This is an interesting review of Facebook "founding fathers". A little scary, but not at all unexpected. Actually I would have been very surprised if the article tried to tell me that detailed information gathering wasn't going on...
So the real question becomes, how do you protect yourself? At this point, aside from cutting all e-connections (which I don't really want to do...) all I can think to do is giving as little information as possible, and providing false information if I don't see how the information requested will assist ME in MY use of the internet service I am using.
Recently I asked Monster.ca to remove my information from their site because I wasn't using it very much at all (because it is riddled with intrusive ads and not easy to get what I want). Below is an excerpt from the email response I received:
"If you would like to have your email address and account COMPLETELY deleted from our database, please reply to this email with the following information as it appears on your account:
1. Account USERNAME for login (if known)
2. Street address
3. City
4. State
5. Country
6. Zip Code or Postal Code
7. Phone Number
8. Your Full Name
9. Any former email addresses you may have had on your account
10. A former employer or school that appears on your resume
The information that you provide is ONLY used for verification purposes. Once we verify the information, your account will be deleted."
Given that I had not provided them with most of the info above in the first place, I found it odd that I needed to provide all of this to have my account removed - my username and password, by definition, should be enough to uniquely identify me in their database.
My response? I logged on to my Monster.ca account and filled it with garbage data. After that they can keep it active for as long as they like.
Its just like the spam emails that say "click here to unsubscribe" - as soon as you click that link they know they have a valid email address that they can sell, and the flood gates open. I loved it when I got spam emails advertising CDs with millions of 'guaranteed valid email addresses' - how did they know the addresses were valid? because people had already provided some form of response.
1 comment:
Interestingly, I think that Facebook/Myspace/something that has the same functionality is going to replace email sooner or later.
Email was the first killer-app that made an internet connection worthwhile to individuals and businesses not primarily concerned with porn. There have been other niche-apps since that have added value to segments of the western world at large, but nothing that *everyone* had to have.
Facebook in many ways is next-generation email. I can send messages, blog, make a radio station, broadcast bulletins, etc. I can communicate in a crapload of ways with this application. All of it so far is entirely spam free because I have to deliberately choose who can and cant send me messages. This is actually a perfect solution at this generation of the technology -- it brings specific human intelligence back into the equation.
If Facebook had a paid service (without ads and with assured privacy, even from Facebook) and also with verified corporate networks (the way they originally only let people join who had an email address from a recognized university) and perhaps had some software to reside on the corporate servers and hard-drives to make the IT department feel like they weren't being outsourced. (And I'm only half being facetious with that change management strategy.)
Whew. Let me back up a few steps. They could provide anti-spam through human intervention. They could provide identity verification while still providing arms-length anonymity (required for full-comfort-level commerce) and they could provide the functionality of every major and significant niche business and home-use application in one location with complete integration.
I will make a wild prediction (and all predictions that reach out more than a couple years are wild) that in 7 years all you'll need is an OS (Windows, probably), a browser (probably Windows, but I hope Firefox), Facebook or MySpace (they both have massive user bases right now. MySpace is bigger, but Facebook is growing faster. Both are so big that they would be hard to usurp at this point) and Google.
Everything else is just content.
Cheers
PS If anyone makes a mint off my accurate prediction of this trend, and my suggestions for capitalizing on it, please send 0.1% of your fortune to me. I'm not greedy, but I could use the cash.
Mike
PPS Oh yeah, security. I have little doubt that Microsoft and perhaps other companies are harvesting at least that much data from the forms I fill out on applications running on their operating system (because I registered my copy at my School Address). So Microsoft has most of that info (and some others). But yeah. They're fishing, just block 'em and move on.
MT
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