Back at school
It’s been a week of school, and I never really ended up posting any more over winter break. I was pretty busy with work and all, so not much happened. However, back at school now. I do, however, have a minor rant about this whole Facebook issue (where they were going to let Web Apps that use facebook access to users’ phone numbers).
Facebook reminds me of one of those pre-school bullies. They poke and prod you, to see how far they can go before you call the teacher. Then when the teacher yells at them, they claim they didn’t do anything, and they’ll never do it again, and go right back to it. It’s always the same with these privacy issues. They slowly give up more and more of our information, then suddenly all of our purchases are appearing on our wall, and users finally realize that something bad is going on. They complain, facebook apologizes and provides some new security toggle hidden amongst all their other security toggles, and then a couple months later, our phone numbers are being shared. Users realize this is bad again and complain, and facebook apologizes again. But in the meantime the friend feature has become a follow, advertisers have everything, and the user-base only complains about what they can actually perceive as invading their privacy. Everyone knows what happens when their phone number becomes wide knowledge (telemarketers anyone?), but not the rest of the privacy concerns that pop up in between. Â I do have a Facebook account still, because it doesn’t actually matter if I delete it or not, the data is still in their system, but I very rarely use it, and do not use my Facebook account to log in to any other website. I hope I never have to. It just tires me to read every couple months about another outrage from Facebook, and wonder when anyone will ever learn.