Didn't Read Facebook's Fine Print? Here's Exactly What It Says
The Huffington Post | By Amanda Scherker
So, like every other one of the world's 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users, you blindly agreed to
Facebook's Terms and Conditions without reading the fine print.
You entrusted your photo albums, private messages and relationships to a website without reading its policies.
And you do the same with every other site ... sound about right?
In your defense, Carnegie Mellon researchers determined that it would take the average American 76 work
days to read all the privacy policies they agreed to each year. So you're not avoiding the reading out of laziness;
it's literally an act of job preservation.
So here are the Cliffs Notes of what you agreed to when you and Facebook entered into this contract. Which, by
the way, began as soon as you signed up:
Nothing you do on Facebook is private. Repeat: Nothing you do on Facebook is private.
Note the rather vague use of the word "infer," which Oxford Dictionary defines as "Deduce or conclude
(information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements."
That includes some things you haven't even done yet. Facebook has even begun studying messages
that you type but end up deciding not to post. A recent study by a Facebook data analyst looked at habits of 3.9
million English-speaking Facebook users to analyze how different users "self-censor" on Facebook. They
measured the frequency of "aborted" messages or status posts, i.e., posts that were deleted before they ever
were published. They studied this because "[Facebook] loses value from the lack of content generation," and
they hoped to determine how to limit this kind of self-censorship in the future. While a Facebook
spokesman told Slate that the network is not monitoring the actual substance of these messages, Facebook was
able to determine when characters were typed, and whether they were posted within ten minutes of being
typed.
Even if you leave the network, not all your information does. Your Facebook footprint doesn't
necessarily disappear if you deactivate your account. According to the site's Statement of Rights and
Responsibilities, if your videos or photos have been shared by other users, they will remain visible on the site
after you deactivate your account, and are subject to that user's privacy settings.
Your information lets Facebook sell the power of your profile to brands and companies.
This means that Facebook is being paid for supplying your endorsement (which you indicate by liking a page)
to brands or companies. You can even find out how much your data is worth to Facebook by using the FBME
application from Disconnect, Inc.And a report from The Center For Digital Democracy shows marketing
companies are taking note, creating algorithms for determining key social media "influencers." The report
found that many marketers have identified multicultural youth users as key influencers, and have targeted
those demographics with heavier social media marketing.
You're also giving Facebook the ability to track your web surfing anytime you're logged into the
site. This announcement came in a recent post from Facebook.
Facebook notes that other websites do the same thing. But that accounts for an insane amount of potential
data, especially given the growth of Facebook mobile use. On average, Facebook mobile users check the site 14
times a day on their devices.
Facebook has been rolling out location services that effectively turn mobile phones into
location tracking devices.
What's next when it come to information gathering by Facebook? TechCrunch spotlighted Facebook's new
tracking feature, "Nearby Friends," which is being pitched as an opt-in way to find out which of your friends is
located within a mile of you. While you don't receive the exact location of your friends, Facebook
receives yourexact location. The feature uses "Location Tracking" to create your "Location History." While you
can clear your history and turn off the app at will, Facebook noted that it "may still receive your most recent
precise location so that you can, for example, post content that's tagged with your location or find nearby
places." So some amount of tracking is happening, no matter what.
And it plans to use this location data to sell you things.
Back when Facebook unveiled "Nearby Friends" in April, a company spokesmanconceded to TechCrunch that "at this time
[Nearby Friends] is not being used for advertising or marketing, but in the future it will be."
It wouldn't be surprising if Facebook did, indeed, begin selling location-based data to marketers. After all, studies confirm
that this advertising is very successful at convincing you to buy things. A recent U.K. study conducted by media strategy
company Vizeum and direct marketing agency iProspect found that location-based advertising created an "11 percent
increase in store visits among more than 172,000 people that were served adverts." This technology is only going to
become more sophisticated with the rise of more location-tracking apps that can follow your movements in-store.