Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Does this image provide you with more trust in how Facebook manages and shares your personal information? Do you trust this ’site validation’ assertion?

I read an interesting article regarding Facebook’s most recent privacy breaches on the Wall Street Journal site yesterday. It’s well known that Facebook has a complete disregard for users’ privacy by sharing personal information with third-party applications and making assumptions about the type of information they want to share with friends and the general public. Most readers of this blog are well versed on this subject, so I won’t bore you with the details or even talk about Facebook itself. Instead, I’d like to comment on the lack of solutions that help encourage companies like Facebook improve their privacy policies.

In particular, I’d like to comment on TRUSTe and how I don’t think the company is doing itself any justice when it comes to providing confidence in its own brand and its seal programme. Instead of launching new products that support mobile, TRUSTe should focus on getting its main product right. Trust is fragile and when lost, it’s almost impossible to win back.

TRUSTe is one of the most widely recognized seals used by organisations that want to demonstrate their conformance and commitment to privacy policy best practices. To demonstrate this commitment, organizations place a TRUSTe privacy seal on their Web site. Users can click on the seal to authenticate the trustmark and find out more information about the best practices. Check out Facebook’s authenticated seal.

According to Fran Maier, TRUSTe Chair

While TRUSTe certifies the privacy practices of Facebook.com, we do not certify the privacy practices of third party applications on the site like those referenced in the WSJ’s article.

Here’s TRUSTe’s biggest shortfall and something they must address if it is to be taken seriously long term. By asserting that Facebook.com lives up to the TRUSTe code of conduct, it is asserting that all applications and content live up to the same standard.  Companies are responsible for content and applications that users access through their site if it is perceived that they control or own that content. That is, according to legislation in countries such as the UK. Even if this didn’t fall under country-specific legislation, it’s quite obvious that TRUSTe’s seal should cover this aspect when almost everyone on the planet is unhappy with Facebook’s approach to privacy.

According to Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe in a post by ZDNet

Facebook has complied with TRUSTe’s policies in that it has quickly responded to the data leak and it suspended some of the applications. “That’s exactly what we want to see.”

Chris’ statement tells me that TRUSTe is now allowing big corporations to break the rules as long as they “have a process”. Sounds like ISO9000 to me - it’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card - it’s ok not to documented processes as long as you have a process for documenting them in the future. Shouldn’t TRUSTe revoke the seal until they have fixed the actual problem?

Either Facebook should live up to the code that the TRUSTe seal asserts, or TRUSTe should remove the seal.

If you look again at the TRUSTe page above which validates Facebook’s privacy seal, you can ‘Positively Endorse’ the assertion with one click of a button. Don’t do what I did and click the button to see what happens - or you’ll give the wrong impression by increasing the number of endorsements. To file a complaint however is a different story. You must first contact the site owner and then complete a form on TRUSTe’s Web site. I understand why they have this process, but why not allow the community to counter the endorsement also, so we can see a balance? I’m guessing it’s because the vast majority would vote against Facebook. If you’d like to file a complaint about Facebook’s use of your personal information please do so using this form.

Do you now trust Facebook given that you know it’s trusted by TRUSTe and now that you know it complies with its privacy seal?

On Monday, May 4th, my Facebook account was hacked. The hacker logged in and sent a message to everyone, driving them to a drugs Web site. If you were one of the recipients please disregard the message and accept my sincere apology for the inconvenience.

What happened

I remember receiving a message from a trusted friend, with a link to what looked like a Facebook page. It turns out that it wasn’t a Facebook page and in fact, was someone phishing for user names and passwords.

Problem solved.

After seeing the love heart in my steam on Facebook last night, I tweeted that I’d never include my relationship status on Facebook because my life, believe it or not, is actually very private. A few people asked me for clarification so I decided to write a post to explain in more detail and to solicit your contribution to the conversation. 140 characters just isn’t enough right now.

You might think I put everything online, but I’m sure you’ll now realise that I never tweet, blog or facebook anything that’s private such a family matters - with the exception of one of my sisters, Deirdra, as I want to help promote her fantastic artwork.

Someone DM’d me to say that I was right because Facebook is so open. Facebook isn’t open, it’s a platform that allows you to put everything out in the open. It’s how you use it that matters. If you don’t want people to see pictures of your kids, don’t upload them. If you don’t want people to see you drunk at a party, don’t get drunk or don’t allow people to view pictures of you online by using your privacy settings - this one is particularly easy.

So, how much do you put online? What do you exclude if anything?

Taken from the Metro:

Using Facebook or Twitter may make you a bad person because it ruins your moral compass, it has been claimed.

Fast-paced modern media, such as Facebook updates and news feeds on Twitter, do not give us time to reflect and could make us indifferent to human suffering, according to a group of researchers.

Children could be particularly vulnerable because their brains are still developing, it was claimed.

‘If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,’ said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, from the University of Southern California.

Yet another dumb ass quote from another dumb ass lecturer. Why do respectable publications such as the Metro (well, I enjoy reading it anyway) continue to quote people who’s job it is to come up with new opposing opinions to that of the general public?

Dear Metro, please try to interview people who know what they’re talking about. Stop interviewing people who sit on the fence commentating on the theory of everything, without actually delving into the real world of practise.

Facebook and Twitter brings out the best in us in my opinion. People have an instinct to help others by sharing opinions, contacts, advice, gossip and the like. What are your thoughts?

Facebook has caused a bit of a stir by censoring some pictures of breastfeeding on the site.

I think it’s perfectly natural for a mother to breastfeed in public - as long as it’s discrete - I’ve yet to witness a mother not being discrete. However, isn’t it possible that some pictures could cause offence to parents who’d rather their children weren’t exposed to them. Remember, some people don’t realise how public their pictures are, so it’s possible they’re not as discrete as they would normally be in public. What do you think? Leave a comment if you have an opinion either way.

I picked up the story here.

[Update: 15:20 The Founder of Pix.ie just told me on Twitter: Pixie has strict rules re: nudity but we even allowed full child birth photos (http://pix.ie/mermaidlilli/album/324903) very NSFW - surely a naked person is less likely to be inappropriate than a woman giving birth - with all bits showing?]