Opinion Australia

With nearly a billion registered users I doubt Facebook will suffer overmuch from my criticisms, but I’m beginning to think the writing is on the wall for my own participation in the phenomenal Social Networking site. I’ve been uneasy for some time about the way Facebook operates, especially vis a vis users ‘privacy’ but recent changes to the site, along with those proposed, are bringing the issue to a head.

Less IT oriented people might be unaware that most sites place a small piece of code on your computer that they use to identify you if you should return to that site. The purpose is usually benign in that it can store certain information about you to enhace your visit and make ongoing participation more ‘user friendly’ For example the cookie might store your username, email, the last time you visited and similar data so that you don’t find yourself having to recall obscure and/or arcane passwords or perhaps wading through page after page of irrelevant information as you try to locate what you really need.

However, cookies *can* be used for more sinister purposes such as tracking your visit to sites and reporting back to base. Again this *might* have a benign application for certain programs, but in the main it isn’t considered to be an activity an ethical site would indulge in, which brings us to the first of the issues that prompted this post. It seems from recent media reports that Facebook cookies are collecting information from many of the pages you visit… especially those that require ‘login’ information and carry a ‘Facebook’ logo on it[1]!! All of the sites that allow you to login via Facebook add their information to the cookie and all of it is reported back to Facebook for them to use as they will.

The implications of the tracking are so serious I’m quite seriously considering whether the invasion of privacy is becoming intense enough to warrant giving it away entirely!!

And yet there is even more to be concerned about. It seems that despite their assurance to the contrary, Facebook *is* using the information gleaned from the cookies. This becomes obvious when you consider their ‘Instant Personalisation’ technology. Basically this comes into play when you visit a site that you’ve never visited before, but that is linked in some way to Facebook (usually by an app that lets you log in via your Facebook ID). What you will see even before you have decided whether or not you want to become a part of the site, is that you are addressed by name and your FB profile picture may appear on the web page!

These changes to Facebook are quite seriously making me rethink the entire operation of  ’Social Networking’. In some ways it’s an irritation that Facebook is causing so much angst because the basic notion is quite brilliant. Zuckerberg obviously had a genius stroke in the way he opened up such an addictive communication portal. Currently it’s so easy to locate people, share photos and family information, locate friends and family and interact in a way that was never possible on the ‘Messenger’ type communication programs such as ICQ or IRC.

However, there is so much wrong with the way Facebook *can* intrude into your privacy (whether it actually does or not!) I’m beginning to get very concerned about what information it *is* gathering!

One answer is of course to delete your account, but here the thing is that even if you delete all your photos… Facebook itself *won’t*. They will be retained forever as will your posting history and your links to friends and family. What’s more I think the T&C’s still say pretty much that Facebook can use them for whatever purposes they wish without any communication to you that they are doing so… or to what purpose they are being put!!

It’s becoming a problem that was anticipated… but nobody took really seriously until now. The marketing power that Facebook has was massive to begin with. With the implementation of these new features they are going to be almost unstoppable!

 [1] Facebook tracks you even after logging out

[2] Facebook and Microsoft De-cloak Chrome – MS Neuters Their Privacy Advocate | ESET ThreatBlog

Yesterday for several hours Microsoft’s nascent cloud storage systems vanished as if they had never been. The problem was eventually resolved, as you’d expect, but, especially for the businesses most badly affected, questions must still remain over the viability of online versus local storage.

For some services, such as MSN the issue might not be quite as serious for some as for others (depending on the use the individual or company has made of it) however for users of Skydrive, and especially users of  Office 365 (Microsoft’s challenge to Google’s Office Suite),  the issue could have been catastrophic! Microsoft’s assurances about the stability of the platforms seem to have become meaningless in the face of a total collapse of the system. It might be hard to believe anyone could be dependent on Hotmail as they could have been in the past, but for those that *are* the inability to access their mail was at minimum frustrating!!

Microsoft was at pains to explain that they had solved the problem, that DNS changes were being propagated, and that normal service would be resumed as soon as they were complete, but that doesn’t really help those stranded as a result of the outage! When this is coupled with the 20,000 or so Hotmail users whose inboxes and archives were temporarily ‘lost’ by Microsoft over the New Year we can see why people still have the jitters about moving *all* their storage to the offsite, and (potentially) out of country data centres, which after all is what “the cloud” really consists of!

We have to ask ourselves whether the time of “the cloud” has indeed come… or if there is still a substantial amount of development and capital input required before the system can be regarded as sufficiently stable for businesses to be confident the services they need will be 100% accessible 24/7!!