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shortformblog: Today in the New York Times: One guy’s embarrassing Facebook ad saga hits the front page Meet Nick Bergus. He’s a pretty cool guy who once linked to an odd product on Facebook as a bit of a joke — a 55-gallon barrel of lube from Amazon.com. Ha ha, funny, right? But the joke was on him, as Facebook’s algorithms started featuring his smiling face in personalized ads featuring the giant barrel of lube. From there, his story spread — first to his personal blog, then to Gawker, with an amazing headline. Now, Bergus’ somewhat embarrassing (but admittedly kind of awesome) tale is on the front page of the New York Times. All because he once linked to a giant barrel of lube. (photo by Stephen Mally/NYT) Wait. What? Facebook can profit from my image without my consent? Or is that a clause in the ToS? Did everyone just hand over their rights by using Facebook? As if there aren’t enough reasons to hate these jokers already, yeesh. Click for high-res photo

shortformblog:

Today in the New York Times: One guy’s embarrassing Facebook ad saga hits the front page

Meet Nick Bergus. He’s a pretty cool guy who once linked to an odd product on Facebook as a bit of a joke — a 55-gallon barrel of lube from Amazon.com. Ha ha, funny, right? But the joke was on him, as Facebook’s algorithms started featuring his smiling face in personalized ads featuring the giant barrel of lube. From there, his story spread — first to his personal blog, then to Gawker, with an amazing headline. Now, Bergus’ somewhat embarrassing (but admittedly kind of awesome) tale is on the front page of the New York Times. All because he once linked to a giant barrel of lube. (photo by Stephen Mally/NYT)

Wait. What? Facebook can profit from my image without my consent? Or is that a clause in the ToS? Did everyone just hand over their rights by using Facebook? As if there aren’t enough reasons to hate these jokers already, yeesh.

(this post was reblogged from shortformblog)
Does this information look like it belongs to a real person? Yes? But it’s bogus. Fake Name Generator lets you create believable—but fictitious—credentials so that you can avoid giving out your real identity to sites that have no business knowing what they are (ahem, Google+). Click for high-res photo

Does this information look like it belongs to a real person? Yes? But it’s bogus. Fake Name Generator lets you create believable—but fictitious—credentials so that you can avoid giving out your real identity to sites that have no business knowing what they are (ahem, Google+).

Okay, Best Buy, why the hell do you need my email for a return?

When did this evil practice start? I already gave you my driver’s license and phone number, why do you need my email?

Anyway, gripe long enough for the counter guy to call his supervisor, who’ll then come over and tell him to put in a bogus address. (That’s what happened in my case anyway.) What this tells me is that there is no valid reason for Best Buy to request this information. Bastards.

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Open Graph is a development tool that lets third-party apps and sites report your activities back to Facebook. It’s meant to extend or replace the Like button. It’s a way for sites and services to jack directly into Facebook from anywhere. If companies use Open Graph, they can publish to your Ticker and Timeline, too, effectively sending tattle-tale updates on anything you do to everyone you know, in real time. And then Facebook gets to keep that data forever. It is the ultimate collection tool, a way for Facebook to monitor you, wherever you go.
Facebook wants to share everything you do online with the world, whether you want to or not. This is on top of a cookie that tracks your activity even when you’re logged out of Facebook. People are upset over Spotify requiring new users to sign up through Facebook, but this isn’t going to be the end of it.

The Truth About Cell Phones and the National Do-Not-Call List

usagov:

You may have received an email telling you cell phones will start to get unwanted telemarketing calls unless you add your wireless number to a special Do-Not-Call Registry.

However, placing telemarketing calls to wireless phones is, and always has been, illegal.

It is unlawful for anyone to place a call using an automatic telephone dialing system or a prerecorded voice message to a telephone number assigned to a paging service, mobile telephone service or any service for which the called party is charged for the call. This applies whether or not your cell phone number is listed on a Do-Not-Call list.

If you receive unwanted calls that you believe violate the do-not-call rules, you can file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.

Seems that this issue has gotten a lot worse (for me at least) in the last six months or so. Problem is, unethical telemarketers don’t care about the law, and they also disguise their numbers.

(this post was reblogged from usagov)

Hints Facebook Is Becoming a Full-On Identification Service

infoneer-pulse:

Facebook’s facial recognition software might not be so harmless. A recent study from Carnegie Mellon finds that the technology can help researchers locate people’s social security numbers, just from the information on their Facebook profiles and their photo. When first released, Facebookers noted the inherent creepiness of facial recognition, but now that the tool can double as personal identification software, the technology is looking even more iffy. With this increased ability to ID its users, Facebook is slowly morphing from a social network to a possible identification service.

» via The Atlantic

Holy shit.

(this post was reblogged from infoneer-pulse)
Think your credit or debit card history is private? Think again: your bank is now essentially selling this information to retailers. From CNNMoney: Many of the nation’s leading banks are using information about their customers’ shopping habits — how much they spend, where they shop, what they buy — to make money. Based on that data, retailers are offering targeted discounts via the banks through text messages, email and online bank statements. You can opt-out…but only if you knew about it. The article claims that consumers have embraced these programs and points to a 2% opt-out rate as evidence; to me, however, this low rate is more likely to be the result of consumer ignorance instead. Did you know that banks were already selling your data? Without asking you first? I sure didn’t. Even with this knowledge, it’s not obvious how I can go about opting out. The remainder of the article is similarly favorable toward banks, which would be alarming if the biases weren’t so hilarious: At a time when government regulation is forcing banks to hike fees and eliminate consumers perks… Aww, you poor things. Is the government keeping you down? Or is the truth more like “at a time (i.e., all the time) when greed forces banks to hike fees and screw consumers”?

Think your credit or debit card history is private? Think again: your bank is now essentially selling this information to retailers. From CNNMoney:

Many of the nation’s leading banks are using information about their customers’ shopping habits — how much they spend, where they shop, what they buy — to make money.

Based on that data, retailers are offering targeted discounts via the banks through text messages, email and online bank statements.

You can opt-out…but only if you knew about it. The article claims that consumers have embraced these programs and points to a 2% opt-out rate as evidence; to me, however, this low rate is more likely to be the result of consumer ignorance instead. Did you know that banks were already selling your data? Without asking you first? I sure didn’t. Even with this knowledge, it’s not obvious how I can go about opting out.

The remainder of the article is similarly favorable toward banks, which would be alarming if the biases weren’t so hilarious:

At a time when government regulation is forcing banks to hike fees and eliminate consumers perks…

Aww, you poor things. Is the government keeping you down? Or is the truth more like “at a time (i.e., all the time) when greed forces banks to hike fees and screw consumers”?

Following up on the previous post, this is Eli Pariser’s speech at TED about filter bubbles. Today, the news we receive can be restricted not just by active filtering (by following only sources that agree with our own views) or social filtering (through apps such as Flipboard), but the Internet itself is winnowing down the information that we see, without telling us.

There are 57 signals that Google looks at—everything from what kind of computer you’re on to what kind of browser you’re using to where you’re located—that it uses to personally tailor your query results. Think about it for a second: there is no standard Google anymore…..And this moves us very quickly toward a world in which the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.

Pariser enlisted his friends to demonstrate this, but you can do it all by yourself. These are the results when I searched for “India”—notice the second hit below is on Sino-Indian relations, and it even bolds “China” when that word is not part of this search session. Why is that? Because, as it happens, “China” was my immediate previous search.


However, after I switch to private browsing mode, where my previous history is not retained, there are no hits for China in the search results below. In other words, Google is trying to guess what you’re interested in based on your past activity. Are their guesses correct? More to the point, do you want them to control what you see?


So, on top of the overall privacy issues, this is another good reason to keep your cookies cleared and tell websites not to track your activities.