Facebook Open Graph Personalization

As you’ve probably heard by now, New York Senator Chuck Schumer is urging the FTC to set Social Networking guidelines in light of Facebook’s latest “upgrade” that implemented their Open Graph concept.

Facebook intends to allow other websites access to both your, and all your friend’s, personal information, in order to give you a more “personalized” web experience. When boiled down to its essence, that means you will see stories and ads targeted specifically to your demographic and interests, along with social plug ins that will let you see what your Facebook friends have read and commented about on the partner site. You will also have the ability to “like” things on the site and have them show up on your Facebook profile. All very cool if you’re interested in those abilities. Personally, I’m not.

Facebook has responded to Senator Schumer’s concerns by pointing out that if you’re not interested in sharing your info with their partners (read partners as websites that pay Facebook for your information), you can button down your privacy settings and prevent it. While this statement is true in the broadest of senses, the problem is that they’ve already rolled out Open Graph Personalization, and guess what? The default setting was “Hell yeah sign me up!”.

I first heard about this change last week and immediately went into my privacy settings and turned it off, only to find out over the weekend that all I did was close the barn door after the horses had already escaped. Whenever you go to a website and see that stupid little thumbs up icon, you know that you’ve been had, and they’re everywhere. Thanks Mr. Zukerberg, for helping to make the web a bigger piece of crap than it already is.

I use Facebook to find and keep up with old friends, as do most of you. It’s not my platform of choice; it’s just a nice social tool that has its uses and limitations. I don’t need or want it to track my every move in the Ether and sell off that info, as well as the personal info that I’ve put out there with the understanding that it was available only to “My Friends”. The ultimate insult though, is that by using this new feature, which at first you have no say over, they also can take personal info from anyone in your friend list. That means that even if you button down your own account, they can still get your personal info from any of your friends who don’t button down theirs. Nice.

I understand that Facebook is in business to make a buck, and I don’t begrudge them on that point. Hey, no one works for free, but if you’re gonna make a buck off of me, the least you can do is warn me so that I can opt out if I choose. Giving me the choice to opt out after you’ve already signed me up and sold me off is just plain sleazy, and taking my info from someone else is even worse.

So, what can you do to protect your info? Well, there’s a very nice write-up here on wikiHow that explains just how to go about opting out of Open Graph Personalization, and I suggest you do. Also, Senator Schumer has his own Facebook page that you might like to like. It will help you stay informed as the situation develops, and it will let them know how you feel. Pretty cool idea using Facebook’s own little thumbs up to help thwart their efforts. Good one Chuck!

Safe Computing

I'm going to give you some information today that may save you a lot of time and aggravation. First thing I want to talk about is targeted ads. Have you ever noticed that sometimes websites seem to be able to read your mind? You go to Autofinder or the Ford website and for the next couple of weeks every site you go to is showing you ads for cars and trucks. Thats because sites put tracking cookies on your hard drive.

Targeted ads cue on your cookies and from the sites you redirect from, among other things. Most websites use tools to collect your info. All you need is to be on them for a second and they have a ton of info about you. They map your location and system info to the stories and the ads you click on so they can use it to adjust what they present. It also tells them how the user found the site, whether searching Google or redirecting from another page's link.

Not all of them collect personal info like IP address, computer names, etc. but some sites do. It's a good reason not to use your name when you are configuring your computer i.e. "Frothington family computer". You should also make it a practice to clean your cache. Get rid of the cookies, offline internet pages and mru lists.

The quickest way is to open Internet Explorer, go to Tools (Top left of the IE window next to Favorites), scroll down to Internet Options at the bottom of the drop down list. This will bring up a window of IE options and on the first tab or page (General) you will see Delete Cookies, Delete files, and Settings. Click on both Cookies and Files. When you hit the delete files button, be sure to select the offline content checkbox. Piece of cake, but it can be even easier...

If we're talking about your home machine, you should install Lavasoft's Ad-Aware. The personal version is free and it's the best tool out there. It not only roots out spyware but also blows away all your cookies. There are some upgraded versions that have more functionality like real time (constant) scans and a version for buisness computers, but the free one is fine for home use. Update it and run it weekly. Please note that Ad-Aware is not a replacement for Norton/Symantec anti virus. You need them both.

Second thing I'm going to talk about is music downloading and P2P (peer to peer) file sharing in general. Don't do it. There is no such thing as a free lunch, or free music. What you are doing is opening up your hard drive so that any unscrupulous person can put anything they want on it. Think spyware or malware. I see a steady stream of people whos PC's are virtually unusable because they are so polluted. The crap comes from music downloading, surfing porn, or both. You need to stick to trusted sites like iTunes or Amazon. If you're concerned about DRM's and cost, you should read my article on DRM free downloads on berryjooks.com. You'll find it on the berry's shuffle page.

OK, I've rambled enough for tonight. The Sox start back up tomorrow night and I need my beauty rest.