Wednesday, May 26, 2010

On Facebook and matters of privacy...

About a month ago, a tennis-friend of the Mrs probligo joined up with Facebook. There was no need for her to publicise this, nor did she do anything more than follow the process of form-filling to get her page set up.

The first that we knew of it was an email - through Facebook - saying the the Mrs probligo should join up and become a "friend".

That would also explain how Facebook got a hold of our email address.

What is inexplicable is that the email includes the names and Facebook addresses of four other people.

Those four people are -

the probligo's daughter, whom we know has a Facepage.

a lady the Mrs probligo worked with about 5 years back and with whom we have occasional direct contact.

Tommy Miesel whom I suspect might be the same gent I conversed with some years back on matters modelling.

Alan Erkkila, whom I presume might have a very direct relationship to an old whig.

And therein lies the mystery.

How was Facebook able to make the connection between the latter two and the Mrs probligo (or perhaps the probligo's private email address)?

2 comments:

Al said...

We've emailed each other. ...I let them have access to my address book when I created my own page. They say they won't keep those, but... I... I'm sorry. I didn't consider how deep they could go.

The probligo said...

I have no problem at all with you or anyone else.

It does worry me though that information, such as what you have said, can and has been used.

Facebook is being severely criticised for the way the "sign-up pages" effectively hide some of the more contentious features, and in particular the "opt-out" for the "compulsory" sharing of information.

There is another very big raruraru that has been brewing down this way (NZ and Aus) with the GoogleEarth camera cars (the ones that let you see my house from street level) also recording the presence of wireless LAN and private wireless networks as they cruise around taking the photos.

I have no hard feelings, old friend, you have solved the mystery for me and that is "another brick in the wall".