"Caught" is a little strong. It's not like they were selling the information to advertisiers -- in fact, several of the advertisers who were receiving the information have said they were unaware it was even being sent, far less doing anything with it.
They didn't write any code to "share" this data; they just failed to put safeguards in place to prevent it leaking via HTTP referrers.
I'm willing to put this down to incompetence rather than malice, though of course incompetence is still not great.
Honestly, I think the vast majority of facebook's privacy guffaws have been due to incompetence and not malice. My concern, however, is that we get in the habit of excusing these failures because of this incompetence.
Software can be made (more) secure and can be tested (better). The point then is when does it make financial sense for facebook to put the money and man power into tackling these issues on the front end... If users / consumers don't take note of the problems and move to another (currently nonexistent) platform facebook will never have a motivating reason to change.
Perhaps, users have done this to themselves by demanding low cost (free) software with fast release schedules for new features.
The cookie thing is definitely a different matter. I was referring to the portion that is making all the headlines, which is Facebook "giving advertisers names and ages of people who clicked ads" (see http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-myspace-busted-for-t... ). They did no such thing.
Comments
"Caught" is a little strong. It's not like they were selling the information to advertisiers -- in fact, several of the advertisers who were receiving the information have said they were unaware it was even being sent, far less doing anything with it.
They didn't write any code to "share" this data; they just failed to put safeguards in place to prevent it leaking via HTTP referrers.
I'm willing to put this down to incompetence rather than malice, though of course incompetence is still not great.
Honestly, I think the vast majority of facebook's privacy guffaws have been due to incompetence and not malice. My concern, however, is that we get in the habit of excusing these failures because of this incompetence.
Software can be made (more) secure and can be tested (better). The point then is when does it make financial sense for facebook to put the money and man power into tackling these issues on the front end... If users / consumers don't take note of the problems and move to another (currently nonexistent) platform facebook will never have a motivating reason to change.
Perhaps, users have done this to themselves by demanding low cost (free) software with fast release schedules for new features.
OP's #3 above with the cookie pointing seems to tell the lie to, well, that lie.
You can't put it past big co's (or even small co's, and individuals) to come up with the strategy:
1. We'll do this naughty thing
2. We'll make it look accidental
3. Then if anyone finds out, we'll pretend to be bumpkins
It's a classic foil. Basically, it's a reverse pool shark hustle.
The cookie thing is definitely a different matter. I was referring to the portion that is making all the headlines, which is Facebook "giving advertisers names and ages of people who clicked ads" (see http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-myspace-busted-for-t... ). They did no such thing.
"Reverse pool shark hustle"
I would call this pulling a W.