Getting rid of that gosh darned Facebook!

[Big Wheel]

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/05/07/facebook-interested-in-palestine-not-anymore/

An unfortunate situation, but almost certainly an oversight rather than a deliberate exclusion of "Palestine" as a location. (As weird as Mark Zuckerberg is, are we really so paranoid as to think the guy wants to insert himself into the Middle East conflict too?) I suspect one of the following happened:

1) A Facebook engineer built a new database of locations himself or herself and forgot to include several locations in there, or they neglected to vet their country data thoroughly with a product manager who might have caught the error.

2) Facebook imported a location database from a third party, and didn't realize that it had inconsistencies with what they'd used before. This wiped out some options that were previously selectable.

Sloppy? Yes. Deliberately excluding the OT? No. These kinds of stupid little data bugs happen constantly on the internets.

Edited May 17, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Brownian Motion]

http://www.quitfacebookday.com/

[Christiern]

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/05/07/facebook-interested-in-palestine-not-anymore/

An unfortunate situation, but almost certainly an oversight rather than a deliberate exclusion of "Palestine" as a location. (As weird as Mark Zuckerberg is, are we really so paranoid as to think the guy wants to insert himself into the Middle East conflict too?) I suspect one of the following happened:

1) A Facebook engineer built a new database of locations himself or herself and forgot to include several locations in there, or they neglected to vet their country data thoroughly with a product manager who might have caught the error.

2) Facebook imported a location database from a third party, and didn't realize that it had inconsistencies with what they'd used before. This wiped out some options that were previously selectable.

Sloppy? Yes. Deliberately excluding the OT? No. These kinds of stupid little data bugs happen constantly on the internets.

The question is: whose assumption may have a basis in fact?

[RDK]

Im not sure I've ever gotten a facebook related email, except to confirm membership. You need to change your settings Chris. This doesn't sound right. I'm pretty sure that I could disappear for months and only folks that HAVE my email address could contact me.

Exactly. I've been on FB for about two years now, have several hundred "friends," and rarely get email notifications that I don't want. The privacy settings are very customizable.

[RDK]

I really don't "get" all of these references to "spam" people are throwing around. I have a very active Facebook account and have no problems whatsoever along those lines.

Agreed. The only "spam" I get are notifications that I've allowed, via settings, to receive. I think it's how like my dad, even after all these years, still hasn't figured out how to program the VCR.

[Jazzmoose]

I think it's how like my dad, even after all these years, still hasn't figured out how to program the VCR.

Wow. He still has a VCR?

[Big Wheel]

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2010/05/07/facebook-interested-in-palestine-not-anymore/

An unfortunate situation, but almost certainly an oversight rather than a deliberate exclusion of "Palestine" as a location. (As weird as Mark Zuckerberg is, are we really so paranoid as to think the guy wants to insert himself into the Middle East conflict too?) I suspect one of the following happened:

1) A Facebook engineer built a new database of locations himself or herself and forgot to include several locations in there, or they neglected to vet their country data thoroughly with a product manager who might have caught the error.

2) Facebook imported a location database from a third party, and didn't realize that it had inconsistencies with what they'd used before. This wiped out some options that were previously selectable.

Sloppy? Yes. Deliberately excluding the OT? No. These kinds of stupid little data bugs happen constantly on the internets.

The question is: whose assumption may have a basis in fact?

You really think it's likelier that Silicon Valley nerds care about imposing a militant Zionist agenda on their users rather than that they are just sometimes careless with data? I will happily bet all the money in my bank account that nobody at Facebook gave a second thought to the political ramifications of whatever country database they used. Anyone care to make it interesting?

[Tom Storer]

Here's a neat little tool that will check that your Facebook privacy settings don't expose your information to the whole world:

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org

[Tom Storer]

Good for a laugh: China to Stop Spying on its People; Will Use Facebook Instead

[Christiern]

Thank you, Tom

So, once again, I went through the step by step instructions Bill Barton posted. Now I will wait the required 14 day and check some time after that.

Thanks to you, too, Bill.

[Quincy]

Here's a neat little tool that will check that your Facebook privacy settings don't expose your information to the whole world:

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org

Yes, I gave that a spin yesterday. Pretty nifty, and worth trying even if you do keep up with the changes.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Here's a neat little tool that will check that your Facebook privacy settings don't expose your information to the whole world:

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org

Thanks, Tom. Very helpful tool. Makes the process much quicker, that's for sure.

Thank you, Tom

So, once again, I went through the step by step instructions Bill Barton posted. Now I will wait the required 14 day and check some time after that.

Thanks to you, too, Bill.

You're welcome, Chris.

[Jazzmoose]

If we all just shrugged, as some here do, I hate to think what the FB'ers might do.

Call it pessimistically resigned to my fate...

[Jim R]

Facebook fucking scares me. Can someone explains to me how it's been able to steal my contacts verbatim off two different e-mail accounts and send me recommendations of people I'd like to add based on them. I have never searched for these people on Facebook itself. One of these folks was a woman who I had an unpleasant experience with and had erased her contact too. Don't know how they got that. Perhaps they are giving these recommendations based on scanning other folks' e-mail accounts?

Did you ever allow facebook access to your email to search for people you already know on facebook? If not, what you're saying is possible - they could be noticing that your email address turns up in a bunch of other people's contact lists. Or it's possible that their algorithm is just noticing that you share lots of friends (or friends of friends). That's the connection I have with most of the friend suggestions - they worked at the same company as me and we usually share a number of acquaintances.

Funnily enough, I know a few Facebook engineers and this subject came up in conversation with one of them tonight. Your last guess was correct - for some (not all AFAIK) of the friend suggestions, they actually harvest the email addresses from other people's uploaded contact lists and match it (if possible) with the email address associated with your Facebook account. Slightly creepy, but there you have it.

We received an e-mail this morning that seems relevant to this discussion. Unfortunately, I deleted it several hours ago (kind of a panic move on my part... I should have labeled it as spam), so I can't be as precise about it as I otherwise would have been. Anyway, I just remembered that this thread existed, and decided to read through the whole thing. I'm not nearly as savvy about these things as most of you who have posted, and I'm a bit perplexed.

First of all, we don't use Facebook, and have never registered. Our kids have, but they have their own computers now. I've never gotten any Facebook-related emails, except legit ones from a few old high school friends who were inviting us to join.

I didn't recognize the name of the sender of this morning's e-mail (it was something odd, like a funny handle of some kind), but the subject was Facebook-related (an invitation to befriend someone). I opened it expecting it to be from someone in that circle of old friends. I was kind of alarmed by what I saw. First of all, there was an image of the "sender", an attractive woman, but I didn't recognize her. The sender's address seemed to indicate to me that it was not sent by an individual, but some sort of automated system or bot. If this really originated from Facebook, and not an individual member, then the photo and the phony handle are a pretty unethical approach to take.

What really alarmed me, though, was a grid of member/friend photos that was displayed below the message, and in addition to the aforementioned high school acquaintances that I knew were Facebook users, there were other people whose names and addresses are in our Mac's address book. Two of them were Organissimo members that I didn't even know were on Facebook (I'm not naming them here, because I don't think either of them has posted in this thread). So, my initial reaction was that our address book might have been hacked, which is why I promptly deleted the message. After reading the above exchange, I suppose that our address might have simply been harvested from Facebook users that we know, but is that still likely even though we aren't registered users ourselves?

[Big Wheel]

Yes. I would have to see more details of your specific case to hazard a good guess at what happened with the person you didn't know, but it's definitely likely that Facebook is storing non-members' email addresses somewhere, the same way they do with people they identify as Facebook members.

If you appear in 8 Facebook members' address books, when clicking a link from your email to a "join Facebook" page, the system is probably going to point out to you that joining will allow you to connect with those 8 people.

Edited May 25, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Jim R]

Yes. I would have to see more details of your specific case to hazard a good guess at what happened with the person you didn't know, but it's definitely likely that Facebook is storing non-members' email addresses somewhere, the same way they do with people they identify as Facebook members.

If you appear in 8 Facebook members' address books, when clicking a link from your email to a "join Facebook" page, the system is probably going to point out to you that joining will allow you to connect with those 8 people.

Thanks, BW. This message really didn't seem to originate from an individual, based on the address. Also, another thing I didn't mention is that they addressed me as "Jim" in the body of the message. Not sure I can make sense of that, if they only harvested my e-mail address from other members. If it happens again, I'll be more careful about saving more details.

[Big Wheel]

Yes. I would have to see more details of your specific case to hazard a good guess at what happened with the person you didn't know, but it's definitely likely that Facebook is storing non-members' email addresses somewhere, the same way they do with people they identify as Facebook members.

If you appear in 8 Facebook members' address books, when clicking a link from your email to a "join Facebook" page, the system is probably going to point out to you that joining will allow you to connect with those 8 people.

Thanks, BW. This message really didn't seem to originate from an individual, based on the address. Also, another thing I didn't mention is that they addressed me as "Jim" in the body of the message. Not sure I can make sense of that, if they only harvested my e-mail address from other members. If it happens again, I'll be more careful about saving more details.

The distinction here is that the email you received is user-triggered. The bot or whoever it was likely put your email address AND name in the form that sends the email, which is why the email was addressed to "Jim". Whereas the landing page that you were brought to with all the people you know is not user-triggered - Facebook is building that page on its own from data that it has about your email address, without any immediate input from a user. It should be easy enough to confirm this with more details next time.

[Jim R]

Yes. I would have to see more details of your specific case to hazard a good guess at what happened with the person you didn't know, but it's definitely likely that Facebook is storing non-members' email addresses somewhere, the same way they do with people they identify as Facebook members.

If you appear in 8 Facebook members' address books, when clicking a link from your email to a "join Facebook" page, the system is probably going to point out to you that joining will allow you to connect with those 8 people.

Thanks, BW. This message really didn't seem to originate from an individual, based on the address. Also, another thing I didn't mention is that they addressed me as "Jim" in the body of the message. Not sure I can make sense of that, if they only harvested my e-mail address from other members. If it happens again, I'll be more careful about saving more details.

The distinction here is that the email you received is user-triggered. The bot or whoever it was likely put your email address AND name in the form that sends the email, which is why the email was addressed to "Jim".

Where/how would the bot have gotten my first name?

Whereas the landing page that you were brought to with all the people you know is not user-triggered - Facebook is building that page on its own from data that it has about your email address, without any immediate input from a user. It should be easy enough to confirm this with more details next time.

Just to be clear, I didn't click on any link in the e-mail (thus I'm not sure what you mean by "landing page"). The grid of user photos (people from our address book) was in the body of the e-mail.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Jim R

[Big Wheel]

Who knows where the bot got your first name? If one of your contacts ever had their email account hacked or turned over their contact list to someone they didn't intend, there you go. Or a spammer could have already had it (or guessed it if your email address already contained "jim" in it).

Sounds like the email Facebook is sending out does basically the same thing as the webpage I assumed you might be taken to - Facebook's system takes your email and name from whoever supplied it in their form, says "oh, we have this guy's email already - all these members know him", and personalizes the email you see so it contains a bunch of people Facebook already knows you know. But the bot or malicious person or whoever triggered the email has no knowledge of exactly how Facebook's system is going to make it look when it hits your inbox.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Jim R]

Thanks again, BW, I appreciate your time and input. Still a mystery to me, but maybe I'll be able to sort it out if it occurs again.

[Quincy]

Who knows where the bot got your first name? If one of your contacts ever had their email account hacked or turned over their contact list to someone they didn't intend, there you go.

It's careless friends who have dumb, easy, not-so-clever-after-all passwords for the account along with having your email address who pass along fun like this. Or at least some of the time.

[Christiern]

Why re you such a staunch defender of FB, BW?

[catesta]

Why re you such a staunch defender of FB, BW?

Just wait and see what happens when someone makes a negative comment about Twitter.

[Big Wheel]

Why re you such a staunch defender of FB, BW?

Where have I defended them besides the one post in which I speculated that the Palestine thing was probably a coding error? For someone who's 79 years old, sometimes you need to grow the fuck up, man.

I worked in customer support at a major tech company (not Facebook) for years. When I was there, I saw how frequently users who had only half-learned how our product worked and were misusing it immediately jumped to thinking it was behaving in all kinds of ways that...it wasn't. Usually ways that involved us being malevolent. Because they knew deep down that they didn't have the foggiest idea of how our product did what it did, that made them feel very insecure, unlikely to trust us, and likely to lash out whenever something happened with it that they didn't expect.

Sometimes that was our fault for not doing a better job of explaining it. Sometimes that was their fault for being pains in the ass who had no interest in learning about what they were using. Point being, they needed someone to EXPLAIN IT TO THEM to be able to even make an informed decision about what they were doing. This thread alone has a lot of good information in it, and a lot of people who are still confused about the details of how Facebook's product actually works. I'm posting because I think maybe people would benefit from having some of it explained to them.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Christiern]

Sputtered not so big wheel today: "For someone who's 79 years old, sometimes you need to grow the fuck up, man."

I ask a perfectly natural question and you reveal your bigotry.

I wonder who has to grow up?