Technosailor - Latest Comments in The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Re: The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Carol — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:40:51 -0000

Aaron, I'm confused. (No surprise there, eh?) -- I read another post you wrote about Beacon, and you cited GameFly's privacy policy, which seemed pretty clear. So...does Beacon violate GameFly's policy or has GameFly violated their own policy by letting Beacon collect data about you and post it to your FB account? Or both?

This really is disturbing. I understand the "openness" of the internet, but posting my purchasing habits on my FB account? Eek.

Re: The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Nathan Ketsdever — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:43:57 -0000

I don't remember where I read it, but I heard that you can't delete your account, you can only deactivate it. The hack around this seems to be to zero out the information contained to zero.
(although I wonder if all those apps still have your numbers and data for eternity)

Re: The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Tony Hung — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:20:25 -0000

There's also the issue of whether your information is really deleted, or its merely the appearance of such; the information officer in the UK is reviewing facebook for this very reason, as its so difficult to delete your account, and it may be a violation of one of its privacy acts.

Re: The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Aaron Brazell — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:32:02 -0000

Jordan, while that too is evil, it's not as evil as personally identifiable information being collected and associated to me and then, tinfoil hat time, being sold on the open market?

Re: The Only Answer to Facebook Beacon is a Deleted Account

Jordan Mitchell — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:12:37 -0000

Me too. I'm not using it much anymore anyway.

And as I understand it, you don't have to be logged into FB for them to collect data remotely. They can collect data anywhere they can read/drop a cookie (ad, image, js, etc.) Like across the MSN ad network for instance?