie “A Few Good Men”, is creating the Facebook Movie for Sony.
A new worm is raising havoc for Facebook and MySpace users. Called Koobface (and alternatively the Facebook Worm, MySpace Worm, Facebook Virus, or MySpace Virus), the MySpace and Facebook worm posts messages on Facebook and MySpace with links to what it claims to be a video. When the users follow the Koobface MySpace or Facebook worm link, they are told that they need to update their video player, and to “click here”. Of course, what they download isn’t really a video player update, it’s a trojan called “codecsetup.exe” which allows their computer to be taken over and controlled remotely.
The rise in social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace has been a boon for prosecutors, who are finding incriminating pictures on such sites – pictures which have been admitted as evidence in court, and used to increase penalties, sentences, and prison time!