[3141] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Facebook group postings allow "spying" on readers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PRIVACY Forum mailing list)
Thu Aug 2 21:32:40 2012
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 18:14:55 -0700
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Facebook group postings allow "spying" on readers
http://j.mp/MTN5fx (L.A. Times)
"Facebook has introduced a feature on its Group pages that lets users
see which other users have viewed their posts. The feature,
introduced earlier this week, adds a "Seen by" tag to posts that users
can hover over to see the reach of each post in Group pages. Based on
a screen shot provided by Facebook, the features appears to already be
on both its website and mobile apps."
- - -
This actually dates to mid-July. If there's a way to disable it so
that you can view a group posting without revealing both your identity
and the date/time of your access, I don't know what it is. Such a
feature is bad enough on its face, but if it cannot be disabled it is
worse. One might argue that membership in a Facebook "group"
reasonably entails exposing to the posting party whether or not you
have seen the associated messages, and when. But it's also clear that
trust level varies widely among these groups, and if -- as the author
of this piece speculates -- this is a move toward more general use of
such exposure on Facebook beyond Facebook groups (such as recently
implemented by Quora) this could become a very serious situation, very
quickly.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
- Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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