That crash you hear is the death of social networking.
Those were the first words out of Sara’s mouth as I read aloud the highlights from the Wall Street Journals “revelations” that Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg and other social networks were sending personally identifiable information, such as user names and user ID’s to advertisers.
The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code.
Advertising companies are receiving information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person’s real name, age, hometown and occupation.
This couldn’t come at a worse time for Facebook, who are being pointed to as being one of the worst offenders. This adds ever more fuel to fire surrounding their current privacy issues which are large enough to have made it on to the front cover of Time Magazine.
But Facebook went further than other sites, in some cases signaling which user name or ID was clicking on the ad as well as the user name or ID of the page being viewed.
I am still flabbergasted that some sites are defending the move, saying that just because they allow you to sign up without using your real name (I sign up with my real name everywhere) the information sent to advertisers is not personally identifiable.
MySpace, Hi5, Digg, Xanga and Live Journal said they don’t consider their user names or ID numbers to be personally identifiable, because unlike Facebook, consumers are not required to submit their real names when signing up for an account.
The bigger advertising companies like Google and Yahoo have come out and said publicly that they do not use the data. Stating that they prohibit companies such as Facebook from sending it to them, but they do anyway.
Both Google and Yahoo strongly refuted the idea that they would ever make use of any such personally identifiable data. Yahoo VP of Global Policy Anne Toth said of the allegations, “We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiable information to us. We have told them. ‘We don’t want it. You shouldn’t be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it.’”
Google and Yahoo have laid the blame firmly at the door of the social networks, implying either that the networks simply don’t care about the data they are sending out, or are too lazy to put in place the filters which the industry demands and that Google and Yahoo have asked for, instead choosing to leave the advertising companies worry about privacy concerns with regard to information they receive.
The trust has been broken. Facebook has pushed it to the brink and now the dam has burst, proving that above all else, social networks have put the dollar before your privacy.
Steven Hodson has it quite right, it’s now come out that despite assurance to the contrary and industry guidelines, the social networks expect us to bend over and take it up the ass where our privacy is concerned.
Posted by Paul to Paul O'Flaherty, 2010. | Permalink to That Crash You Hear Is The Death Of Social Networking