Sue Facebook for sharing your info? Seriously?

While I purposely don't put anything private on the Facebook site and keep my privacy settings high, I was recently surprised when I looked that their "Friend Suggestions" for me. Two of them were right out of my Outlook email recipeints from several years ago - and they were individuals who would have no reason or possibility to be there without Facebook harvesting email accounts from my Outlook files. I have never used Friend Finder or any other function that gave them permission to harvest email addresses and then look for "My Friends", and these users would not have any even remote connection to the "Friends" that I do have on FB.

The ability to scan email boxes on my PC for email addresses without my permission definitely raises concern for me. And yet, today I am still on Facebook. Mostly due to the fact that several of my friends have chosen this as their primary mode of communication these days. And, if I have any hopes of keeping up with what they are doing, I stay on Facebook. With very minimal data and quite a bit of caution.

I agree and disagree:

(1) Terms of Service and similar privacy-related notices are, in fact, contracts. In most states, minors under a certain age, typically 16-18, can't enter into contracts. So, to the extent the privacy issues concern accounts of minors, Facebook is actually "taking advantage" of persons we, as a society, have concluded do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to waive certain of their rights.

(2) You ask "when’s the last time you read the Terms of Service agreement on anything...." My question would be, "when's the last time the Terms of Service agreement on anything actually explained in plain-english what rights you are waiving by agreeing?"

I agree and disagree:

(1) Terms of Service and similar privacy-related notices are, in fact, contracts. In most states, minors under a certain age, typically 16-18, can't enter into contracts. So, to the extent the privacy issues concern accounts of minors, Facebook is actually "taking advantage" of persons we, as a society, have concluded do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to waive certain of their rights.

(2) You ask "when’s the last time you read the Terms of Service agreement on anything...." My question would be, "when's the last time the Terms of Service agreement on anything actually explained in plain-english what rights you are waiving by agreeing?"

I don't think people are upset that their 'friends' can see their information. But it is invasive when you have a 'private' profile and find out that information is being spread to businesses and spammers. I don't put anything too personal on my page. But I still don't want spam thrown at me.

As far as the 'quizes' go, SOME of them are to gather information to send to advertisers/spamers. They don't make this entirely clear when you take the quiz. It's so unclear that even the person who wrote this article seems to be unaware of it.

Very rarely do I walk away from an article thinking the writer is utterly clueless, which happens to be the case here. Ms. Popkin fails to meet the "press credo" twice in this article, first being unbiased in reporting the facts and second gathering all of the facts. Yes, FB is a social site, yes FB is free, yes it is owened by someone who can do whatever they want with it. However, people are fighting for the rights to their own images and information. FB continually changes the "legalese" of their terms of agreement. It all comes down to FB living up to what it is portraying itself to be, which is a social networking site when in fact it is behaving like a business which will take images of YOUR family and sell them to businesses for marketing purposes. The issue at the heart of the problem is not the people's onformation is being shared with others on FB, it is the FB is claiming the right's to subscriber's intelectual property and SELLING it to companies. What does all this mean Ms. Popkin? It means that you could have a beautiful baby, decide to share a picture of if with your private family on FB and FB can and will take that picture and SELL it to GERBER. Your babie's picture will be the next big marketing campaign making him or her a target for press and freaks all while YOU have NO say in the matter and not getting a dime for it either. What-cha-think now?

While I have a Facebook account, I post hardly anything on there, private or otherwise. Do people actually think that FB was going to give them this site to socialize electronically with no repayment of any kind? Wake up people! No one gives you anything for free; the price for your 'free' FB account is that anything you put there is the same as giving it to them - and the rest of the world.

Also, I cringe every time I see someone post the child's ror children's picture as their avatar. They are putting their child out there as representation of themselves probably because they don't want their own picture online. Let's let the children have some privacy and decide when they're grown up whether they want their pictures on the web. Post your own picture if you want, but leave the kids out of it. Personally, I have an inanimate object because I'm putting nothing out there that would compromise me of my family in any way.

Facebook is handy, just like Twitter, when you need to know how many of your friends took a dump that morning, or who ate an orange for breakfast, or what they thought of the new "G.I. Joe" movie.

Useless.

The problem with your argement is that it isn't a question of what you reasonably expect or assume it is a question of what facebook states its policies to be. Facebook has established a docement on Rights and Responsibilities and a set of Governance Principals. The Rights and Responsibilities is, according to facebook, the entirety of the agreement between the parties. The Governance Principal establishes the spirit of the agreement.

Many of the things that Facebook is accused of doing on this, an other complains, is rooted in the apparent violation of the Right granted to its members by Facebook through these documents. Regardless of whether someone should or should not have known better is not the argument when you have been granted specific rights that appear to be violated.

Furthermore, Facebook itself establishes the case for damages in their Governance documents. In that document the state something to effect that by using Facebook you are establishing trust and relationships which can in term be damage through their actions.

I'm not well enough versed in this specific case to know its merits, but you seem to me to be making assumptions about what they should have expected their RIGHTS to be rather than on what they actually are.

well, I was able to track down a couple of old Army friends thru FB so it does serve a useful purpose. I can also keep track of what some of my favorite musicians are doing so it's good for that as well. Twitter on the other hand is something I refuse to use. I don't need to know every time someone burps their baby or puts gas in their car. It may be useful for other things but it seems people get obsessed with telling the world every irrelevant move they make, as if it matters to the whole world.

Facebook's the best! not...

I find facebook very handy. I can keep up to date with my friends and even keep in contact with people I wouldn't see or talk to without facebook. But-- you have to be responsible with it. I agree that it should be for college students only again and maybe businesses. Since it seems to be hard for parents to keep track of what or who their children are 'chatting' with... maybe they just shouldn't be allowed... but then you get into... how do you regulate that? Children even teens, sometimes just can't see how their actions can effect their life in the long or short term. The internet seems to do more evil then good sometimes. I remember in middle school a schoolmate made a webpage (not an appropriate page) about me and said I made it... shoot I cried for weeks!! haha. I am in college now- and even see some people may age being inmature with the social site. But when you get that age- I would think you would know better....maybe..maybe not?? Anyways people need to stop blaming everyone else for their own inmature actions. If you don't want everyone knowing something personal about yourself... maybe tell a friend the old fashion way-- face to face. Other then that... you shot yourself in the foot.

I'm going to sue god for having it rain during a friends spring time wedding. The nerve of the guy.

I wonder if I could sue the people for wasting the county/state's money by trying this case, and wasting the state's money. Therefore taking money away from schools, roads, and any other state regulated item.

The most shocking is that this story is coming out of the highly enlightend state of California.

We as Americans have just too much free time on our hands, just look at how many facebook entries are done on the employer's time. If your stupid enough to put pictures and your intimate things on this website you deserve what you get.

You all are a bunch of idiots -- pretending to be something you're not. Stop this Facebook crap and start some real relationships. Pick up the phone an call a friend, not some fake on this website. I find it funny that now folks are complaining about the data they put out there. Stop this crap.

I'm not on Facebook, and have a virtually nonexistent online "life" - indeed, Googling myself yields pages of references to a British actress and a Malaysian model who share my name, but nothing about me - but I'm interested in the lawsuit for quite another reason. A couple of months ago, a friend's fiancee snapped a photo of me and then sent me an email inviting me to view it online at her Facebook (or similar) page. As I avoid the social networking sites precisely because I don't want information about me out there, I sent a polite email asking her to take the photo down. She assures me she did, but that raises a question: I have no control over what photos of me social-networking friends put up. Even for non-Facebook users, Facebook's privacy policies are of interest.

This article is either written to be intentionally deceptive or the author is just plain stupid. Everyone knows that when posting info about themselves on Facebook that everyone with a Facebook account can view it. But that is not the issue at all. The issue is what does Facebook do with that info without your knowledge? That's the privacy issue - Dumba.s.s! Oh yeah they have those agreements when you sign up where you have to click "I accept" but A. it's all legal gibberish so unless you're a lawyer you're not going to understand it and B. who wants to spend 20 minutes reading all that crap when they just want to be able to say hi to friends and family? Plus if you do not accept, then you just can't use Facebook so what choice do you have? I have an account but only visit once or twice a month and I will NOT put a picture of myself on there nor will I add any information or pictures I don't want people to see. I have been thinking about closing it.

After a release like this, we would like to place an open call for any managing member of Facebook to reach out to us for insight and assistance into how press like this can proactively be eliminated.

Cheers,

The Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-Phone Communication's Safety Lab

www.iroc2.org

Well, I am going to step out on a proverbial limb and say that I actually laughed out loud while reading this article because it was very tongue in cheek and well, funny! Yes, I Facebook, yes sometimes I get tired of other people's quizzes and comments but it's my choice to be on there and I bet sometimes people get tired of reading about my crap too. Yes, I am selective about what I post on my profile...which is basically nothing...and I am honest enough to say I enjoy catching up with people I probably would never be in contact with and I enjoy checking out their pictures and stuff. But folks, seriously, Facebook is like anything else in life...it's what we make of it. The author's point was don't sue for something that is so blatantly what you make of it. If you don't use the privacy tools, don't get your panties in a bunch and blame Facebook. It's kind of like suing McDonald's because their coffee is hot and you burned yourself when you dropped the cup in your lap or you ate too many cheeseburgers and got obese. Sounds like "duh" to me!

Don't complain that Facebook is at fault because their privacy policy is unclear or can be changed on a whim. If you don't understand the policy, don't use the site! If you don't like the fact that the policy can be changed, don't use the site! Believe it or not, you can continue to live a normal life without posting your intimate thoughts online.

I don't use any of the social networking sites, but my wife doe to keep in touch with family and friends and to share pictures of our son's online...this story andthe nonchalant way the author made it seem like a non-issue is in fact a vary serious issue. I checked my wife's privacy settings and had to adjust them for the highest possible because of all the information the default settings allowed others to have the people using facebook may not want shared.... i then proceeded to go through the motions of doing my own account and saw none of this mentioned anywhere...fact is facebook is allowing widespread data mining through their sites and not specifically warning people because it would lose them money...they may not be selling the info outright, but are selling the means for third parties to gather it and that is wrong. Now i have to explain to my wife how facebook may have ripped off every address in her address book and more... then it's probably going to be me who has to fix everything again...just so the media can make a lark out of very serious issues. people who join facebook and myspace do so believeing only the people they allow to see stuff will, not that third party's using applications facebook and etc. provide could and will mine data, use photographs without permission, and etc. It's not something someone should expect to happen... basically you're saying since it's free Facebook and etc. can do what they want and that's the consequences... and that is wrong. Sites like this bury the information about stuff like this so deep in their TOS's and etc. they actively try and keep people from reading them. How many people would use it if there was a warning during the account creation process about what was going on? face it facebook doesn't make money off of standard activities like advertisements or etc...but through selling the data mined on their sites... usually fom uninformed people...of warned my wife of this before and it seems will have to again.

If the telephone company bugged your calls and sold that information to advertisers they would have a problem. I see no reason why Social Networks shouldn't be held to the same standard.

I recently let facebook look at my outlook contacts to see what friends might be current users on FB, when I clicked "add" after selecting a few of them in the list, I was shocked to learn that FB sent invitations to all 650 of my outlook contacts, many of them business related. I have emailed FB many times to resolve the issue over the last 6 moths. Last month I received and email stating "issue has been resolved." However just a week ago, FB sent another round of reminders to all those email addresses captured in my Outlook. I have reported this abuse to the Texas AG hoping to bring awareness to the problem. FB continues to remind me that I authorized this action, however if I did authorize it mistakingly - I should have the right to cancel sending future reminders!