No More Winking at Facebook’s Lack of Privacy

2008 April 1
tags: , ,
by Teeg

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A little while back, Allan Cockerill, my favorite Facebook expert, asked me if I’d seen a website called Wink.

Wink gathers your information from various social sites and then sells advertising space to information companies so they can help people find out more information about you. Right now, their biggest advertiser seems to be Intellius, which means that people who don’t live in the US are safe for the time being, but if you live in the US and have used Facebook, myspace, Linkedin, Friendster, or Xanga, be warned. Having your information on Wink means that by clicking the link for more information (which isn’t obvious until after the fact that it takes you off site) anyone can find a list of cities you’ve lived in and known family members. For a small fee ($2.95 -$7.95) they can find out your current address, date of birth, telephone number, income, home value, relatives and associates, not to mention running background and criminal checks.

Scared yet?

I’ve explored the Wink site this morning. There’s no opt-out option, which would make me happy. Even the telephone company allows me to have an unlisted number.

Now, Wink says they gather information from Twitter, but my Twitter account isn’t listed on there. Not sure why, but I’m definitely not fussing.

I’ve written before that I don’t like the Facebook TOS. This is exactly the type of issue I was afraid of when I first read their terms, and it seems that they didn’t learn a lesson with Beacon, and still aren’t telling people when your information is given out…or giving you the option to opt out before it is shared.

But I have finally broken down and changed my facebook profile to private. I have removed all applications, although I hated removing some of them. And still, I’m in danger of having my information shared, according to this sentence about Privacy and Applications: Applications may be able to access a limited set of information about you through friends who opt in to other applications. Scroll further down to see “Share my name, networks, and list of friends, as well as..” and 18 other items that Facebook is willing to share with applications your friends (not you) use, including education history, personal info, current location, work history, relationship status, etc.

In order to stop that, you have to select “Do not share any information about me through the Facebook API.” If you can’t select it, a pop-up box will explain that you are currently using applications that use the API. But here’s the rub, I am unable to select it, and I have no applications on Facebook. None, zilch, nada. Not sure yet how to fix that, but I’ll keep looking.

So what do you think? Is privacy an important issue to you? How do we stay safe in the “Information Age?”

from → Facebook, Social Media

  • Unfortunately it gets worse - the whole issue with data portability and Facebook is that when you submit your information to facebook, it becomes 'theirs'.

    This is where Robert Scoble got into trouble when he tried to download his contacts. According to Facebook, they owned the information.

    There are other sites such as bigsight.com that collect data as well, but that are not selling it at present.

    I asked the Bigsight CEO whether they had plans to on sell the information in the same manner as Wink does, but received no answer. (We'd sent quite a few emails back and forth, and that was the only question that I remember remaining unanswered).

    That was back in February.

    To network on Facebook, or not to network on Facebook?

    On balance, I would still join Facebook today, but would be very careful with what information that I gave out.

    Of course, this goes for any other site as well.

    Allan Cockerill's last blog post..Blog Friends Application Is Closing
  • Looks like some good will come out of all this though. There's a bright side to data gathered by facebook:

    http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2008/03/31/united-...

    shotals32's last blog post..United Nations to Acquire Facebook
  • @shotals32 Sounds like an interesting story, though I might just wait until we're a bit further away from April 1 before I believe it!

    Makes one wonder about Myspace if it really is true, as it's twice the size of Facebook.

    Cheers

    Allan Cockerill's last blog post..Blog Friends Application Is Closing
  • That is absolutely wrong! You should at least have the option to opt out of their list. Just like a unlisted number or the no-call list. This only throws gas on the fire of identity theft.
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