Facebook’s Social Media Problems
For the world’s favourite social network Facebook sure has a lot of problems with social media. First it took a cavalier attitude to individual’s concerns, then it managed to annoy much of its user base resulting in poor customer satisfaction ratings and, in case anyone was not really getting the message, it over-reacted at almost every opportunity.
Then, as things appeared to settle down and complaints over Facebook’s new re-design started to fade a fresh privacy issue came up with Facebook, apparently tracking members even when they were not logged in. Add to this the IM messages of Facebook’s founder, Zuckerberg, who called, when at Harvard, those entrusting him with data “dumb f*cks” and the picture that begins to emerge is one of a company that’s playing very fast and loose with your personal data.
Now you could argue that Zuckerberg’s IM messages were just youthful posturing and that Facebook is now a company of adults that’s set to make a profit of over $1 billion this year and it would be wary of doing anything that might jeopardise its user base. Well, yes, you could argue that but it would hold no water.
Those that did argue it now have to contend with the case of Max Scherns, a 24-year-old law student from Vienna, who used a European law requiring entities which hold digital data on you to disclose it, to force Facebook to do just that.
The result as the Sophos security article revealed was nothing less than shocking. After getting a CD from Facebook which detailed, in over 1,200 pages, all of his activities Scherns discovered that:
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