New site exposes Facebook users' secrets
By Stewart Mitchell
Posted on 17 May 2010 at 12:48
A site highlighting the dangers of posting on Facebook is contributing to mounting pressure on the social network over its privacy policy.
Openbook uses publicly available information from Facebook to highlight potentially embarrassing posts and status updates on the social-networking site.
Visitors to the site can search for terms such as “cheated exams” or “I hate my boss”, and view posts from people using those terms on their Facebook pages.
The founders of Openbook say they are running the site to draw attention to how much information Facebook makes public.
Our goal is to get Facebook to restore the privacy of this information, so that this website and others like it no longer work
“Openbook draws attention to the information Facebook makes public about its users via its search API," writes site founder Will Moffat. “Our goal is to get Facebook to restore the privacy of this information, so that this website and others like it no longer work.”
Facebook has faced mounting criticism for ongoing changes to its default privacy settings, which make more information publicly searchable.
Last week, the European Union's Article 29 Working Group, which oversees data protection, attacked Facebook's privacy policy and the frequency of changes to its terms.
"The Article 29 Working Party told Facebook in a letter today that it is unacceptable that the company fundamentally changed the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user," the group said in a statement.
The widespread criticism of the social network is having a negative impact with users, according to Google figures. The search term “delete Facebook account” has soared this year, recently reaching ninth place in the list of most popular US searches.
From around the web
If you don't want people to know...
then don't post it on the internet!
Common sense plays a large part, it's not all social networking sites fault.
If you really have an issue with Facebook's privacy then the best thing to do is leave Facebook.
By TimCoyle on 17 May 2010 
Don't think this site will ever need to close
Even if Facebook does change their privacy model there will still be some who will gladly, willingly, knowingly and stupidly publish everything to anyone.
By halsteadk on 18 May 2010
Complexity
FaceBook acts in its own interests while cleverly presenting an interface that appeals to the user. Remember, it is free, and the FaceBook folks are not altruists, they are businessmen.
FaceBook has deliberately obfuscated the business of securing one's account so that it is very difficult to do and most people probably don't even try or don't realise the need.
When you see something like this, you are right to smell a rat. Other things that come into the same category include:
- Mobile contracts with penalty clauses that charge astronomical amounts if you exceed your data quota, without allowing the simple and obvious thing of a definable credit limit so that you get cut off instead of fleeced.
- BT phone service options that let you select the 10 people you call most often so the calls are cheaper. The initial list is computer-generated. I asked if they could just continue to update it automatically for me but they said I had to change it manually. Why? Because they make money out of people forgetting to do it, knowing they can continue to say how cheap they are, and effectively blaming customers if they don't make full use of the options.
- Virgin Media offering free phone calls for the first 60 min and then charging about 18p/min thereafter without doing the obvious thing of giving a warning bleep or disconnecting the call after 60 min.
All these are examples of evil business practices. Deliberate obfuscation. Making money by deliberately confusing and tripping up the customer.
And FaceBook is just the same.
By fogtax on 20 May 2010
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