“According to a report by Jennifer Goldbeck written for Slate, Facebook [keeps] tabs on when people enter text in the Facebook browser interface and then choose to not share it (a practice the company terms ‘self censorship’),” Christopher Breen reports for Macworld. “However—again according to the Slate article—the company doesn’t collect the text you type, only when you fail to share it.:
“If this specific behavior creeps you out you might instead choose to compose your Facebook messages in a text editor. When you’re sure that you want to share them, paste that text into your browser and post,” Breen reports. “That will prevent the service from tracking aborted messages. However, if this is a ‘last straw’ kind of decision, read on.”
“I left Facebook nearly four years ago because of its casual attitude toward its users’ privacy and nothing I’ve seen since has convinced me that this was a mistake. So, I sympathize,” Breen reports. “Fortunately, it’s easy to leave.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Facebook: Oops, technical flaw exposed 6 million users’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses – June 21, 2013
AT&T discontinues HTC’s ‘Facebook phone’ flop after just one month – May 13, 2013
Study finds link between number of Facebook friends and ‘socially disruptive’ narcissism – April 10, 2012
Facebook is stupid and for old people – April 10, 2012
Facebook Fatigue: Has Facebook peaked? – December 12, 2011
Even easier, I never joined
Same here.
Mine was really easy to “delete”
I am so glad I never joined Facebook. The peer pressure was a little strong at some points. My wife is on it, and would regularly tell me of old friends of ours she’d found on it. But though I came close, I never pulled the trigger and now I am so damned glad of that.
——RM
Still happy I never used Facebook even though a close family member is employed by them.
The only way to be sure is to blow up the Facebook datacenter…
Did I say that out loud ?
You did, but I’m sure no one is listening in. Hahahahahahahaha….
I joined a long time ago just to see what was going on. I didn’t get it I guess, and never used it except to make it faster & easier to join a few web sites. But then one day I noticed that my full name was being displayed, and I certainly NEVER gave them that. So I got out… I think. I had to email them to ASK to be deleted, and they said it would take effect in a couple of weeks. That was a month or 2 ago, and I can only assume I’m history with them now.
You know what they say about assuming…
If you want to really want to discover old friends, pick up the phone or write a sincere hand-written letter.
Educate the gullible FB addicts around you — it’s just not worth it to support such corporate snooping. You aren’t benefiting.
Grocery stores were amongst the first to bribe users into having all their purchases tracked. But Google and Facebook and hundreds of other ad agencies and data thieves have taken their deceptive user datamining to a whole new level — and they don’t bother giving users any compensation in exchange for all their data.
As nasty as the NSA is, it actually might be reigned in when voters put into office some responsible representatives. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, really don’t respect the intent of any nation’s laws. Since corporations have wriggled their way into legal “personhood” in many nations, they can get away with any online behaviour they wish, no matter how disgusting. And if regulation ever did catch up with them, multinational companies simply relocate to continue doing whatever they want to do. Until democratic societies reclaim privacy as a right for PEOPLE, and properly restrict multinational corporations from egregious flagrant damaging brainwashing & profiteering data thievery, it will only get worse. Challenge your real friends to drop FB and implement some intelligent tracker blocking into their online lives.
I joined and use it every day to see what lunch specials all of the local restaurants are having. Other than that, I have no “friends,” and don’t post anything (other than a profile picture). It’s really useful for my purpose.
I signed up so that I can post selfies and duck face shots daily. I want to grow my audience but all I get is hate mail. Maybe I should tweak and wear a thong or something, any suggestions?
Maybe try some cyber-bullying.
I just use other people’s facebook accounts.
Today I’m Cheryl from Minnesota.
I’m kind of surprised by all the Facebook hate here. Just don’t provide personal information. All Facebook has from me is my name. No address, no DOB, none of the other “about” info.
I find it a convenient way to share info with friends, post a few pics now and again, etc. I’m very careful about who I “friend”, meaning it is only people I truly consider friends. Plus I occasionally review the privacy settings.
If you stay on top of the privacy settings, are careful about who you friend, and don’t provide all your personal info, you shouldn’t have any issues.
Don’t worry, FB and all of its marketing customers have already figured out exactly who you are, where you live, what you eat, what you drive, where you tend to shop, where you are at any given time, etc.
FB can predict much of your behavior even before you act on it yourself. The profiling is sickeningly powerful. Don’t assume that just because you didn’t offer a piece of data to FB that they haven’t pieced it all together.
i have a good friend who lives inside her Facebook account and ……the stuff she posts is THE MOST BANAL COMMENTARY IMAGINABLE cuz it’s become her life and her life has become banal. it’s an ugly way to live a life.
Maybe it is generational, but this early adopter never saw the value in FarceBook. I did see the potential for abuse and stayed clear.
I am so tired of corporate America’s endless pimping of FarceBook to whatever end they see fit. I male it a point to email those of interest back to inform them that I would sooner lick a public toilet bowl than join FarceBook.
BTW- in privacy world the NSA is starting to crack. A senior NSA official is publicly floating the idea of a blanket pardon of Ed Snowden in exchange for a full survey of what materials were taken and released.
Flash-Judge rules NSA collection probably unconstitutional.
http://flip.it/3DgvT
What’s Facebook?
There are two types of people on Facebook…
1) People who know they’re on Facebook
2) People who don’t know they’re on Facebook
The point being that many (in reality not all) people have friends who are on Facebook who are posting pictures and other information about them.
My advice to people who want to protect their privacy is to develop an online persona that represents who they want to be. Get ahead of it.
Many employers today do online and social media searches of all applicants. You can score positive, negative or inconclusive. For many, being inconclusive is worse than a slightly negative score.
All of this doesn’t mean you have to publish everything, but it’s something to consider in terms of putting out just some basic information about yourself, connecting with a few good people, and creating enough of a persona that someone searching doesn’t dive into deeper things that may reveal some things you don’t want revealed.
Case in point… A few of my friends were trying to find a person from high school. I knew he had become a pilot at one point and there’s a public registry of pilots. So after no other online or social media search revealed anything about him, I searched the pilot database only to find that he’d been suspended (and then later the details of the suspension).
We need to be talking about ways to use Facebook not deleting ourselves. Way too impractical for people who want to be in touch with others in the way they want to interact.
What pisses me off about facebook (among other things) is that businesses and corporations are on facebook. I’m sorry but F-off, it should be for people only. Every time I hear or read “visit us on facebook” from some company I cringe. Companies shouldn’t have goddamn facebook pages. That is what a website is for !!
I hate facebook. I never joined (except as a false alias but that’s another story) and I never will.
Now when companies make you use their facebook page to interact with them I just get pissed. My local newspaper website, when reacting to stories they recently changed from a standard message forum where anyone can post to using “facebook comments”, where of course you need to be a FB member. F _OFF !!
/rant
google+ combined with realtime tracking of android phones gives the NSA instant access to terabytes of useful data on virtually every IT doofus in your locality. And unlike Facebook, you can’t delete a google+ account ever.
I don’t complain about FB security issues because I only post what I’m willing to share — no personal information.
FaceBook is stupid. It has always been stupid. And it will always be stupid.
I understand that women go for this sort of thing, but when a guy does, it’s really gay.
I can’t find away to delete Facebook from my Mac’s top sites. It won’t ever go away.
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