Facebook Keeps A History Of Everyone Who Has Ever Poked You, Along With A Lot Of Other Data (BLOG)

Across the pond, European law grants citizens a “right to access,” meaning that companies have to provide a person with all of the personal data they have on them if they request it. An Austrian-based group called Europe v. Facebook has posted a couple of the reports compiled by the social networking giant everyone loves (and loves to hate).


Facebook doesn't forget pokes

Most of you probably know that Facebook knows a lot about you. But did you know that if you were to print it out, it might take up about 880 pages? I went through one of the lengthy dossiers from Europe v. Facebook. Here are the juicy bits for a female Facebook user with the initials ‘L.B.’ who has been a member of the site since 2007:


Facebook keeps track of every person who has ever poked you. Facebook user L.B. has been poked over 50 times from 2008 through 2011 (K.D. was a frequent poker in 2008, though a user by the initials T.V. is currently the pokiest of L.B.’s friends).


Facebook keeps track of the devices associated with your account
The report includes a list of the machines that L.B. has used Facebook from, how often she has signed in from the machine, as well as a list of all the other Facebookers who have logged in on that machine. As pointed out recently by blogger Nik Cubrilovic, Facebook leaves cookies on computers that have the ability to track users even when they’re logged out of Facebook. Facebook now plans to scale back that cookie use, but it still will want information about who’s signing in on which machines to thwart hackers, block spammers, and know which computers are in Internet cafes, for example. Given the hundreds of millions of users the company has, “Facebook is pretty much indexing all computers worldwide,” says Max Schrems of Europe v. Facebook.
Facebook keeps track of every event you’ve ever been invited to, and how you responded to the invitation. L.B. has attended about 29 events since 2009, has declined nine invitations since 2010, and has failed to RSVP at all to about 75 events dating back to 2007 (how rude!). The inviter, location and name of the events have been blacked out on the report posted to Europe v. Facebook’s site for privacy reasons.


A list of exes?
Facebook keeps track of everyone you defriended and when. As some have pointed out, the Facebook Timeline will also expose this information to anyone who’s interested. L.B. has removed over a dozen of her friends over the years. The Facebook report also includes a list of friend requests that L.B. rejected.
Facebook includes a history of messages and chats in the report.Europe v. Facebook says that some users say their reports include messages they’ve deleted.

If you want to see all 880 glorious pages yourself, you can download the filehere [pdf]. It also includes things you’d expect, like a list of all of L.B.’s friends and personal information from her profile page.

(What I was surprised not to see here was a list of the things that L.B. had looked at and/or clicked, such as other peoples’ profile pages, photos, or status updates. As we have seen before, that is something Facebook knows about its users. Update, Sept. 28: While “real-time activities” are missing from L.B.’s report, you will see them in another report on the site, for M.S.)

So, just keep this in mind next time you’re on Facebook. All your pokes are going into a permanent record.

European users can request their information with this Facebook form(instructions here). Max Schrems of Europe v. Facebook put his request in to Facebook’s Ireland office and says it took the company about 30 days to send his report, and that it arrived on a C.D. from California.

One thing that I found a bit concerning about the process is that it only requires a photo of your government i.d., your name, and birthdate to confirm your identity. Given how easy it is to get one’s hands on someone else’s ID (say if you’re dating someone and s/he leaves a wallet about your house), I could imagine some scenarios in which this process could be abused.

Facebook Faces Rumors of Membership Fees (BLOG)

False rumors that Facebook is about to implement a plan to charge for profile pages have been burning up email accounts and Facebook pages. But the social networking giant, which just announced a series of new features, says charging for profile pages and use of the site is not among the changes.

To make sure such rumors do not gain traction, Facebook's home page states that "it's free and always will be." On Facebook's own product page on the site, it posted the following Status Update: "A rumor on the Internet caught our attention. We have no plans to charge for Facebook. It's free and always will be."

'This Is Official'

The rumors take the form of a variety of chain messages that have been spreading through status updates and email. "This is official," reads one. "It was even on the news. Facebook will start charging due to the new profile changes." That message goes on to say that, if the message is copied onto the user's Facebook wall, the company icon will turn blue and "Facebook will be free for you."

Another such message indicates the specifics about the "price grid for membership." It says the company will be charging $9.99 monthly for gold membership, $6.99 for silver, $3.99 for bronze, but no charge if the message is copied and pasted "before midnight tonight."

These are not the first rumors that Facebook will be charging for membership. Snopes.com, a site dedicated to factually verifying or dismissing myths and rumors, declares unequivocally on its site that the rumor is false. They list eight previous versions of this rumor, which they encountered via email, going back to December of 2009.

The initial hoax, Snopes said, was a malware attack. When users went to an alleged protest page, "clicking on certain elements of it initiated a script that hijacked users' computers," Snopes said. Snopes added that, when users did click on the page link, their computer was "taken over by a series of highly objectionable images while malware simultaneously attempted to install itself onto their computers."

'Fertile Ground for Rumors'

Snopes noted that some of the later rumor versions similarly led to malware, and, by asking users to avoid a fee by posting the message on their walls, sought members' help in spreading the rumor. It pointed out that, if Facebook wanted to charge, why would the site exempt some users?

The new rumors come on the heels of a wide range of changes to the Profile page, and the addition of a variety of features. The changes, including a new Timeline feature, a real-time stream called Ticker, a deeper integration of apps, and the offering of a wide range of "listen, watch, read" options, were announced Thursday at the company's f8 developers conference in San Francisco.

However, since it's likely that few members have yet had the time to absorb the changes, the rumors are apparently trying to fill in the anxiety about the changes with the specter of membership fees.

Andrew Frank, research director for Gartner, said that he doubted there was anything Facebook could do to prevent these kinds of rumors from happening. He noted that, "by its nature, Facebook is fertile ground for rumors."

The best thing the company can do, Frank added, is to "get out in front of them and deny them as quickly as possible," without publicizing them too much.

Is it Going to Be Google+ vs. Facebook? (BLOG)

(yahoo)COMMENTARY | The social media gauntlet has been thrown out and two Internet heavyweights are starting to circle each other. Current social media champion Facebook has announced a few changes. Those changes timed out rather interestingly with Google+ being made available to everyone. A social media showdown could be in the making.



Perhaps it is just users not liking change, but a survey of 1,000 users revealed about 86 percent of Facebook users strongly dislike the changes to the social platform. Plus, another hoax is making the rounds on that Facebook will start charging. However, the changes will be rolled out completely on Sept. 30.



That date could give Google+ a little more momentum. If Facebook users are truly upset with the changes and do not want to stick around, another social network is opening its arms wide. Google+ could fill the void for many users who are just tired of changes with little or no advanced notice.



The strange part about folks leaving Facebook in favor of Google+ is that change is still change regardless if it is on another website or not. Therefore, if Facebook does see a massive exodus, the company might never really know how much the changes influenced departures. A few years ago, MySpace was the biggest thing on the Internet, but a series of changes, tweaks, and a variety of other reasons led users to Facebook. History could be repeating itself, or maybe the Internet has room for more than one social media heavyweight.



Of course, that is one of the big questions: How many social media sites will users embrace at one time? Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even MySpace offer a host of different experiences. However, Facebook has more than 750 million user accounts and Google+ has around 25 million, so the score is pretty lopsided right now. But Google definitely has the cash and the Web experience to give Facebook a serious run for their money.



Working against the flood of social networks is an old foe: time. There is a finite amount of time people will spend updating and checking different sites. Folks are probably going to do what their friends do, which is what drives social media anyway. Is it going to boil down to Facebook versus Google+, or is there enough room for both to thrive? Oddly enough, time will tell.

The No. 1 Danger of Using Facebook (BLOG)

Spending too much time on it and neglecting other stuff? Your boss finding embarrassing photos? Nope, and nope. People have been getting obsessed with stuff long before Facebook, and "Facebook addictions" making the news now mostly because it's so new. Meanwhile, not everyone finds themselves turned down from a job because of embarrassing pictures, but every Facebook user is affected by the No. 1 danger.



It's not Facebook addiction, in the sense that you need to get your fix like a shot of caffeine. It's Facebook dependency, in the sense that you need Facebook. And that a single, profit-driven corporation is becoming as much a part of our lives as email and the Internet. No one individual controls either of those, but Mark Zuckerberg holds the keys to Facebook. And he doesn't answer to you.



A single point of failure



The danger isn't that Facebook will stop working all of a sudden, a la Twitter's "fail whale." It's that a lot of power is being given to someone who wasn't elected, and who has no accountability to the people on Facebook. The only people Mark's accountable to are Facebook's investors, and they have only one request of him: Make money.



That's why Facebook can experiment with stuff like its unpopular new "Timeline" system and make everyone who uses Facebook deal with it. Where are you going to go if you don't like Facebook?LiveJournal? Maybe that new thing Google is doing? Yeah, right. How are you going to see what your friends and favorite brands are up to if you're not on Facebook? Plus all your crops in Farmville will die!



Having a Facebook account is like having a car. Everyone assumes you have one, and there are things you can't do and places you can't go if you don't. Even online games and websites' comment forms require you to have a Facebook account these days. Unless you want to give all that up, you're not allowed to stop using Facebook.



And Facebook's not like other companies



Not even other monopolies like AT&T and Verizon are in some places. Because to the phone companies, you're the customer, even if it's mostly because there's no one else you can buy from. But to many Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, you aren't the customer. You're the product.



No, they're not grinding you up and making Soylent Green. They just need your eyeballs, because they're selling advertisers the right to put ads in front of them. And while there's nothing especially sinister about online advertising (please do click on one of our fine sponsors), in Facebook's case you can't just change the channel or go to a different website.



You're the perfect, powerless, captive audience. And Facebook can censor what you say about it, too.

Missouri lawmakers repeal teacher-Facebook law (BLOG)

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Friday to repeal part of a contentious new law that had prohibited teachers from chatting privately with students over Internet sites such as Facebook.

If the repeal is signed by Gov. Jay Nixon, Missouri's law restricting online communications would instead be replaced with a new requirement for public school districts to develop their own policies on the use of electronic media between employees and students.

"It puts things back into the hands of the school districts," said Todd Fuller, a spokesman for the Missouri State Teachers Association, which had challenged Missouri's law in court.

A Cole County judge issued a preliminary injunction placing Missouri's law on hold shortly before it was to take effect Aug. 28, declaring that "the breadth of the prohibition is staggering" and the law "would have a chilling effect" on free-speech rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

Shortly after the judge's order, Nixon added the online communications law to the agenda of a special session that began Sept. 6. Nixon's written message to lawmakers specifically limited them to repealing the law — not replacing it with new wording, as they did.

The Missouri Constitution gives the governor the authority to determine which matters lawmakers can consider during extraordinary sessions. But lawmakers contend that does not mean the governor can limit how legislators act on those matters — for example, by restricting them only to repealing a section of law instead of amending it.

Lawmakers removed the original law's most publicly controversial provision, which barred teachers from using websites that allow "exclusive access" with current students or former students who are 18 or younger, such as occurs with private messages on Facebook. But the repeal went a step further by also requiring public school districts to adopt policies by March 1 on employee-student communications, including "the use of electronic media," in order "to prevent improper communications."

The House passed the legislation to repeal and replace the law by a 139-2 vote. The Senate passed it 33-0 earlier this month.

"When we make errors we need to fix them, and that's what we're doing here today," said Rep. Chris Kelly, a Democrat from Columbia.

The original provisions about Internet communications had been included in a broader law enacted earlier this year that sought to stop school personnel who have sexually abused students from quietly resigning and getting hired by other districts. That law requires schools to share information with other districts about teachers who have sexually abused students and allows lawsuits in cases where districts fail to disclose such information and teachers later abuse someone else. Those provisions of the law were not challenged in court and were not part of the repeal considered during the special session.

There was little debate about the online communications section of the legislation when it passed this spring. But afterward, confusion and concerns began to mount among some teachers about whether they could be barred from using Facebook. Other teachers feared the law also could have had implications for online courses, which may be configured to allow limited access only by teachers and students.

"It became easy to call this a Facebook bill, but it was bigger than that," Fuller said. "It was more, 'we're using a form of social media in the classroom right now that we're not sure if we can continue to use.'"

The only two House members to vote against the repeal Friday were Republican Jay Barnes of Jefferson City and Democrat Mike Colona of St. Louis. Both are attorneys. And both suggested that local school districts could end up adopting policies that still infringe on free speech, essentially multiplying the lawsuits that could be filed.

"We just traded one big unconstitutional ball of wax for 529 little balls of wax," Barnes said.

Questions and answers on the latest 'New Facebook' (BLOG)

NEW YORK (AP) — Every year or so — and sometimes more often — Facebook manages to miff a vocal percentage of users by changing the look and feel of its site. As it adds new features, it invariably takes away things that people have grown attached to. It's no different with the changes unveiled this week. Some have already gone live while others will be coming to your Facebook page soon.

Here are some questions and answers on Facebook's latest transformation.

Question: Why don't I have the new Facebook yet?

Answer: Facebook rolls out its new features gradually, so not all 800 million users see the updates at once. First, the changes are tested internally Facebook employees. Once they are public, the changes are rolled out geographically. U.S. users will likely see the changes first, but even that could depend on where you live. You also may need to close and reopen your browser or log out and log back in. The just-announced timeline feature won't be available users until later this year — Facebook has not yet said when.

Q: Why does Facebook keep changing things? I liked it the way it was.

A: At its heart, Facebook is a technology company that wants to keep improving its products so that people keep using it and it doesn't grow stale. Sometimes, the changes are things people ask for. Other times, engineers try to anticipate new ways people will want to use Facebook. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Facebook also tends to change its site so that it encourages users to share and interact more, whether that's with each other or with businesses, public figures and the like. This has often raised concern among privacy advocates

Q: What is the scrolling, Twitter-like list of my Facebook friends' activities doing on the right side of the new layout?

A: Facebook calls this the "ticker" — not to be confused with, but similar to, Twitter. The idea is to show a live feed of everything going on with your Facebook friends and pages you follow as it is happening. There will be information here that doesn't appear on your regular news feed, such as songs your friends are listening to on the music service Spotify, news stories they are reading or, eventually, even movies or TV shows they watched on Netflix.

Q: Does Facebook care about angering its users with the changes?

A: Facebook has said in the past that the percentage of users who complain about its changes is small. But a small percentage of 800 million users is still a big group. And even with angry users taking to social media to complain, the growth of Facebook's user base, not to mention how much people are sharing on the site and beyond, is growing at a staggering pace. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday Facebook passed a milestone recently where it had 500 million of its users logged in at once. So while a lot of users may hate the changes, it is not driving them away. The company is betting it knows what people want.

Q: How do I go back to the "Old Facebook"?

A: You mean other than a time machine? That's tough. But there are some website plugins, such as "Better Facebook" that try to enhance the way your Facebook page looks and feels. Using the mobile application will also give you a more simple Facebook experience.

Q: How does Facebook determine what my "top news" should be?

A: The "top news" feature has already existed on Facebook, it just didn't automatically appear on the top of your news feed every time you logged in. This is the stuff Facebook thinks you will be most interested in. So it's updates from friends you interact with the most, big news stories from media accounts you follow or photos from your friends that got a lot of comments, for example. It's not an exact science, so you can uncheck a top story by clicking on a tiny triangle on its upper left corner. The site will try to remember, and a box will pop up saying "we'll try not to pub more stories like this at the top of your News Feed."

Q: Isn't this all about getting Facebook more advertising money?

A: That will almost certainly be one outcome, though Facebook has never made that its outright goal. It's more of an "if we build it, they will come" type of situation. The company is expected to bring in $3.8 billion in worldwide advertising revenue this year and $5.8 billion in 2012, according to research firm eMarketer. The more time people spend on its site or share and the more information they share about themselves, the better companies can target their ads.

Ashton Kutcher Using Social Media to "Set Record Straight" on New TV Role (BLOG)

Ashton Kutcher officially joins the cast of Two and a Half Men on Monday. The social media savvy actor, investor and activist penned an op-ed for USA Today explaining the reasons he took the role on the hit sitcom.

Notably, it was Kutcher's social media savvy, including his 7.6 million followers on Twitter, that helped convince the actor to take the job.

[More from Mashable: Watch the 2011 Emmys Live with Mashable]

He writes,


"When I really broke down the decision to take the job, there were so many rewards and few risks — except maybe one: I was stepping into a media frenzy. But I figured I could temper that a bit by keeping the lines of communication open with my social media presence. I can always set the record straight."

[More from Mashable: The Charlie Sheen Roast: Comedy Central’s Ambitious Social Media Experiment]

The "media frenzy" that Kutcher is referring to is the fallout from former Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen's very public exitfrom the show. In the wake of his suspension and subsequent firing, Sheen took to social media, performed one-man shows in clubs across the country and has coined a number of memes.

The Charlie Sheen media circus is something Kutcher, CBS and the show producers are all going to have to deal with head-on. Fittingly,Comedy Central's Charlie Sheen Roast will air 30 minutes after the season premiere of Two and a Half Men. (We should point out the fortunate timing of this programming decision was not accidental: Viacom and CBS are sister companies.) It will be important for Kutcher to own the messaging behind his own brand, as well as the brand of the show, to keep the attention on the product and not the larger media story.

As Christy Tanner, general manager and executive vice president ofTV Guide Digital told us back in May, "Two and a Half Men won't live or die by social media. The show will continue to be successful if fans continue to find the show funny."

Rumor has it that Charlie Sheen will be attending Sunday's 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

What impact do you think Kutcher's presence is going to have onTwo and a Half Men? Do you think his social graph will help get the right message out to audiences? Let us know.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

2 Mexicans deny terrorism, face 30 years for tweet (BLOG)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Think before you tweet.

A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor who lives with his mother sit in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentences for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.

Prosecutors say the defendants helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.

Gerardo Buganza, interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the panic to that caused by Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds." But he said the fear roused by that account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey "was small compared to what happened here."

"Here, there were 26 car accidents, or people left their cars in the middle of the streets to run and pick up their children, because they thought these things were occurring at their kids' schools," Buganza told local reporters.

The charges say the messages caused such panic that emergency numbers "totally collapsed because people were terrified," damaging service for real emergencies.

Veracruz, the state's largest city, and the neighboring suburb of Boca del Rio were already on edge after weeks of gunbattles involving drug traffickers. One attack occurred on a major boulevard. In another, gunmen tossed a grenade outside the city aquarium, killing an tourist and seriously wounding his wife and their two young children.

On Aug. 25, nerves were further frayed when residents saw armed convoys of marines circulating on the streets, making some think a confrontation with gangs was imminent.

That is when Gilberto Martinez Vera, who works as a low-paid tutor at several private schools, allegedly opened the floodgates of fear with repeated messages that gunmen were taking children from schools.

"My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school," Martinez tweeted.

In fact, no such kidnappings occurred that day. Defense lawyer Claribel Guevara said the rumors already had started and that Martinez Vera was just relaying what others told him. She said he never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the incident.

But in a subsequent tweet about the kidnap rumor, he said, "I don't know what time it happened, but it's true." He also tweeted that three days earlier, "they mowed down six kids between 13 and 15 in the Hidalgo neighborhood." While a similar attack occurred, it didn't involve children.

Prosecutors say the rumors were also sent by Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, who has worked as a teacher, a state arts official and a radio commentator. She says she was just relaying such messages to her own Twitter followers.

"How can they possibly do this to me, for re-tweeting a message? I mean, it's 140 characters. It's not logical,'" said Guevara, quoting her client.

Better known on the radio and social networks as "Maruchi," her Facebook site now features the Twitter logo, a little bluebird, blindfolded and standing in front of the scales of justice, with the slogan "I too am a TwitTerrorist."

Online petitions are circulating to demand her release, and the pair's cause has been taken up by human rights groups that call the charges exaggerated. Amnesty International says officials are violating freedom of expression and it blames the panic on the uncertainty many Mexicans feel amid a drug war in which more than 35,000 people have died over the past five years.

"The lack of safety creates an atmosphere of mistrust in which rumors that circulate on social networks are part of people's efforts to protect themselves, since there is very little trustworthy information," Amnesty wrote in a statement on the case.

In violence-wracked cities in the northern state of Tamaulipas, citizens and even authorities have used Twitter and Facebook to warn one another about shootouts.

Anita Vera, Martinez Vera's 71-year-old mother, said her 48-year-old son still lives at her house with his girlfriend. She said he told her that had posted his messages after the panic had already started.

"He told me "Mom, I didn't start any of this, I just transmitted what I was told,'" Vera Martellis said after visiting her son in prison.

"He used the computer, but I swear that my son never wanted to do anybody harm, or start a revolution, like they say he did," said Vera, who ekes out a living selling flowers.

Raul Trejo, an expert on media and violence at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the terrorism charge is unwarranted, but described the case as "a very incautious use of Twitter."

He noted that in Mexico, "Twitter has been used by drug traffickers to create panic with false warnings." In one case, a wave of messages about impending violence shut down schools, bars and restaurants in the central city of Cuernavaca last year.

Trejo said Twitter users must learn "not to believe everything, and simply take the Twitter messages as an indication that some (report) is making the rounds."

But the real problem appears to be that governments cannot prevent drug cartel violence or even accurately inform citizens about it. Local news media are often so battered by kidnappings and killings of reporters that, in many states, they are loath to report about it.

"These Twitter users had accounts with a few hundred followers," Trejo noted. "If these lies grew, it is not so much because they propagated them, but because in Veracruz as in most of the rest of the country, there is such a lack of public safety that the public is inclined to believe unconfirmed acts of violence ... The government doesn't make clear what is happening."

Defense attorneys also say their clients were held incommunicado for almost three days, unable to see a lawyer.

It appears one of the most serious sets of charges ever brought for sending or resending Twitter messages.

Tweeter Paul Chambers was fined 385 pounds and ordered to pay 2,000 pounds ($3,225) in prosecution costs last year for tweeting that if northern England's Robin Hood Airport didn't reopen in time for his flight, "I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Venezuelan authorities last year charged two people with spreading false information about the country's banking system using Twitter and urging people to pull money out of banks. They could serve nine to 11 years in prison if convicted.

In 2009, a Chinese woman was sentenced to a year in a labor camp for posting a satirical Twitter message about the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.