Facebook Gets Even More Intrusive

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 08:52:12 AM EST
Tags: Facebook (all tags)

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As if Facebook wasn't intrusive enough, it's taken another giant leap, adding new apps that tell us way more than we want to know about people we've "friended" and telling our "friends" way more than we ever intended to share.

The apps are all set up to use the “frictionless sharing” function on the social network, meaning that users only have to give an app permission to share information once. After that, the app updates automatically to a user’s profile, letting their friends know instantly what they may be eating, studying or listening to at any given moment.

So now, as soon as you buy a concert ticket, your Ticketmaster app will let your friends know what you’ve purchased immediately.

I'm so close to deleting my account entirely. It took me a half hour last night to figure out how to get rid of seeing what news articles on WAPO and Yahoo "friends" read and what they ate. [More...]

The worst is that I didn't sign up for any apps, but if a "friend" does, it shows up on my page and I have to block each app individually.

The Government is probably loving it. Why bother with the paperwork of getting a national security letter for a bookstore to see what books someone bought when FB publishes it gratis?

It's creepy to see what people I know are reading when the reason I know is not because they wanted me to know but because they clicked on it while logged onto FB. Moral of the story for now: Never use your FB account to log onto a media site to read an article, comment or buy something unless you want the whole world to know.

I especially feel sorry for those with 5,000 friends. Their timelines will be so clogged it will take them hours to slog through and delete this stuff they never asked to know about in the first place.

If you have a FB account, go in now and check your privacy settings. (Mine have always been set to "available only to me" and I'm still getting all this nonsense.)

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Facebook Gets Even More Intrusive | 12 comments (12 topical)

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I Don't Have an Account. (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by ScottW714 on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 09:27:33 AM EST

But I have to continuously have friends check my other friends for pics of me. They have even been know to tag my pic to whomever I dating at the time. I hate it, but they find great entertainment from it because it's never lame pics, it's always me doing something ridiculous. They know I will find out and it's almost a game to see how long before I call. Since I don't have an account, there is only so much policing I can do.

I am a private person and until some clown put my data in Linked-in, my name drew zero hits from Google. I have called Linked-In many times, and they will not remove my name, work name/address, and position.

Anyways, I can firmly attest that not having a FB account is not all it's cracked up to be. I am so out of the loop with my friends, it's not even funny. It's becoming so common that people simply forget I am not plugged-in and occasionally don't like explaining something everyone else knew long ago. I didn't know one of my closest friends got engaged for about 10 days. He was on vacation, FB'ed it, then I went out of town. It was by chance I found out from another party.

I can't post to a lot of sites that use FB logon, and many other interests are scrapping email updates and using FB. I have even ran into a couple places that deals were only available if I liked them in FB. It's becoming real apparent, not having an account is holding me back.

Last month I was seriously contemplating getting an account. The privacy that I hold so dear is fleeting, FB just happens to be the front runner today, but eventually IMO anyone using the internet will not have the luxury of anonymity/privacy. So why am I fighting the inevitable...

I think (none / 0) (#3)
by CST on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 09:46:35 AM EST

this is one of the biggest reasons I would never quit my account over privacy issues.

As long as your friends are online you are online. You just don't know what they are saying/posting about you, and you can't control that info as much.


I don't know... (none / 0) (#5)
by kdog on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 11:33:19 AM EST

My social life seems to function pretty well without FB and the like. Many if not most of my circle is on there, but I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

If I wanna see pictures of something I missed, everybody has them on their phones.

Knocking on my door, calling, or emailing are 3 options for keeping in touch and making plans...more than sufficient.

From the sidelines it looks like FB just further complicates a complicated life....but obviously I must be missing something since so many people are hooked;)


that's not quite what I meant (none / 0) (#8)
by CST on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 12:10:51 PM EST

about seeing things you "missed", it's more about seeing things you don't want online. If you don't know see the photo your friend posted of you, or whatever, how can you ask them to take it down?

I guess I'm just saying that if I'm gonna be online anyway I'd rather know what it is about me that is online.


: I hear ya... (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by kdog on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 12:31:09 PM EST

I guess that kinda thing is "outta sight outta mind" for me.
For all I know there may well be sh*t online about me I don't like or wouldn't want shared, but since I don't know about it I ain't bothered by it...and I ain't gonna go looking for it;)
It all seems...I don't know...so junior high?

Have You Considered (5.00 / 2) (#2)
by msaroff on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 09:36:10 AM EST

The Web 2.0 Suicide machine?

What it does:

What exactly is happening or how does the suicide machine delete my account in detail?
We are doing our best to expand possibilities of erasing your entire presence, however it is a work in progress. Please note, that we are not deleting your account! Our aim is rather to remove your private content and friend relationships than just deactivating/deleting the account! Our current achievements are so far:
Facebook
logging into your account
changing your password and your profile picture
excluding your account from public search
removing all email notifications
removing all your friends
removing all groups you were member of
removing all your wall posts (beta)
joining the group "Social Network Suiciders"
logging out
Myspace
logging into your account
removing all your friends
leaving a status message that you've comitted suicide
logging out
LinkedIn
logging into your account
changing your password and your profile picture
removing all your business connections
logging out
Twitter
logging into your account
changing your password and your profile picture
removing all people you follow
removing all your followers
removing all your tweets
logging out

This has the effect of completely scrubbing your account.

BTW, when one considers the lawsuits around the founding of Facebook, one has to conclude that Mark Zuckerberg is not a person that one can trust to keep their word.

: Thanks... (none / 0) (#4)
by ScottW714 on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 10:32:33 AM EST

...but I don;t actually have an account with liked in. I don't want to create one because I am positive I will have to check some box that will essentially give them reign over my data.
I will check the site out at home, this can't be an odd problem. And if I had to guess, one of disciples of networking here at work added my data.

I honestly don't understand (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by eric on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 11:58:23 AM EST

Facebook's compulsion to open stuff up. I had my settings perfectly the way I wanted them and then comes the damn timeline. Then, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of stuff is open to the public. Why?

I changed my settings to friends only then used a setting somewhere to change all previous posts to friends only, as well.

I don't get it. FB gets grief all the time about privacy and yet they pull this.

: They want as much data as possible (none / 0) (#10)
by ruffian on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 04:21:57 PM EST

available to their ad buyers and other buyers of their data. They don't care about the grief they get as long as the money keeps pouring in.

I have to keep my account (none / 0) (#6)
by Coral on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 11:47:51 AM EST

But I wish I didn't. I just deleted my Google Plus account. I hate the trend to social media.

A friend sent me a message telling what (none / 0) (#11)
by ruffian on Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 04:30:15 PM EST

I had to do, and what I had to ask all of my friends to do. If you hover over the friend's name, you will get a 'subscribe to' button, that lets you select the kind of updates from them you want to get posted to the new crawl in the upper right of the new home pages. Un-select all the stuff you don't want, like music, games, 'comments and likes', etc. Post a message asking all your friends to do the same for you.

I really don't want to know that stuff, and I sure don't post my music selections, web reading, or books unless there is something I particularly want to say about them.

I can see the reason advertisers want the data, but not why anyone else cares. And not why it benefits me in any way.

fb gets even more intrusive (none / 0) (#12)
by leoncarre on Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 07:31:38 PM EST

i had been subscribed to "washington post Social Reader" app... little did i know that all my reading habits were being published for all and sundry... i Did block the app and cleaned up what history i could... the only thing left to do is delete fb... nearly there.. thanks for posting this :)