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Facebook Privacy Social Networks

Facebook's First CES Reveal In Years Is a Privacy Tool That Falls Short (cnet.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD from the swing-and-a-miss dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: At CES 2020, Facebook plans to show off an innovative new concept for the company: privacy. It will have a booth at the tech show for giving demos on its updated Privacy Checkup tool, which it announced Monday morning. This is the first significant update to Facebook's Privacy Checkup tool since it was created in 2014, four years before its major Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal broke. Following the scandal, in which an app harvested data from up to 87 million people without their knowledge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress on how the social network planned to protect people's privacy.

Since then, Facebook has made a public push on privacy, opening pop-up booths in cities around the world to teach people about their privacy settings on the social network. At CES, Facebook will be bringing that experience to Las Vegas. The update to Privacy Checkup expands its categories from three to eight different groups, and four topics: Who can see what you share; How to keep your account secure; How people can find you on Facebook; and Your data settings on Facebook. The new tool gives people one central tab where they can change settings such as reviewing who can see your profile and send you friend requests, enabling two-factor authentication and reviewing permissions settings for third-party apps. Facebook said it introduced these categories based on issues that its users were most concerned about. The Data Settings category, for example, provides a convenient location where people can revoke permissions and access for apps and websites for which they've used Facebook to log in. But these updates don't address data privacy issues that lawmakers have been raising about Facebook for years. "The core of lawmakers' privacy frustrations about Facebook aren't about who can send you friend requests; they're about data brokers and advertisers who can target entire groups of people using the social network," the report adds. "Many of the privacy concerns surrounding Facebook are about privacy from the social network, not on it, which is what the Privacy Checkup tool is mainly addressing."

"We need to educate the public more on the different types of privacy concerns," said Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies social media. "There's user interface issues, like how I'm being tagged, and greater privacy concerns that only regulators can get insight to, like how your profile is used to algorithmically shift what you see in your newsfeed."
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Facebook's First CES Reveal In Years Is a Privacy Tool That Falls Short More

Facebook's First CES Reveal In Years Is a Privacy Tool That Falls Short

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  • Privacy Theater (Score:3)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Monday January 06, 2020 @10:45PM (#59594308)
    All these tech giants seem to have some kind of privacy "tutorial" or "check-up" designed to convince you that they (and you) have done something to protect your data. I wonder how effective it is.
    • Partly effective. They want you to be aware of what you are sharing with other users and 3rd parties. That’s what the “privacy” settings are for, and it’s good that they show you how to use them. But it’s kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, isn’t it?

      Taking advice on privacy from Facebook is like taking advice on home security from the guy who steals stuff from your house on a regular basis.
  • Wouldn't it just be easier to have everything an opt-in? By default nothing shared.
  • With all this backlash about online privacy etc., will we see it where people refuse to give information on social media and other places, or possibly give false information? Surely, more than a handful already are, but will it become mainstream again like in the 90's where you "don't use your real name"?
    • I never stopped using the "don't use your real name" philosophy. Then again, I've never used unsocial media so that was easy for me.

  • Too many words in title... (Score:3)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Monday January 06, 2020 @11:03PM (#59594332)

    "Facebook Falls Short"

    There, FTFY.

  • I saw, "Facebook ", "privacy tool" in headline. I didn't read anything else. I assume this is a new tool Facebook created to further violate our privacy in ways previously impossible or unimaginable.
    • Uhm, no. Regardless of anything, Facebook has and always will have access to all your data. It's on their computers. "Privacy" has never been and will never be about privacy from Facebook. "Privacy" is about privacy from others (people, companies, apps, etc.). As someone else posted, it would be a lot simpler just to have everything private (again, from others, not Facebook) by default.

  • Sadly FB cannot actually publish the truth, "If you don't mind us using and abusing your private details and turning it into money that we're going to lay out on the bed and roll around on while having sex with partners of our choice, then we suggest you don't sign up with us or indeed any social media networks. If you want to keep your personal stuff personal then we suggest you stay the hell away from us!".

    Privacy is complete anathema to FB, if FB ever did security and privacy properly the business would

  • Following the scandal, in which an app harvested data from up to 87 million people without their knowledge

    This is totally untrue. The Facebook app which Cambridge Analytica used would have presented the user with a page which prompted to confirm the granting of permissions required for the app. It did not harvest their data without their knowledge, it harvested their data with their knowledge, apathy and complete disregard for their own privacy.

    People who install an app, who just totally ignore warnings,

  • Who watches the watchers? (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @01:41AM (#59594510) Journal
    Ha ha, very funny Zuckerbook. You insult the intelligence of every last one of your victims, er, I mean users with this bullshit.
    At best you're concerned about them giving away their data to someone other than you; you want exclusive rights to everyones' Very Much Personal Private Data. Hell, your 'privacy tool' probably collects even more data for you to sell, you bastards.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @02:10AM (#59594558)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah, I'll get right on that as soon as I'm done reading Xi Jinping's book on human rights.
      -jcr

      A strange and nonsensical comparison, really. The first assertions about western social media companies being denied access to any nation on earth were that the motivation of said nation(s) was to deny its people freedom of expression.

      The conjecture was, by default, social media is synonymous with liberty/freedom/progress, but that's not how it's working out.

      Suppose China allowed the seasonal, consumer habits

  • FACTS About the Cambridge Analytica App (Score:3)

    by Darkling-MHCN ( 222524 ) on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @03:36AM (#59594664)

    Following the scandal, in which an app harvested data from up to 87 million people without their knowledge

    The information was only taken without their knowledge, as those 87 million people didn't bother to read the Facebook installation page for Cambridge Analytica's personality quiz app. Cambridge Analytica's Facebook Personality Quiz Facebook app was implemented using a now defunct version of Facebook Graph API. Even with that version users installing the app would have had full warning of the access to their data being requested by Cambridge Analytica. As such

    The issues were:-

    * people didn't understand the difference between Facebook content and those supplied by third parties.
    * people don't bother reading disclosures on app's installed on any platform
    * I believe the biggest issue is that there is no governance of apps created on Facebooks platform. Apple, Microsoft and Google have a vetting process to minimise the number of malicious apps ending up on their platforms. Facebook has no such process, even to this day you can make your Facebook apps publicly available on Facebook without a single Facebook employee even looking at the app. If Facebook had such a vetting process they would have easily realised that the permissions being requested by Cambridge Analytica's app were totally unwarranted for the content being supplied by the app.

    Facebook didn't violate people's privacy, they just unwittingly facilitated it. Their response to Cambridge Analytica was to make big changes to their API making it far more restrictive than it once was.

  • when the individual places no value on their own privacy

    this is not a problem that can be solved by tools, utilities, methods, processes or anything practical like that.

  • They should check out FakeBlock App from George Michael Bluth. It's up for sale for 2-3 million $.
    However, they better act quickly because the Chinese are very interested in it as well.
    It's as real as The Wall.
  • It is so funny when "Facebook" and "privacy" are used in the same sentence.
  • Firefighters that put out their own bonfires.
    A garbage man who litters.
    Police officers that have to arrest themselves.
    A programmer that codes bugs

    list continutes....

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