Credit scores are a bit voodoo in their nature, and the methodology of calculating the three-digit number that influences your mortgage rate, auto loan offers and even job prospects is a for-profit trade secret- but a quashed plan in Germany to involve Facebook activity in determining creditworthiness indicates that your activity on social media could soon affect the already-mysterious formula that makes up your credit score.

Credit scores aren’t the only issue when it comes to Facebook, as there has already been some back and forth over whether debt collectors should be able to use the social network to track down and contact debtors or even their friends and relatives. The trail of unwitting information we provide sites like Facebook (but, let’s face it, most commonly, Facebook) is vast, and if that dribble of data begins to affect credit scores, we’re probably all all kinds of screwed.

In Germany, plans by the German version of FICO, SCHUFA (isn’t that what people say before sucking down a stein full of beer?) to use information culled via Facebook were publicized by a German media outlet and tabled after a large outcry.

But in Europe, privacy laws are far stricter and people less tolerant of violations. Planning of such a practice over there is almost a guarantee credit scores and Facebook shenanigans will be tied together in the future, and TIME poses a frightening yet entirely plausible scenario in which this kind of thing matters:

“How much of a risk are you if you read crime stories, vent about a speeding ticket or Like every bar in town? Figuring this out is an interesting academic riddle. It’s also the holy grail for credit agencies, digital-marketing companies and other platforms that collect and organize consumer data — and it could hurt consumers.”

The site quotes a privacy expert, and not to bang the drum too hard, she makes a good case for credit scores being influenced by Facebook likes and the like in the future:

“‘If you like things pertaining to risky behaviors, that may be perceived as part of your personality makeup,’ says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.”

Most scarily, information tallied to compile your credit scores is already somewhat ephemeral- so preventing Facebook likes from influencing that sort of data when a precedent exists predating social media is a very sticky potential issue indeed. Do you think your Facebook behavior could damage your credit score?

Credit Scores Could Soon Be Influenced By Facebook Likes, Behavior, German Plan Suggests is a post from: The Inquisitr

After all the recent concern over whether potential employers and employers should have access to log in to your personal Facebook account, it was practically inevitable some poor sod who’d been fired over refusing would pop up, and it appears that Kimberly Hester of Michigan is the sod in question.

Before we get to the nitty-gritty, it bears mentioning how important it is to flesh out these protections right this second in law while it’s all being decided. After all, you wouldn’t allow your boss to stand outside the kitchen window while you’re having a dinner party with your oldest friends, would you? What about allowing them into your bedroom while you and your spouse or partner cuddle after sex? (Which differs little from the soppy messages couples send to one another via Facebook’s messaging.)

Another crucial point brought to light by cases like Kimberly Hester’s is the aspect of other people’s privacy. (Just think for a second if your spouse or even your ex-lover was subjected to such scrutiny, which information of yours nosy HR departments might be privy to should they relent to the snooping. And shudder.) But we’ve examined all these angles before and we know that anyone other than yourself having access to your Facebook from the log-in angle is not only a gross and egregious violation of privacy, but also completely against’s Facebook’s TOS. In fact, Facebook prohibits it.

That hasn’t stopped spying bosses and hirers preying on desperate job seekers from demanding access anyway. And Hester, who had friended a student’s parent, found herself called on the carpet last April after the friend in question took issue with a picture she’d posted of a co-worker’s shoes and pants around their ankles. No nudity was visible, and the image wasn’t even suggestive. Here, take a look:

Crass, perhaps. But what Hester says happened after the parent complained is something we should all worry about. She explains:

“Instead of asking to take the photo down and viewing it from my friend’s point of view, they called me into the office without my union… I asked for my union several times, and they refused. They wanted me to [log in to Facebook] right then and there.”

ABC reports that Hester is in possession of a letter which reads in part:

“…in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly.”

Hester says the co-worker was forced to resign, and that in the intervening year, she has suffered a “nervous breakdown” and was subjected to a hostile work environment. She is seeking her job back after the Facebook firing as well as an apology from the district.

Fired Over Facebook: Teacher’s Aide Kimberly Hester Axed After Refusing to Provide Log In Access to School is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the time-tested ways of deflecting criticism is blaming what you’re being accused of on the other guy.

Today in tech news, one of the stories I’ve seen bounced around centers on allegations Facebook engaged in a crafty campaign to accuse Google of being loose and free with GMail user data. Hmm… that sounds a bit like accusations I’ve heard lobbed at another tech giant… >scratches head< Anyway, the interesting thing is that the interpretation of the available information seems to draw two different conclusions.

To wit, ComputerWorld concludes, “Caught! Facebook admits running anti-Google campaign,” while ABC decides that, “Facebook Denies ‘Smear’ Campaign Against Google” is the more fitting headline. But curiously, both stories center around the following statement about the PR push to educate users about Google’s “Social Circles,” snipped from the CW piece:

“No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended,” a Facebook spokesman wrote. “Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles — just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst.”

The brouhaha was born from a string of emails between blogger Christopher Soghoian and PR firm Burson-Marsteller where the latter attempted to plant stories about Google’s Social Circles, and the PR firm admits to asking for Facebook’s name to remain “out of it.” And as we know, PR firms are paid insane amounts of money to boost the profile of their clients, which in this situation, would be Facebook… hmmm. Whatever the truth is in this situation, it does seem like a massive PR fail.

Do you think any less of Facebook after the admission? It’s not gonna make you any less likely to use it, is it?

Did Facebook run an anti-Google smear campaign? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Is anyone else beginning to think that Facebook’s entire focus is desensitizing users to privacy breaches?

The leaky social network has again exposed user data to third parties, this time inadvertently allowing advertisers to obtain “access tokens,” which have been described by experts as “spare keys” to a user’s account. So what could have been shared? Symantec, who discovered the breach, explains:

Third parties, in particular advertisers, have accidentally had access to Facebook users’ accounts including profiles, photographs, chat, and also had the ability to post messages and mine personal information.

However, the security site adds:

Fortunately, these third-parties may not have realized their ability to access this information. We have reported this issue to Facebook, who has taken corrective action to help eliminate this issue.

Worryingly, the breach allowed long term access even though tokens eventually expire:

By default, most access tokens expire after a short time, however the application can request offline access tokens which allow them to use these tokens until you change your password, even when you aren’t logged in.

Facebook has admitted the breach and said they’ve taken steps to correct it, but some tokens could still be out there. (In a blog post, the social network downplays the issue a bit.) Symantec recommends changing your Facebook password, just in case.

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Facebook is leaking, again- private data exposed to third parties is a post from: The Inquisitr

The idea of your unpaid student loan debts or late car payments being publicized on your Facebook wall is probably pretty unpleasant sounding.

With high unemployment and a record wealth divide right now in the US, it also is likely many people reading this post can relate to having a bit of difficulty paying the bills. A landmark new ruling in Florida may help ensure that if you owe money on some accounts, at least you won’t wake up to an embarrassing announcement about it on a social media profile.

Melanie Beacham, a Florida resident, sued collections agency MarkOne after an illness caused her to fall behind on her bills. Instead of working out a payment plan, agents from the company called Beacham over twenty times in a day and even found her on Facebook, contacting her family and friends to inform them of the woman’s past due bills.

Beacham won in court, and after the ruling, her lawyer Billy Howard commented on how harmful such actions are to individuals who are under financial pressure:

“This is a new age of harassment,” Howard said. “A couple of key strokes you can use one of the oldest debt collectors’ tricks there is … that is, to contact family members and friends. Most harassment is one-on-one, but when you bring in family members and friends that’s when you really turn up the psychological pressure on people.”

In March, Beacham filed a separate harassment suit against MarkOne for their collections practices.

[Orlando Sentinel via Consumerist]

Debt collectors can’t harass you through Facebook, court rules is a post from: The Inquisitr

Social media movements are again being discussed as possible pivotal evidence in a high-profile murder case, this time with a defense lawyer claiming Twitter updates prove his client’s self-defense claim.

18-year-old Shanterrica Madden stands accused of the murder of her 21-year-old college roommate, Tina Stewart. Madden’s lawyer Joe Brandon, Jr., believes that social media activity detailing the ongoing conflict will prove that it’s “undisputed” that the victim “started the fight and it’s just an unfortunate series of events that follows.” Said Brandon:

“It’s one of the first times as a defense lawyer that I have seen it come into play,” said attorney Joe Brandon. “I’m keen on it. This supports fully our defense of self-defense. It’s critical.”

Benjamin Holden is the director of the Reynolds National Center for Courts and Media as well as a professor of media law at the University of Nevada, Reno. Holden said the introduction of social media evidence is a massive complication as courts work to catch up to technology:

“It’s extremely complicating. It broadens the arena of evidentiary opportunity, evidentiary pieces, to an almost limitless scope… The legal team with the best geek squad wins — that may be the future of litigation.”

While a fortuitous status update or location-aware app could certainly work in an individual’s favor, evidence gleaned from sites like Facebook is not always useful in building a defense. Local District Attorney General Kim Helper admitted the prosecution often “scours” social networking sites to gather evidence against a defendant:

“Definitely in terms of evidentiary issues, we’re seeing a lot of it, and a lot of it is beneficial to the state,” Helper said. “I tell juveniles all the time, ‘If you don’t want someone to read it, don’t put it out there.’ The same thing goes across the board whether you’re a prosecutor, juror, witness, defendant.”

The issue does indeed span all aspects of a court’s reach. The integrity of a jury or juror has been called into question on more than one occasion, and the New York State Bar even published an opinion last year on the ethics of gathering evidence via social media. (It was basically decided that entirely public evidence should be admissible, but “friending” an individual to gain access to their semi-private information should not.) A New York teen was saved from jail when a status update proved his innocence. (The status? “Where’s my pancakes?”) Matrimonial lawyers have even gone so far as to call Facebook and its ilk an “evidentiary goldmine” in gathering evidence for divorce cases, and it has been claimed more than once that 20% of divorces now mention Facebook in filings.

The lasting implications for this are fascinating and scary- kind of like watching a big, real-life episode of Law and Order SVU. It could be the wind up that innocence is more often proven early rather than later in a case, with services like Foursquare providing alibis, or it could be that the future is an Orwellian nightmare in which not one iota of your life is private if you happen to rely on digital means of communication. Do you think the introduction of social media evidence stands to do more harm or good to the criminal justice system from an individual’s standpoint?

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Is evidence gathered from social media the “future of litigation?” is a post from: The Inquisitr

Although it’s kind of like blaming cars for transporting people to affairs more easily, Facebook has again been named as a factor in one out of five divorces in the United States.

We first posted about this particular (and interestingly, exactly proportionate) figure of Facebook supposedly being cited in 20% of divorces after it was reported by a law firm back in December of 2009. Prior to that, there was commentary from divorce lawyers about Facebook being an “evidentiary goldmine” in digging up information on adultery and otherwise unsavory behavior, and the New York State Bar even stepped in with an opinion on the ethics of gathering evidence via social networking. (Mainly that publicly available information was acceptable evidence, but “friending” to access information for the purpose of building a case against someone was not considered ethical.)

It seems the 20% figure could bear out on a larger scale, and two additional sources have cited the figure in recent stories on Facebook and divorce. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers is one, and researchers at Loyola University Medical Center reported similar findings. Steven Kimmons, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist at Loyola, explained that while Facebook isn’t necessarily the reason these marriages implode, the service often provides kindling to the flames of an otherwise distressed relationship:

“We’re coming across it more and more… One spouse connects online with someone they knew from high school. The person is emotionally available and they start communicating through Facebook. Within a short amount of time, the sharing of personal stories can lead to a deepened sense of intimacy, which in turn can point the couple in the direction of physical contact. I don’t think these people typically set out to have affairs. A lot of it is curiosity. They see an old friend or someone they dated and decide to say ‘hello’ and catch up on where that person is and how they’re doing.”

While it’s unlikely a relationship in perfect health would succumb to the temptation or distraction provided by Facebook or similar service, the sad part is that very few relationships are free from rough patches. While some couples could repair their marriages or otherwise weather bad spots, perhaps the ease with which a sympathetic and romantically-piqued ear could be found on sites like Facebook strongly diminishes the likelihood of that. Surely not the fault of Facebook, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

Have you seen the dynamic of a relationship change drastically due to the actions of one partner on social networks? Have you ended a relationship due to a significant other’s internet activities? Do you submit to a crushing fit of jealous rage when a person of the opposite sex comments on your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend’s Facebook page?

Facebook again blamed in 20% of US divorces is a post from: The Inquisitr

C’mon guys- this totally looks legit!

A dating site that opens with a pic of creepy basement guy and his mail-order Eastern European bride clad in Walmart attire and smiling unnervingly has gotten in a bit of hot water for scraping all the info for their 250,000 “profiles” from publicly available, not-deliberately-shared personal information culled from Facebook. The site was shut down for a spell when the controversy first broke, but it’s back up and running, classing unwitting Facebook users as “sly,” “climbers,” “smug,” or “mild.”

The site’s about page leads to another site, which reveals the “social experiment” behind lovely-faces.com:

Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating – unfortunately, without the user’s control. But that’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in general. If we start to play with the concepts of identity theft and dating, we should be able to unveil how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be. And how fragile enormous capitalization based on exploiting social systems can be. And it’ll eventually mutate, from a plausible translation of real identities into virtual management, to something just for fun, with no assumed guarantee of trust, crumbling the whole market evaluation hysteria that surrounds the crowded, and much hyped, online social platforms.

Spokesman for Facebook Barry Schnitt responded to the actions of lovely-faces.com in a Facebook statement regarding the “dating” site:

“We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’ve already been in touch with Lovely-Faces to demand that they delete the data and we will take additional action as necessary.”

Interestingly, though, Facebook is in a bit of a funny position when it comes to defending itself against this kind of information scraping. The site itself sprang out of Mark Zuckerberg’s first social networking venture, Face Mash- a hotness-comparison engine that culled pics of female Harvard students, and pitted them against one another, without their permission.

Dating site makes waves by swiping 250,000 Facebook profiles is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a case that could set legal precedent regarding the impact of social media activities on your academic and ultimately professional prospects, students at a Kansas community college were removed from the nursing program at a community college after posting gross but relatively benign pictures of themselves to Facebook, posing with a human placenta.

22-year-old Doyle Byrnes is now seeking an injunction against the college that booted her from her nursing classes after the school administration learned of the photo.Per a filing in US District Court in Kansas, Byrnes- who was in good standing academically- was at an off-site visit to Olathe Medical Center November 10th under the tutelage of instructor Amber Delphia. There were seven students present, and one requested permission to take the photos with the express purpose of posting them on Facebook. Delphia did not object:

Delphia, according to the lawsuit, merely said, “Oh, you girls,” and did not tell them not to do it or that it could result in discipline.

Four of the girls posed with the placenta, and the patient from which it came was in no way identifiable in the images. Byrnes had the image up as her profile picture for approximately three hours before Delphia called her and requested she remove it. Byrnes asked if she was in trouble, and Delphia told her that she was not. The following day, Byrnes received a letter from the program barring her return to classes.

“Your demeanor and lack of professional behavior surrounding this event was considered a disruption to the learning environment and did not exemplify the professional behavior that we expect in the nursing program,” Jeanne Walsh, director of nursing at the college, wrote in a letter to Byrnes that is included as an exhibit with the complaint.

Byrnes is hoping to get a “temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction” allowing her to return when classes resume on January 19th. She has since deleted her Facebook account.

Nursing students kicked out of community college for Facebook placenta photo is a post from: The Inquisitr

Technology and its widespread use evolves daily, and as it does, the way sometimes intensely personal information is used (possibly against you) by companies and agencies often has no legal precedent.

One such case would be the collection of debts. As Americans cope with unprecedented financial strain, more and more borrowers find themselves losing their grip on fiscal matters. Many people are falling behind on major obligations like mortgages and car payments, and thanks to services Facebook, we are easier than ever to track down via our online activities. But should debt collectors be able to use these services to harass the family and friends of people who are delinquent on their bills?

Florida resident Melanie Beacham took a medical leave from her job after falling ill, preventing her from remaining current on her car loan. Although she kept lender MarkOne abreast of the situation, she received as many as 20 calls a day about her car loan. Then, Beacham says, the company turned to Facebook to notify her family and friends that she was in financial trouble.

Consumer attorney Billy Howard says the practice is becoming increasingly common, mostly because naming and shaming those who have fallen on hard times inspires desperation anew:

“It’s getting the desired result, and that is to start a domino effect of panic and embarrassment among family and friends, and people will do anything to stop that.”

Howard is representing Beacham in a lawsuit hoping to prevent MarkOne from employing the practice of using Facebook to locate and harangue the family members of people who owe them money, and MarkOne unsurprisingly did not comment in their defense on the matter.

Do you think the practice of social media stalking by debt collectors is acceptable? Have you ever had a third party mine your friends list in an attempt to force action on your part?

[WTSP via Consumerist]

Debt collectors sued for using Facebook to harass family and friends of delinquent borrowers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sometimes you read about strategies for interacting via social media that simplify things or alert you to a new, better way of using these tools to communicate with friends, co-workers, clients or relatives.

Then there’s this, which is just asinine. danah boyd, a Microsoft researcher and Harvard fellow, posted about a new way for people to fly under the radar on Facebook. (You may remember boyd, who insists on not capitalizing her name, as the theorist behind the “MySpace has become a digital ghetto” thing.) According to boyd, some users “super logoff” Facebook by deactivating their accounts every time they sign off the service.

boyd, who looks way too old to be engaging in grammatical shenanigans, makes a case for the stupid, inconsiderate and attention-whoring practice of repeatedly deleting yourself. boyd cites a young woman who uses the super log off, and the reasons behind it:

Mikalah uses Facebook but when she goes to log out, she deactivates her Facebook account. She knows that this doesn’t delete the account – that’s the point. She knows that when she logs back in, she’ll be able to reactivate the account and have all of her friend connections back. But when she’s not logged in, no one can post messages on her wall or send her messages privately or browse her content. But when she’s logged in, they can do all of that. And she can delete anything that she doesn’t like… Mikalah is not trying to get rid of her data or piss of [sic] her friends. And she’s not.

Would that not piss you off? Why would anyone go to the trouble of interacting with someone on Facebook if they kept continually disappearing, removing their content so public conversations appear incomplete, and moderating every interaction you have with them so stringently? A lot of social media interaction is variable, but surely this level of control-freakiness means that maybe you just have nothing to bring to Facebook?

boyd continues:

In many ways, deactivation is a way of not letting the digital body stick around when the person is not present. This is a great risk reduction strategy if you’re worried about people who might look and misinterpret. Or people who might post something that would get you into trouble. Mikalah’s been there and isn’t looking to get into any more trouble. But she wants to be a part of Facebook when it makes sense and not risk the possibility that people will be snooping when she’s not around.

It seems, though, that removing almost all of the opportunity to interact with you on Facebook is less a “risk reduction strategy,” and more just completely eliminating the point of having a Facebook account altogether- interaction.

boyd covers another form of this, too- people who delete every interaction on the site after it occurs- because, they say, it avoids “drama.”

Shamika doesn’t deactivate her Facebook profile but she does delete every wall message, status update, and Like shortly after it’s posted. She’ll post a status update and leave it there until she’s ready to post the next one or until she’s done with it. Then she’ll delete it from her profile. When she’s done reading a friend’s comment on her page, she’ll delete it. She’ll leave a Like up for a few days for her friends to see and then delete it. When I asked her why she was deleting this content, she looked at me incredulously and told me “too much drama.”

Again, while boyd makes the case that Facebook is useful to Shamika despite the fact that she sends “1200 text messages” in a single day, I think the larger point of how this kind of behavior affects other users stands. Deleting things on Facebook, people or actions, is not a friendly way to behave and only worsens the self-centeredness using media like this can encourage. And while Facebook, Twitter and the like are frequently pegged as vehicles for narcissism and navel-gazing, they don’t have to be. Any “social media expert” will tell you that your interactions on these networks should be far more often about others than yourself- or else you’re probably a sucky user with very little of note to contribute.

Have you used the “super logoff” technique to avoid “drama” or just general interaction? Would you keep someone on your friends list if they kept appearing and reappearing? Are any or many of your Facebook friends “loose cannons” that you fear will embarrass or incriminate you on your page?

[danah boyd via CNN, Image]

Stupid: ‘Super logoff’ Facebook to avoid interacting with people is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’re sworn to uphold the law or hope to be, should you have to bend over and allow hiring directors to sift through your personal communications and base personnel decisions on that content?

If a recent piece in USA Today is correct, then yes, yes you should. It’s not the first time this hiring practice has been alleged, (the city in question rapidly backed away from the practice once word got out) but it is just as shocking and upsetting each time we hear about it. One factor the USA Today piece doesn’t seem to acknowledge is the very easily made distinction between publicly made statements- whether to a friends-only list on Facebook or Twitter- and privately made ones, such as a text message or Facebook private message. If the allegation that hiring departments are demanding applicants’ personal login information is accurate, it’s a troubling one.

Would you allow a recruiter to read your love letters? Listen in on a conversation with your spouse or significant other? How is requesting carte blanche to read private Facebook messages- a functionality available with your login, as you know- any different? But USA Today says that’s the case in certain jurisdictions:

In Massachusetts, Malden Police Chief Jim Holland, whose agency has requested electronic message logs, said a recruit’s text messages revealed past threats of suicide, resulting in disqualification.

In New Jersey, Middletown Police Chief Robert Oches said a candidate was disqualified for posting racy photographs of himself with scantily clad women.

At the Florida conference, Crawford narrated a video full of officers’ inappropriate Facebook postings, from sexually explicit photographs to racially charged commentary. All of it, he said, argues for better background checks for incoming recruits.

A recent opinion published by the New York State Bar Association seems to set a reasonable boundary for information gleaned via social networking. The organization’s ethics committee approved using the networks for mining data, but disapproved of rifling around in users’ locked data, as well as “friending” individuals for the sole purpose of gathering incriminating information about them.

USA Today didn’t cite any specific instances of the request of Facebook passwords as a barrier to employment, but it seems more and more people are having difficulty understanding that just because a message is transmitted electronically, it doesn’t mean you should only send it if you’d be comfortable “seeing it in the newspaper.” This smug and grossly offensive idea is bandied around every time this practice comes under scrutiny, and it demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of technology and modern communications. Should you never have sex because an unscrupulous partner could surreptitiously photograph or film it and distribute the footage? Should you never visit the doctor because someone could find out and tell people you might be sick? Privately shared private information is just that… private. With the number of couples who meet over the internet nowadays or, for that matter, have spouses or significant others deployed for long periods, is there not a reasonable expectation of privacy in your one on one Facebook message box, for starters?

Have you ever had an employer or potential employer invade your privacy in such a manner? Did you relent to the request? Should hiring agencies be forbidden from engaging in such practices?

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Law enforcement recruits asked to hand over Facebook passwords, text messages is a post from: The Inquisitr

Privacy concerns surrounding Facebook are nothing new- indeed, at this point, one of the first things that springs to mind alongside the world’s most popular social network is the frequent news that somehow, somewhere Facebook is currently leaking some scarily intimate information about you to the internet in general.

Apps mine info, lawyers use Facebook to get you in legal trouble (and judges smack you down for violating due process) and overly chatty friends reveal more than you’d care to through tagged pics. Now a study is making the rounds suggesting that your behaviors on the site can both reveal your sexuality and that this information might be distributed to third parties without your knowledge.

Microsoft and the Max Planck Insitute had researchers create six fake Facebook accounts- one for a male interested in males, one for a female interested in females, two for males interested in females and two for females interested in males. All accounts were set for a location of Washington DC and as 25 years old. While the ads for the ostensible lesbians and straight people were much the same, the ones for gay men were frequently different, and didn’t often relate to the user’s sexuality. TG Daily quoted the researchers’ explanation of why this could be problematic for users:

“The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-preference and a unique identifier (cookie, IP address, or email address) if he signs up on the advertiser’s site,” say the researchers.

“Furthermore, such deceptive ads are not uncommon; indeed exactly half of the 66 ads shown exclusively to gay men (more than 50 times) during our experiment did not mention ‘gay’ anywhere in the ad text.”

Thus, to use the medical school as an example, if a gay man clicks on the ad and mentions that he saw it on Facebook, the school now knows his sexuality.

You’ve probably experienced some unsettling targeted advertising from Facebook before. Does this information give your further pause, or are the benefits of using Facebook as you please worth the slight risk of being outed for any manner of personal attribute?

Is Facebook outing gay people through targeted advertising? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Occasionally, people in my Facebook feed will post and repost a status update about not how not to have information you’d not like public leaked on Facebook.

“Get a piece of paper and write down all the things you don’t want people to see on Facebook…” it begins, “and then don’t post them on Facebook.” While that’s marginally cute and clever, seeing it inevitably repeated in my feed is irritating because one of the biggest issues surrounding Facebook and personal privacy is that a lot of the information that stands to be leaked- demographic information, for instance- will not be revealed through status updates but rather the indiscriminate use of Facebook apps.

“Which apps?” might be the question you’d ask, and according to the WSJ, it appears that might be “all of them.” A spokesman for Facebook Sunday said that the company is working to find and “drastically limit” the availability of user information that is transmitted via the use of Facebook ID:

“A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook,” he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.

“Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information,” the Facebook official said.

The Wall Street Journal elaborates as to how this can affect individual users regardless of the privacy settings enabled on their accounts:

The information being transmitted is one of Facebook’s basic building blocks: the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos.

Facebook says they have disabled thousands of apps since the issue came to light, but it wasn’t clear “how many, if any” of the cases were related to leaking user info to marketing companies.

[WSJ]

Facebook: Popular apps are leaking, selling user information is a post from: The Inquisitr

Have you ever used a public computer terminal and discovered with horror that the person who used the device before you left their Facebook or GMail accounts logged in, open to public tampering?

Maybe you’ve done it yourself, and some Apple store visiting jerk has updated your status to something embarrassing or tinkered with your settings. Even if you’ve never had it happen to you, the idea of everyone at large having the opportunity to play around with your personal data is a bit unnerving. Facebook is trying to increase the comfort level of those who have to use the popular service in public places on public computers by rolling out single use passwords to be sent to users’ mobile phones.

In a blog post, Facebook explains the new features and how you can implement them to avoid epic shame:

Simply text “otp” to 32665 on your mobile phone (U.S. only), and you’ll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you’ll need a mobile phone number in your account. We’re rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

Also being added is the ability to log out of your account remotely. This will be pretty handy for the times you forget whether you’re still logged in on a computer someone else can access and it’s totally stressful:

Second, the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely is now available to everyone. These session controls can be useful if you log into Facebook from a friend’s phone or computer and then forget to sign out. From your Account Settings, you can check if you’re still logged in on other devices and remotely log out.

You can read Facebook’s full announcement here.

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Facebook to introduce one-time use passwords for public Facebooking is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s kind of interesting (albeit a little scary) to watch legal precedents develop around technology we’ve all already been using for years.

We’ve posted before about lawyers regarding Facebook as an “evidentiary goldmine” in divorce cases, and everyone has likely read a story (or knows someone personally) who has been fired from a job for information posted on a social networking site or their personal blog. We’ve even seen Facebook provided alibis keeping people out of jail, and jurors who were punished by a judge for bragging of Facebook about unethical conduct related to a case.

Until a recent decision by the New York State Bar Association, however, admissions in court based on Facebook postings or similar web-based emissions have always raised a bit of dander on the ethics of such evidence. Not much precedent had been officially set regarding how legal counsel should approach the issue of using these technologies to extend you the rope needed to hang your ass.

As stated in a press release, New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics made a determination that  “an attorney representing a party in pending litigation may access the public pages of another party’s social networking website for the purpose of obtaining information about that party.” Opinion 843, handed down by the Committee on Professional Ethics, lays some groundwork for the proper usage of the treasure trove of potentially incriminating information just floating around the internet on Facebook and Twitter.

An interesting caveat is that while the Committee ruled that openly shared information is fair game, friending a party for the sole purpose of gaining access to data that could land them in court, jail or other kinds of trouble should not occur. Also not ethical- using non-lawyers as a workaround at the direction of lawyers to obtain another party in litigation’s private data:

“A lawyer who represents a client in a pending litigation, and who has access to the Facebook or MySpace network used by another party in litigation, may access and review the public social network pages of that party to search for potential impeachment material.

“As long as the lawyer does not ‘friend’ the other party or direct a third person to do so, accessing the social network pages of the party will not violate Rule 8.4 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct (prohibiting deceptive or misleading conduct), Rule 4.1 (prohibiting false statements of fact or law), or Rule 5.3(b)(1) (imposing responsibility on lawyers for unethical conduct by non-lawyers acting at their direction).”

The opinion is unique to New York for now, but it will be interesting to see how this affects or influences the handling of evidence obtained via social networking in other states, or indeed other nations. Consider, for instance, the couple locked in a bitter custody dispute where one parent posts pictures of extensive alcohol or drug consumption of a child-free weekend- would mutual friends of the former couple leak such information to opposing counsel, to cast doubt on the person’s character? If you are on disability but post pictures of yourself water-skiing or doing keg stands, will it nullify your claim or get you prosecuted?

Assuming that just not posting data to such sites will protect you is risky and chances are high that we will see cases emerge in coming years that defy any logical anticipation of prudent personal use of social networks- so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re safe because your Facebook privacy settings are high. What about other people’s Facebooks? Merely being out in public around people who know your name and can tag you in a photo could come back to haunt you in later years, and that’s not scratching the surface of data gathered by apps and games applications. (Will someone, somewhere be jailed for an ironic result on a “which murder weapon will you use to kill your cheating spouse?” quiz?)

Have you ever been involved in a legal action where Facebook or a similar service was namechecked in court? Do you worry about the amount or relevance of data you’ve leaked onto the internet over the years?

New York Bar approves evidence mining on social networks like Facebook, with some caveats is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you haven’t noticed, “Facebook whining” has reached a crescendo in the past few weeks as the company continues to make changes that dribble bits of user information out onto the internet at large.

Instances of threatening to quit Facebook have been on an upswing, although statistics are not available as to how many people have followed through and abandoned the service. People are rightly concerned that Facebook keeps rejigging their user privacy settings every couple of weeks, as well as allowing choices your Facebook friends make without your knowledge or consent to affect the amount of information leaked by your Facebook profile. (So while you may always or usually avoid sketchy games and requests from strangers, a friend who does not can inadvertently expose your information.)

VentureBeat posted today about different privacy changes Facebook has made in the past few months, notably connecting and sharing your information with third-party sites like Yelp and Pandora:

In December, Facebook went through a privacy transition that defaulted content shared by users who had never adjusted their settings to public. It also recently made “likes” and “connections” more public and launched an instant personalization program that shared user data with special partners like Pandora and Yelp to offer more customized and social experiences on other sites.

…which might not be desireable if you don’t wish to release information to those sites or have no idea in which way they plan to use your data. The post highlights a bookmarklet created by “donation-based project” ReclaimPrivacy, which keeps an eye on your settings in the event of changes. If you drag the bookmarklet up to your bookmarks bar, when you log in to Facebook, the service will check to see if any of your privacy settings have been altered since your last login. VentureBeat says:

ReclaimPrivacy focuses on six primary areas:

1. Whether your personal information is restricted to your friends or closer
2. Whether your contact information is exposed to the entire Internet
3. Whether all of your friends, tags and connections are restricted to you or closer
4. Whether your friends can share information about your with external applications or websites
5. Whether you’re opted out of Facebook’s new instant personalization program
6. Whether you’ve blocked applications that can leak your information.

Creator Matt Pizzimenti says the service doesn’t see or expose any of your Facebook data. There’s no guarantee you won’t have information undesirably shared by Facebook, but if you’re interested in extra protection against changes to your account, ReclaimPrivacy’s bookmarklet might be useful to you.

ReclaimPrivacy bookmarklet helps keep your info under wraps so you don’t have to delete yourself is a post from: The Inquisitr

An unnamed 16-year-old boy from Arkadelphia, Arkansas is suing his mother for breaking into his Facebook account and like, totally embarrassing the hell out of him.

Denise New’s son brought action against her last month and requested a “no contact order” after New allegedly broke into the boy’s Facebook account and posted “slanderous” things about her son. New is charged with harassment, and court documents allege the meddling mother hacked into the kid’s account, posted “details that include slander about his personal life,” and then to add insult to injury, changed his password. Burn.

New is pretty unrepentant about her actions, and offers this explanation:

“I read things on his Facebook about how he had gone to Hot Springs one night and was driving 95 m.p.h. home because he was upset with a girl and it was his friend that called me and told me about all this that prompted me to even actually start really going through his Facebook to see what was going on.”

New says that she has the right to monitor her son, who is in the custody of a grandparent, through Facebook:

“You’re within your legal rights to monitor your child and to have a conversation with your child on Facebook whether it’s his account, or your account or whoever’s account.  It’s crazy to me that we’re even having this interview.”

She’s also setting her sights higher than just interfering in her own son’s life, hoping that the case will set a precedent so that all parents can legally shame their children on the internet:

“Oh yeah, I’m going to fight it.  If I have to go even higher up, I’m going to.  I’m not gonna let this rest.  I think this could be a precedent-setting moment for parents.”

If you’re a parent, do you think it’s okay to use social networking sites to spy on and shame your children? Is the harassment charge justified?

[KATV via CNET]

16-year-old sues mom for Facebook harassment is a post from: The Inquisitr

Remember last week when Facebook had that problem where an undetermined number of users received messages in their Facebook inboxes that belonged to complete strangers and they said it was no big deal?

We told you about the love, loss and sex chat many users had unwittingly delivered to the inboxes of random other users. Several journalists found themselves on the receiving end of the errant emails, and many people felt that the disclosure of information was inappropriate given the fact that people had no idea their private transmissions (albeit without ill intention on the side of the recipients) were being intercepted and read. If that original disclosurepalooza upset you, you probably won’t like this development.

CAN I LICK YOUR FACE: An evening with total strangers’ Facebook messages is the name of an event being held later this week at a New York bar. The truly voyeuristic (and local) folk who felt left out can go to a bar called Heathers (gossip irony!) in Alphabet City to “relive that magical evening” when the channels of email privacy were stripped away and everybody got all up in everybody else’s business.

What do you think? Going too far? Would you go because, hey, it’s not me it happened to? Obviously nothing can be done to stop it, but is the public performance of a bunch of emails received in error totally wrong and unethical, or do people on Facebook really have no reasonable expectation of privacy?

[Gawker]

Misdirected Facebook messages to be read at NYC bar is a post from: The Inquisitr

It was like PostSecret.

Except it wasn’t random postcards, it was whole emails. And instead of people knowingly sending their darkest secrets and innermost feelings anonymously to a guy who vets them and posts them, their Facebook messages flooded the inboxes of others, revealing all manner of sexual impulse, romantic heartache and tractor accident to an undisclosed number of users. One of those affected users happens to write for the Wall Street Journal, and instead of being stingy with the juice, Zachary Seward shares with the class. Thank you, Zachary.

Calling the “errant messages” he received “totally fascinating,” Seward teased us with a new choice niblets from his gossip buffet:

Kelly has applied for a job at Starbucks. Michelle’s brother sliced his head open in a harrowing tractor accident. A Milwaukee native is “sooo mad at annabelle.” Middle schoolers in Georgia have a quiz today on Newton’s Laws. And in Kentucky, weekend plans are solidifying: “we need to go to that place and get alcohol. ALSO GET TOGETHER AT MY HOUSE FRIDAY NIGHT. COME.”

I learned that people still use o_O to indicate they’re confused and that “no stalk” means you’re not stalking someone — as in, “no stalk but your formspring stuff has been coming up on my feed.”Much of the chatter referred to Facebook itself, like the teenager who wrote, “look at [so-and-so's] wall and the convo she has on her statuses with TIM!”

Seward reports that far and away, the bulk of messages received in error by him that night dealt with love, loving and lovers. Apparently, Facebook is an important tool in many modern relationships. Lucky Zach was even on the receiving end of a steamy chat session, which may have been a porn goldmine had he been a woman.

But alas, some commenters did not take the subsequent dish session in the spirit in which it was intended. Which is sad, because if we have proven one thing as people-on-the-internet, we excel at stopping and staring. It is our achilles heel and our greatest uniting interest. We like watching stars shagging, whales eating people, the bodies of pop culture icons being carried off, texts from last night, nip slips and sports reporters getting dressed. We are good at one thing collectively: bearing witness. Who among us would have resisted such an opportunity, besides Zach Seward’s morally bragging readers?

If we’ve not embraced the idea that our biggest secrets may or may not have already hit the interwebs at large, perhaps we should. An informal poll at the bottom of Seward’s piece suggests that nearly ten percent of the almost 1200 people who voted were in receipt of errant inbox messages. We’re all a hair’s breadth away from becoming the next FailBlog entry or Digg front page sensation, and the only protection is to remain really, really boring.

[Image] [via snopes]

How big was Facebook’s recent privacy glitch? is a post from: The Inquisitr

A limited study of 5,436 divorce cases by a law firm found that around 20% of the filings cited the popular social networking site Facebook.

Out of all the cases, the most commonly pinpointed reason was sexually inappropriate chats with someone other than a spouse- divorce-online’s Mark Keenan told press:

‘I heard from my staff there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was.

‘I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.’

Although Facebook probably causes divorces as often as text messages lead to teenagers having sex (i.e., a convenient vehicle for the inevitable), the website has been a boon to one party divorce-wise. Lawyers say the site is an “evidentiary goldmine,” with words posted in a moment of passion or anger henceforth belonging to the ether of the internet and irretractable.

A statistic I’d really be interested in seeing? The profit increase of divorce lawyers due to Facebook.

Law firm claims as many as 20% of modern divorces cite Facebook in filings is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’re a Facebook user, you’re probably used to it.

The awkward status update. The information that not too long ago, you’d discover via word of mouth, perhaps whispered between friends while another was retrieving around of drinks or in the bathroom- a social courtesy to those wronged in order to bring everyone in your social circle up to speed and avoid future mutual discomfort. (“No, Jane moved out!” “Tim’s dad ran off with his secretary!” “The garbage truck ran over their dog.”) Now, thanks to the prevalence of social networking, what would once be whispered and relayed in person is now delivered via a clinical status message. Not everyone has, thankfully, adapted to this tell-all way of handling personal affairs described in a recent Salon article as requiring “a peculiar mix of anger, candidness and exhibitionism, maybe even a tinge of desperation.”

As old social mores fall away, though, that’s where the tricky part comes in. If you’ve been divorced, or experienced any kind of grown-up trauma, the compulsion to express the abject horror you may feel at your life coming apart at the seams is difficult not to vent to friends. (Alas, teenagers and college students are even more prone to those feelings, although arguably have less to lose.) But until not too long ago, words said in anger to your friends were understood, in context, taken with a grain of salt. Now, a split second judgment, a night of drinking and/or building frustration can be screencapped and spread virally before the hangover wears off. And friends means all your friends, even by loosest definition. People you met on a messageboard. Anyone you ever ate lunch with in high school. College roommates. Your dog groomer, your co-workers from eight years ago, and of course, your mom.

The Salon article tells a user’s story, an acquaintance liveblogging her own worst-moment-so-far:

Her former classmate “posted on Friday at 9 or 10 p.m., ‘He’s decided that he can’t stand me, he wants a divorce, we’ve only been married 5 months, I’m pregnant, he’s on the phone with his ex-wife right now, asking her to take him back.’” She continued, “This thing is happening to you, right, and you get on fricking Facebook? I would call my best friend crying, I would leave the house — I don’t know what I would do — but writing on Facebook would be the last thing on my mind.”

Even reading that, third or fourth-hand, is painful. But having been in a similar situation, I’m glad Facebook wasn’t around then. I can’t see personally expressing something so raw there, but such a story is almost divisive in the reaction it elicits- as if you can only really understand that impulse if you’ve been in that awful place. (Indeed, I can relate to a degree. My own husband, with whom I have two children, casually defriended me after eight years of marriage when he moved in with a waitress ten years his junior and, I believe, realized the shared last name outed the reality of his situation to her friends and family. It was not particularly hurtful at that juncture, but felt incredibly disrespectful.)

Which leads me to the interesting legal conundrum this very personal social networking status update issue presents. There’s no filter on Twitter, Facebook or messageboards. The very minute you hit “update,” your words cease to be yours. We’ve all seen high profile people try to retract words said in haste (like Perez Hilton’s harsh words before the death of Michael Jackson was confirmed) only to have their retraction lend credence to later criticism. Lawyers now fear and love Facebook for that very reason. A client can tank a case with “is in a relationship with,” and formerly he-said, she-said issues (like adultery) can be proven through seemingly innocuous acts like the tagging of a photo.

Maintaining a private profile is no measure of safety either- there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy on Facebook, and crafty investigators can dig up deleted data to use against you in civil or criminal matters. As pointed out in the Salon post, abstinence may be the best policy for ultra-personal matters:

Many lawyers, in fact, advise clients not to get on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter at all during a divorce, and some firms require that clients suspend their accounts. “Those bunny ears at Halloween may have been harmless, but they can be used to paint a fairly nasty picture in court,” writes Jones, the Memphis divorce lawyer.

Facebook, like the weather, is impossible to control. ”It’s not like bitching about your ex-wife to your neighbor over the fence,” said Laura Merritt, “you just told 600 people, who might tell 600 people …” Find yourself a neighbor and a fence. After all, during a divorce, people need to vent — non-disparagement clauses exist for a reason — it’s only now, post-Facebook, that there exists a permanent digital footprint of that venting. As a law student wrote in “Social Media Law Student,” an online blog about the topic: “People will express themselves, albeit to their own detriment, through numerous mediums, whether by electronic communication, acts of aggression, verbal comments, physical actions, written letters, and more. Social media networks are not to blame for sheer stupidity … stupidity is now just easier to prove.”

[Source: Salon, Image: Lamebook]

In modern divorce, Facebook is an “evidentiary goldmine” is a post from: The Inquisitr