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General discussion

facebook etc, opt-in still isn't good enough

May 11, 2010 8:06PM PDT

Regarding the many discussions of facebook and other sites collecting and publicizing marketing and profiling data:

One point I haven't heard mention yet is that the problem is worse than opt-in vs opt-out.

The problem is the insidious allowance of the "Who needs privacy anyways?" trend to gain momentum and reach a point of too-late-to-bother-trying-to-return (because so many sites will have so much info, and so much of it will have already been made available and gotten distributed too widely to ever delete it) long before the time most people finally get burned, or just mosquito-bitten-to-death, and realize how it came to be.

At some point fairly soon, what this will mean is that the mere act of opting out (or declining to opt-in) to data publication by social web sites, or turning off Lattitude, or failing to check in to foursquare, will ITSELF be a big red flag item that will arouse attention and speculation and carry more stigma than whatever you might have been doing or place you might have been going.

This is already happening to money. You almost can not actually conduct your life using _only_ cash any more. If you try, you must be a wacko or criminal with something to hide.

--
bkw

Discussion is locked

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facebook etc, opt-in still isn't good enough
May 12, 2010 7:39AM PDT

They need to have one button to easy opt out.

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It's a free site on the Internet
May 12, 2010 2:26PM PDT

And you were foolish to trust it with personal information in the first place. *shrug*

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Well, with that attitude...
May 13, 2010 12:00AM PDT

The net is useless. Whether it's free or not doesn't matter. Are "paid" sites to be trusted because you pay for them? Hardly.

Facebook is treading on very dangerous waters. They seem to be going out of their way to push the privacy (or lack of) envelope time after time, and one has to wonder who thinks this is a good idea. $$$ does not equal good idea, btw.

I see Google making some of the same blunders. One has to wonder who in these companies is strong enough to say "Hey, what are we doing here????"

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Agree with Slickster here
May 13, 2010 3:58AM PDT

Not to mention, Facebook was foolish enough to think that they can keep this crap up and never suffer any consequences. Had they made privacy simple to control they could have avoided the FTC and the Senate from sticking their noses into their business. Their condescension towards their users will eventually come back to bite them them in the face.

Look what happened when banks started removing barriers that use to keep late fees and NSF charges in check. It was of course all in the ever changing fine print but that doesn't make these tactics any less sleazy or predatory. Hence they now have to live with new banking rules.

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(NT) Make sure to note this agreement for posterity, lol!
May 13, 2010 6:12AM PDT
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Lifehacker has a good article about the maze of FB Security
May 13, 2010 6:28AM PDT