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Facebook bans people who sell user data

Jen — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:38:46 +0000

According to a news release, social networking giants Facebook have initiated legal action against a group of technical developers who have been found to be selling information about Facebook users to brokers, in order to enable them to place targeted adverts to consumers. The data which was sold include the user names and contact details of people who have signed up to the networking site.

Facebook discovered the sale of the data when they investigated a bug in the web browser which inadvertently disclosed the identification of users. The investigation commenced when various reports in the media were stating that advertising firms were managing to acquire the sensitive information about users including contact details and user identifiers.

Following the identification, Facebook discovered that there were a number of developers profiting from the illicit sale of user data. The people concerned with the enquiry have been banned from using or connecting to Facebook for the next six months, and are required to undergo an audit in order to ensure that they are compliant with the site’s policies.

The developers involved in the scam were people who had been employed in order to create technical applications for Facebook. They were able to obtain user information as a result of the access which was required in order for them to undertake their development work. While the people who have been punished for leaking and selling the user data have not been identified, Facebook have confirmed that there were less than twelve people involved in the scam, and none of the people concerned were responsible for the creation of the ten most popular applications used on the site.

According to Facebook, the company Rapleaf are among those data brokers who have bought up the user IDs of Facebook subscribers. Following the investigation, Rapleaf have agreed to stop using Facebook applications or having anything to do with the site from now on. A spokesperson for Facebook commented: “The investigation determined that no private user data was sold and confirmed that transfer of these UIDs did not give access to any private data. Despite this, we have taken the breach very seriously and imposed a six-month ban on the developers who have been caught out.”

Facebook fury as AT&T solicit feedback

Jenny Sanderson — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:54:11 +0000

American Telecommunications company AT&T have angered a number of Facebook users, following the issue of a supposed thank you letter, which in fact was a ploy to elicit feedback from users. The company’s official page on Facebook has been swamped with complaints from members, after the firm issued a thank you letter to all their new subscribers.

The letter, rather than simply thanking people for signing up, and updating them, in fact was a guise to request that customers provide feedback about the service which they receive, by commenting on the official Facebook page. Within the letter, the company provided information about new innovations geared towards enhancing wireless services, stating that they had “exciting plans to make your wireless experience better”.

Issued from the vice president and general manager of AT&T’s New York premises, the letter was sent to millions of people as a way of communicating the fact that the company was expanding, and have plans to invest billions of pounds in new developments and improvements.

Since issuing the letter, AT&T’s Facebook page has been inundated with critical comments by users, who took the opportunity to post up criticism on the public Facebook page of the organisation. As AT&T currently has over six hundred thousand followers on their Facebook presence, there is potential for a huge amount of negative traffic to the site following the receipt of the letter.

People have posted up comments complaining about the poor service which they have received, the negative implications of sub-standard network accessibility, and a host of other issues. The move demonstrates the power of social networking, and the risk which companies take when they elicit feedback publicly from their customers.

A spokesperson for the company stated: “Our letters today – in addition to thanking customers and outlining what we’re doing to make sure our service continually improves – asked for feedback and we’re getting it. We engage with customers all day every day on Facebook. We don’t delete comments, we answer questions and complaints directly and honestly, and we have a separate team of customer service managers who engage one-on-one with customers who post specific problems.”

Facebook disrupts sales of Blair autobiography

Admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:00:56 +0000

Following the release of Tony Blair’s long-anticipated autobiography ‘A Journey’, Facebook members have gone all out to disrupt sales of the memoirs. In a bid to publicise criticism of the former Prime Minister’s stance on the Iraq war, a new Facebook page has been set up encouraging people to sabotage sales of the book.

The group on the social networking site is termed ‘Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in bookshops’, with a view to getting people to acknowledge his activities in the Iraq war, which a number of people have described as being tantamount to war crime. Thousands of people have flocked to join the online group, and have signed up to wreak havoc in bookstores across the UK, moving Blair’s book in to the Crime section of the books.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, the Facebook page has over five thousand followers, all of whom pledged to support the move to brand Blair as a war criminal in bookshops. The page suggested that the movement would encourage people to think twice about how the book was categorised in stores.

The group, set up by a student called Euan Booth, was set up to make a quiet and polite protest against Blair’s Iraq activity. Initially Booth confessed that he wanted to stain copies of the memoirs with fake blood, but decided that a peaceful protest would be far more effective. Booth stated: “It is mischievous, but no one is coming to any harm. It is a very English way of voicing your opinion and is meant to be a bit of fun.”

“I was absolutely livid that this bloke could still be walking around and lying to the British people. The war was based on a complete pack of lies and we are still paying the price of that. If it gets back to him in some small way that this is what people think about him, I will be pleased. He hasn’t profited from the book but he has a channel to voice his opinions about this. I don’t and I’m trying to take that back.”

The protest follows a more aggressive stance taken by a number of demonstrators when Blair attended his first signing at an Eason’s bookshop in Dublin, on Saturday. Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes as people voiced their anger with the former Prime Minister.

Facebook alternative to be launched next month

Jen — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:16:02 +0000

An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on 15 September, the developers of the new project have announced. The site is described as a social networking service which enables members to have a much greater level of control over their privacy options than Facebook.

Named ‘Diaspora’, the new network is marketing itself as a ‘personally-controlled’ site which made news headlines at the beginning of the year, when Facebook was forced to address its privacy settings. Facebook authorities were forced to simplify setting on the site to make them less confusing for their members.

Diaspora, as an open-source project, was developed by four students in the United States, and has so far raised around £140,000 from sponsorship and donations. The students (one mathematician and three computer scientists), are based in New York.

They came up with the idea for Diaspora when Facebook came under fire for its lackadaisical approach to member security and privacy settings. The students used Kickstarter to generate funds for the project, and generated their funds from almost six and a half thousand people donating to the project. According to news reports, even the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, contributed to the development of the site.

One of the three founders of Diaspora, Maz Salzberg, was interviewed by the BBC about the project. “We want to put users back in control of what they share,” he commented.

“We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15^th. Our team has spent the entire summer building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their co-workers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that’s a hard [user interface] problem and we take it seriously.”

Facebook Places functionality updated for smartphones

Andre — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:01:23 +0000

An announcement this week from social networking giants Facebook sees the launch of a new smartphone function called ‘Places’. Places enables people to update their status to show people where they are, when they are on the move. It constitutes Facebook’s first location-based service, enabling people to share information about where they are eating, playing or shopping.

The Places feature follows on the back of other existing services such as Gowalla and Foursquare. It is currently only available as a US iPhone application, or by entering Facebook’s smartphone site. However, there are plans to roll out the new feature to the 500 million members of the networking site in the very near future. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook has commented: “This is meaningful because you can stay connected with your friends around you.”

The new feature employs smartphone GPS technology to enable users to locate their current location and access a list of places nearby. The action then enables them to publish their location details to their news feed facility on their own page. They also have the ability to tag friends whom they are with, to distribute location information among a group of people travelling together, providing friends have already updated their location on the site.

Product vice president Chris Cox commented: “While home and work are two of the most important places in people’s lives, Places tries to tap into the third most important. This third place is the one we end up talking about a lot. I went to a movie, I saw a band, I went to a bar. So much of the interesting stuff in our lives happens in this small amount of time and we want to make that come alive. The worst portrait of Facebook is people at home just looking at pictures of other people having fun. This is exactly the opposite. This is a very participatory, real-world kind of thing.”

Facebook revenue scheduled to rise further

Matt Thomas — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:30:59 +0000

eMarketer have released details of a new report which states that advertising revenue from social networking giants Facebook is set to rise to the point where it passes one billion pounds for the first time, next year. At the same time, profits for rivals MySpace are predicted to fall by fourteen percent, making the disparity between the two sites even wider.

The report predicts that Facebook will generate £1.13bn over the course of the year, as its 500 million users across the globe make it a viable and lucrative space for businesses around the world to advertise their products and services.
Advertisers in the Unites States currently supply approximately 65 percent of all advertising revenue for the site, according to the eMarketer research. MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, is only due to generate $347m over the course of 2010. In contrast, Mark Zuckerberg, who owns Facebook, will see advertising revenue grow by 165 percent over the course of 2009 – 2011.

A senior analyst spokesperson for the research company eMarketer commented: “Brand advertisers are making Facebook a core buy. Ad spending is building quickly and the mass audience is one that marketers cannot ignore any longer.”
At the recent Cannes Lyons International Advertising Festival, Mark Zuckerberg commented: “it is almost a guarantee that Facebook will eventually top one billion users, with significant room for further growth in countries including Russia, Japan and China.”

Facebook hosts over 550,000 third-party applications, and boasts 500 million active users. More than 150 million people engage with the site on external websites every month, and there are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

Facebook security is being used by members

Matt Thomas — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:09:15 +0000

Following calls from a number of Facebook members to enhance security on the site for vulnerable members, the social networking giant implemented a panic button. The button is designed to alert authorities if anyone felt that they were at risk from online predators using Facebook to groom or otherwise prey on users.

According to The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), more than 200 people have used the panic button since it was launched last month, as a means of reporting suspicious behaviour. Ceop, which created the application to safeguard Facebook users, state that this figure represents an increase of reports by seven times the norm.

Facebook were initially resistant to the idea of launching a panic button, but was pressurized in to it following the brutal murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall. Ashleigh was enticed to meet convicted sex offender Peter Chapman through Facebook. Following her death, a significant number of police backed the campaign from all over the UK in support of Ceop’s plans.

A Ceop spokesperson commented: “We have no statistics to say this is the highest we have ever had – although experience suggests it is. All the reports have been acted upon, and prompted a number of ongoing investigations. There have been some very serious allegations. The application, which allows users to report abuse to Ceop with one click, has been downloaded more than 55,000 times.”

“It is all about making it easier to report abuse on Facebook. Previously it would take six clicks to make a report – it was long winded and difficult. We deal with between 500 and 700 reports every month from across the web. Around 50% come from the public, while other sources may be police agencies here and abroad, online moderators, worried parents and NGOs”.

Facebook privacy pirate speaks out

Andy Russell — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:43:58 +0000

Ron Bowes, the security consultant responsible for publishing 100 million Facebook user details online, has released a statement explaining his motivation behind the breach of privacy. Bowes developed some code to go through a series of Facebook profiles to identify users which were not protected by the optional privacy settings.

Bowes then harvested the details and published them on the Pirate Bay website for people to download and use as they saw fit. Details published included URLs, names, IDs and profile information of Facebook members.

The security consultant has claimed that he undertook the project as part of his ongoing work on developing a security tool, called ‘Ncrack’.

“I’m a developer for the Nmap Security Scanner and one of our recent tools is called Ncrack. It is designed to test password policies of organisations by using brute force attacks; in other words, guessing every username and password combination. The original plan was to collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests. Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did.”

“If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook’s directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public. All I’ve done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis. I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too.”

“For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there’s minimal potential for anybody to get hurt. Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it. However, it also highlights a new trend that is emerging in the digital age. With traditional paper media, it wasn’t possible to compile 170 million records in a searchable format and distribute it, but now we can. Having the name of one person means nothing, and having the name of a hundred people means nothing; it isn’t statistically significant. But when you start scaling to 170 million, statistical data emerges that we have never seen in the past.”

Man publishes private information in a bid to discredit Facebook

Matt Thomas — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:47:20 +0000

Approximately one hundred million people who subscribe to social networking giant Facebook have found themselves embroiled in a publicity row this week. A security consultant, Ron Bowles, developed a piece of code to extract personal data from profiles on Facebook, collating them all in a single document and then publishing them online.

The list has been made available as a file for download, and comprises of every user on Facebook who have personal information which is not hidden from view through the site’s privacy settings. The data collated and published includes the URL of users, their name, and their unique user ID. The file has proved to be extremely popular already, with many people downloading it to pursue the contents. Over one thousand people have already accessed the file, through file sharing site Pirate Bay.

A spokesperson from Facebook was quick to discount any claims that private data had been exposed in any way, suggesting that all information was already freely available to consumers: “People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want. In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. No private data is available or has been compromised.”

Ron Bowles stated that he published the data in an effort to highlight Facebook’s lackadaisical approach to user privacy settings.

A spokesperson from Privacy International commented: “Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it. It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn’t have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there’s an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence. The trawl of data fed into the confusion of the privacy settings. People did not understand the privacy settings and this is the result.”

Sociologist criticises Facebook quest for profit

Andre — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:44 +0000

Facebook has long hit the news for its controversial approach to online data privacy, with many people criticising the application for abusing users’ personal information. Earlier this month, Facebook came under fire by German officials, following claims that the social networking giants has gathered personal information from non-Facebook subscribers.

Data protection officials commenced legal proceedings against the company, in action that could result in thousands of Euros in fines being levied against them. Swiss officials are also considering action against them.

With 500 million users and an estimated value of well over 6 billion pounds, Facebook is the acknowledged king of social networking. Despite the popularity of the site, earlier this year over 40,000 people pledged to leave the site over privacy concerns. A sociologist from Lausanne University, Olivier Glassey, has issued a statement suggesting that Facebook’s popularity will continue to decline, unless the company does something radical to change their approach to users’ data and personal information.

Olivier Glassey stated: “We are providing a lot of information and we do not know how this information is used by them or even what kind of information Facebook is processing and how. So maybe a better balance between given and received information will be a point to work on in the future for the user and for Facebook.”

A second social expert has backed up the claims, stating: “People understood that their privacy was at risk and therefore they will falsify the information. It is what sociologists call projecting your life. You start to manipulate the data, you start to make things better, you start to put out only selected pictures of yourself, because you know that the pictures are going to circulate.”

“So what we see right now is that social networks are less and less a representation of our life as it really is. It is more what we want others to think our life is, which is a very, very big difference.”

With the growing concerns over Facebook’s use of data, the future could see a mass exodus of users to more secure sites, and the popular networking service diminishing in popularity over time.

Facebook smashes member number record

Matt Thomas — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 05:45:12 +0000

As some point in the next week, social networking giants Facebook will be achieving a major milestone, when the number of users for the site hits 500 million. As one of the most popular and flourishing sites on the web, Facebook rightly enjoys a place on the favourites bar of most surfers, and this popularity is now evidenced as they celebrate their 500 millionth subscriber.

Facebook users have grown exponentially since its conception, with 400 million members registered five months ago. The growth rate of the site has been phenomenal, considering it was launched in 2004, so has had just six years to become established as the most popular site online for social networking. Twelve months ago Facebook had 200 million users, showing that in the past year it has managed growth rates of over one hundred percent.

The site is due to achieve 500 million users at some point over the course of the week, and has already mapped out plans to celebrate the figure. Facebook Stories is a new page dedicated to demonstrating the power of the site for certain individuals, illustrating the impact Facebook has had upon people. The social networking site staff are hailing it as a visual memorial to how the internet has transformed people’s lives for the better.

Facebook Stories will enable people to submit their own perspective of how online networking has changed or supported them, using categories such as ‘natural disaster’ or ‘falling in love’. The idea is to present a user-led view of Facebook’s value within society. Posted in the number of characters allowed for a status update (420), the page will be succinct, powerful and to the point.

All Facebook members have been invited to submit their status story through the site, with the best ones being featured and published to celebrate the success of the social networking phenomenon.

Reuters announces Facebook profit for first time

Admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:20:13 +0000

A recent announcement by Reuters has suggested that the online networking site Facebook made a profit in 2009, for the first time. The growing success of the site has meant it generated more revenue than was initially predicted by Facebook’s own board members, and industry analysts.

Over the course of 2009, the site generated $800 million, which doubles the site’s takings from the previous year, and sees the company turning a profit for the very first time. Over the last year, Facebook has increased its private advertising by 400 percent, and now draws half a billion users worldwide.

The Reuters announcement stated that the financial information about Facebook came from two sources familiar with the situation, although the official profit has not yet been confirmed by Facebook’s own board or owner Mark Zuckerburg. Facebook’s growth over the past year indicates that the sites future will very much focus upon generating advertising revenue and drawing businesses and individuals in to deals to place company profiles and adverts on the site. Currently, Facebook offers a number of advertising packages including Pay Per Click.

Facts about Facebook:

More than 35 million users update their status each day, with more than 55 million status updates each day
More than 2.5 billion pictures are uploaded to Facebook each month
The average Facebook user has 130 friends and sends eight friend requests per month
Among children under 18, Facebook was ranked third in the top 100 searches of 2009, behind YouTube and Google
A recent survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social networking sites such as Facebook to evaluate applicants. Thirty-eight percent of admissions officers said that what they saw negatively affected the applicant
Facebook is not only beating MySpace traffic, but it is also the second-ranked site overall in the U.S. behind Google
Americans spend 13.9 billion minutes a year on Facebook and five billion minutes on MySpace.

Yahoo and Facebook push integration even further

James Oliver — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:36:59 +0000

Yahoo! is set to launch new features that will push the integration of Yahoo.com and Yahoo! Mail with Facebook, the main aim behind the new features will be to encourage users to post actions taken on Yahoo! sites and other associated services – such as photography favourite Flickr – onto their Facebook wall.

It has also been reported that Yahoo! will also be upgrading its Yahoo! Profiles service to include tabs that will take users to various social networks. Under an all new name ‘Yahoo! Pulse’, users will be able to switch between these networks and access updates from their Yahoo! or Facebook profiles without having to use the services separately.

These new features are slowly strengthening the extended partnership between Yahoo! and Facebook that has been growing since last December, as Yahoo! really pushes its goal of becoming a more social site in order to hold the attention of its visitors.

Although Yahoo! sites already currently receive hundreds of millions of visitors from around the world each month, studies have shown that many of them do not hang around after viewing news stories or checking their email – instead heading over to social networking sites such as Facebook to spend more time networking with friends.

In a statement, a Yahoo! spokesperson explained that its partnership with Facebook was an effort “to give people one simple, trusted place to share information and connect. We think this offers great benefit to people across the Web, and it’s key to helping Yahoo! extend our reach and increase engagement.”

Yahoo! is not the only side benefiting from the deal, however, as these new features will also aid Facebook in as they seek to encourage more sites to link to its services, achieving founder Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a more social web, extending user profiles across more major hubs and sites.

Director of the Facebook Developer Network, Ethan Beard, had this to say about the partnership:

“By integrating with Facebook on a global scale, Yahoo! is building upon an already valuable brand to give people easy ways to share the content they enjoy on Yahoo! with their friends on Facebook.”

Partnership between Facebook and FarmVille under threat

Jenny Sanderson — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:00:08 +0000

Facebook, now officially the largest social networking site on the internet, and Zynga, the company behind the incredibly popular Facebook game FarmVille, have fallen out over money issues.

Facebook have recently decided to make changes to agreements held with companies who build different features for the site.

The Times have claimed that Facebook are intending to take a 30 percent commission on all financial transactions that are made through the site as they look to maximise profits.

Californian based company, Zynga, the group behind the ever-popular FarmVille game are reported to be upset by the plans set forth by Facebook and as a result are rumoured to have threatened to split from Facebook.

This is unlikely to be the desired outcome from Facebook as the end of their relationship with Zynga would mean that other games produced by Zynga such as FishVille, Café World and Mafia Wars would all be taken off of the site, along with FarmVille these games bring a lot of users to the site for long periods of time.

FarmVille is played by an incredible 83 million people a month. The main premise behind the game is that users build a farm and then maintain it, including tending to crops and rearing livestock.

Although FarmVille is free to play it does create money as players are able to buy virtual items for their farm with real money.

With 83 million users logging on to play FarmVille a month there is a fair amount of money to be made and it would seem logical for both Facebook and Zynga to come to an agreement that would benefit both companies and not take FarmVille away from its hoard of loyal fans.