Facebook and the way it collects data is again is in the news, in an issue related to the recent fuzz about its new Beacon service. The Beacon scandal seems to be a fire Facebook cannot quench adequately.
Beacon in a nutshell before discussing the newest twist to the story: it is a service whereby when you buy at participating companies while logged in to Facebook, information about your purchase is broadcasted to Facebook, and through them to the people on your friend list (which can be very embarasing). The problem was, that many Facebook users didn’t bargain for that kind of invasion of their privacy, and (and that was the main problem) it turned out to be very cumbersome to opt-out of this. It resulted in active protest from facebook users and Facebook had to adopt the system.
Latest twist:
It turns out however, that behind the scenes the data are still collected - even when you are logged out from Facebook! Relevant news article is here.
Going to the original topic of this thread and tying this new twist into it: so basically, through Facebook and whether you want it or not, information is gathered about what you buy, and this information is directly tied to your ID. While this happens more often (e.g. with supermarket client passes etc.), the point is that again it looks like Facebook just wants to collect as much data about you and your habits as possible - not only your friends circle, but also your purchases etc.
All those in favour of the theory that Facebook founder and Harvard drop-out Zuckerberg is just a CIA operative recruited in one of their recruiting campaigns among students, please raise your hand and say “Aye”....
[size=1]To my fellow Facebook subscribed MoH members: if dubious items show up in your notifications as having been “purchased” by me: it is all true…[/size]
