P0rn sites start using Facebook Connect

By Techwag

With a sense of humor because when Mashable’s Pete Cashmore wrote that Facebook users should be beware that the new timeline feature could embarrass a user, I just had to see what the porn industry was doing. Porn has been trying to get involved in social media, but for a multi-billion dollar industry we tend to turn a blind eye to what is arguably one of the internet’s most popular features, and one of the most consumed but unacknowledged products out there.

So imagine my surprise to see a couple of porn sites this morning using Facebook Connect, and yes, they knew who I was. Embarrassed possibly, more humored because this really is how the adult industry is going to get into social media and it will be done because users rarely log out of facebook (even that might not help) and facebook connect is everywhere.

So how are we going to manage our privacy when we hit porn sites that are notorious for viruses, illegal porn, many many pop up’s that does not mean that we really wanted to go there. Are we ready to see what your particular taste is in the industry that cannot be mentioned or promoted on social media?

So exactly how is Facebook going to let us screen our timeline before we really get going and dive deeper into the things that we really do not want our friends and neighbors to know about.

Embarrassing maybe depending on who you are, I can lay really good money on the table that people who follow celebrities are going to love knowing that celebrity X visited X site because they didn’t log out. T he paparazzi is going to have a…

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Facebook is scaring me

By Dave Winer

Yesterday I wrote that Twitter should be scared of Facebook. Today it’s worse. I, as a mere user of Facebook, am seriously scared of them.

Every time they make a change, people get angry. I’ve never myself been angry because I have always assumed everything I post to Facebook is public. That the act of putting something there, a link, picture, mini-essay, is itself a public act.

This time, however, they’re doing something that I think is really scary, and virus-like. The kind of behavior deserves a bad name, like phishing, or spam, or cyber-stalking.

What clued me in was an article on ReadWriteWeb that says that just reading an article on their site may create an announcement on Facebook. Something like: “Bull Mancuso just read a tutorial explaining how to kill a member of another crime family.” Bull didn’t comment. He didn’t press a Like button. He just visited a web page. And an announcement was made on his behalf to everyone who follows him on Facebook. Not just his friends, because now they have subscribers, who can be total strangers.

Now, I’m not technically naive. I understood before that the Like buttons were extensions of Facebook. They were surely keeping track of all the places I went. And if I went to places that were illegal, they would be reported to government agencies. Bull Mancuso in the example above has more serious things to worry about than his mother finding out that he’s a hitman for the mob. (Both are fictitious characters, and in my little story his mom already knows he’s a hitman.)

There could easily be lawsuits, divorces, maybe even arrests based on what’s made public by Facebook.

People joke that privacy is over, but I don’t think they imagined that the disclosures would be so proactive. They are seeking out information to report about you. That’s different from showing people a picture that you posted yourself. If this were the government we’d be talking about the Fourth Amendment.

Also, I noted that I had somehow given access to my Facebook account to ReadWriteWeb. That’s puzzling because I have no memory of having done that. And when I went to…

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Anonymous’ new agenda is Operation Facebook

By Molly McHugh

Facebook is the latest entity to join Anonymous’ hit list.

Anonymous has announced its new target. After taking on the likes of oppressive regimes in Egypt, Iran, and Syria, the hacktivist group has now set its sights on Facebook. In a YouTube post this morning, the group has declared that it wants to “kill Facebook.” Here is part of Anonymous’ message:

Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing hactivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook [sic] for the sake of your own privacy.

Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria.

Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your “privacy” settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you “delete” your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more “private” is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. 

You cannot hide from the reality in which you, the people of the internet [sic], live in. Facebook is…

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Does using Facebook put you at more risk elsewhere on the internet?

By Carole Theriault

According to a recent article from the coolcats at Fast Company, “Digital Oxytocin: How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming”, the Pew Research Center has shown that the more time you spend on the internet, especially social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the more trusting you become.

Not just on social networks, but everywhere – both online and in real life.

Now, the article is well worth a read, but those of you short on time, here is the gist:

As the report put it, "The typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted," with regular Facebook users the most trusting of all. "A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as non-Internet users to feel that most people can be trusted."

With 30% of the world estimated to be online – about 80% of North America and 60% of Europe – and more than half of these users belonging to some social networking site, an increase in trust could have major impacts on how people interact in the future.

Does this mean that social network users will eventually become a bunch of loved-up hippies? It is really difficult for me to imagine what I would be like if I shed my cynical armour.

I shouldn’t really worry: while I study social networks all the time, I am more of a voyeur than a player. Let’s be honest here – I find them really scary.

Many users of social networks seem completely addicted – they are on there all the time, recording every event of their lives. It just seems…

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Facebook video chat: What could possibly go wrong?

By Paul Ducklin

Facebook has just announced its video chat service, though it’s officially named Video Calling. Presumably that gives it a bit more cachet than a mere “chat” service.

It’s powered by Skype, which is probably an excellent thing. You have probably already decided whether you trust Skype and its technology, so you’re not sailing entirely into the unknown on that score.

And Skype is now owned by Microsoft, a company you’ve probably also already decided whether you trust or not. (If you are reading this on a Windows computer, an accurate first approximation is that you do.)

Microsoft, despite being the archetype of closed-source software vendors, has consistently improved its attitude to security over the past 20 years, when it first wandered into the security field with a badge-engineered version of Central Point Anti-Virus.

Microsoft owns Skype. Skype and Facebook have joined forces.

Microsoft is much bigger – and used to being much bigger – than Facebook. Microsoft has many more developers than Facebook. Many more of those many more developers are involved with security. And Microsoft…

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China wants to buy Facebook

By Gordon G. Chang

On Thursday, Business Insider reported that China is trying to buy “a huge chunk” of Facebook.

According to the business news website, Beijing approached a fund that buys stock from former Facebook employees to see if it could assemble a stake large enough “to matter.”  Moreover, Citibank is rumored to be trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion of stock for two sovereign wealth funds, one from the Middle East and the other Chinese.  Business Insider reports a third source, from a “very influential” Silicon Valley investment bank, confirms that Citi is representing China.

Should Beijing be allowed to buy a part of Mark Zuckerberg’s site?  Business Insider tells us there is “little need” for concern about Chinese censors looking at the photos and postings of the 700 million people who trust Facebook with their personal online activity.

First, China’s position won’t be large.  A billion-dollar investment does not buy much influence in a site expected to be worth a hundred times that when it goes public.  Second, Beijing will be acquiring nonvoting stock.  Third, shareholders don’t get the right to look at what’s on the site.  All of these arguments from Business Insider ring true.

Yet they are all beside the point—and there are other reasons to be concerned.  The business site says…

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Facebook in new privacy row over facial recognition feature

By Charles Arthur

Facebook has come under fire for quietly expanding the availability of technology to automatically identify people in photos, renewing concerns about its privacy practices.

The feature, which the giant social network automatically enabled for its more than 500 million users, has been expanded from the US to “most countries”, Facebook said on its official blog on Tuesday.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the non-profit privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the system raised questions about which personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, would become associated with the photos in Facebook’s database.

He also criticised Facebook’s decision to automatically enable the facial-recognition technology for its users.

“I’m not sure that’s the setting that people would want to choose. A better option would be to let people opt-in,” he said.

Internet security consultancy Sophos noted that many Facebook users had seen the facial recognition option turned on without any notice in the last few days.

“Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth,” commented Graham Cluley, a senior technology…

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Log-in to Facebook with an iris scan: Eye-scanner for your PC set to go on the market in months

By Daily Mail

In the films Minority Report and Demolition Man, and indeed many other sci-fi flicks, iris recognition is used to gain access to top secret files – often with gruesome results.

But very soon the technology could be turned to more mundane applications.

A New York-based biometric security company is set to market an iris scanner that would connect to a personal computer the next few months.

The device will allow users to log into their online banking, social networks and emails – all in the blink of an eye.

Hoyos Group unveiled their new security product, dubbed the EyeLock, at the Finovate financial technology conference, amid claims that it is the first and only portable iris-scanning device for consumers.

The device, which is the size of a standard business card and…

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Assange: Facebook is an ‘appalling spy machine’

By Don Reisinger

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are actually tools for the U.S. intelligence community.

Speaking to Russian news site RT in an interview published yesterday, Assange was especially critical of the world’s top social network. He reportedly said that the information Facebook houses is a potential boon for the U.S. government if it tries to build up a dossier on users.

“Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented,” Assange said in the interview, which was videotaped and published on the site. “Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence.”

If that’s the case, it might surprise some that WikiLeaks has its very own Facebook page. In fact, last year, when WikiLeaks released a controversial batch…

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