Facebook & Google Privacy: What you don't know.

[denem]

Here's an IM from Zuckerkman (Zuck) in late 2003 reguarding his infant Facebook

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks

When (the New Yorker) asked Zuckerberg about the IMs that have already been published online, and that I have also obtained and confirmed, he said that he “absolutely” regretted them.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_vargas?currentPage=all

I bet he did, but the point is our "trust" in Google, Facebook and any other aggregator, rests on largely on their size, the number of people we know who uses them, and the all important 'Privacy Policy'. All that policy states is what they can do outside with the information. What goes without saying is that they have kept every detail and have the analytics to manage it. Google probably restricts access on a needs to know basis. Mr Zuckerman, no doubt retains the mandate to go through the files of any face that attracts his interest.

Google is bound by an agreement with the EU to discard web data after 18 months. How this is verified is anyone's guess. Congress is acting on Internet Privacy, but these two gems from Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO puts the matter in perspective::

The serious goal is: just remember that when you post things on the internet that the computers remember for ever
"It's actually on the web, Google just collects it," he said. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/233162,googles-schmidt-faces-colbert-on-privacy.aspx

Just collects it?

(Fortune) Schmidt: We'll pull Facebook's data by hook or by crook

Although he downplayed copying Facebook's functionality directly, he made no bones about wanting Google users to have the same sort of Social Graph that Facebook enjoys.

Surprisingly, Schmidt said they planned to get more of that social graph directly from Facebook itself:

"The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data," Mr. Schmidt said. "Failing that, there are other ways to get that information." He declined to be specific.
]http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/15/schmidt-well-pull-facebooks-data-by-hook-or-by-crook/

.

Open your data or we'll take it? Maybe Schmidt was just recalling a conversation when the big boy NSA hooks and crooks first paid him a visit.

Trust, trust in any way, big private corporations? Dumb fucks.

[realisticphish]

1. Google at least

has seemed relatively benevolent. But they don't have to stay that way, and that's the risk. Some ridiculous percentage of the US Government's data (something like 40%, but I don't have a source) is hosted/controlled by Google.

If anyone could take over the planet, I honestly think it would be a deeply integrated tech company like Google.

[denem]

3. Raiding Facebook in benevolent?

[bluerum]

2. personally I am glad that google caches websites. Many a scamming grifter

has been outed because their post/op ed/article/column was cached and available for inspection after their vehement claims that they never said any such thing.

I also think that when u post online, ESPECIALLY if you post on Facebook, you basically waive any reasonable expectation to privacy.

[jancantor]

4. Well put...

I don't post private stuff on Facebook. Anybody who does, gets what they deserve. It reminds me of the idiotic UW students who committed a theft, then posted a picture of them with their swag on a social networking site, and were pissed off that the cops used it against them.

Facebook is a private company, and they offer me a product. I don't pretend for a second that they are looking out for my best interests (shades of Suicidal Tendencies)...

I find it useful, but if I want a private conversation, there is no way I am having it on facebook chat.