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Solidarity

 

Facebook - Stop Invading Our Privacy!

rkamens's picture
Submitted by rkamens on Tue, 2007-11-20 19:22.

"When you buy a book or movie online--or make a political contribution--do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?

Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But recently, Facebook began doing just that. People across the country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed on their Facebook News Feeds. "
-- MoveOn.org

Facebook has begun blatantly violating the privacy of their users by publicizing (through user feeds, etc.) the purchases that users make. This is ridiculous and we need to stop it. Earlier I had considered leaving Facebook because of the shady figures that provided investment money but decided to stay. If Facebook starts telling my friends where I shop, what I buy, and who I donate money to then the decision will have been made for me and I will be leaving Facebook.

How does it work? Advertisers are given a special snippet of code to put on their site, and that enables facebook to see what you are buying. This is not an application that you can choose not to install or remove. This is embedded in Facebook's core and was sprung on Facebook users with no prior notice. If you cancel your account, your previous purchases are already out there. If you're doing your Christmas shopping and have a Facebook account, be careful because they might just spoil your surprise. So can you opt-out of this? Not really. Upon purchasing an item, a small windows slides out of the corner of your screen for a few seconds offering to opt you out for that particular purchase. Of course, that's easy to miss. Afterwords, you are given a similar warning of the same visibility when you first sign in above your feed. You can't just opt-out of the program and you can't just set something in your privacy profile to fix it.

Please act on this issue and show Facebook how wrong this is.

1. Sign MoveOn's Petition Available at http://civ.moveon.org/facebookprivacy/?rc=fb_privacy

2. Join the Facebook group petitioning Facebook to make it opt-in at http://hs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5930262681

Thanks to MoveOn for their leadership on this.

In Solidarity,
Comrade Ringo Kamens

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