Get your loved ones off Facebook – Salim Virani
Salim Virani has been checking Facebook upcoming privacy policy due to change on Jan. 30th, 20151. Unless you leave Facebook before this date, you won’t have to accept the new ToS since you agree by staying2.
Abstract: Facebook doesn’t keep any of your data safe or anonymous, no matter how much you lock down your privacy settings. There are very serious privacy breaches, like selling your product endorsement to advertisers and politicians, tracking everything you read on the internet, or using data from your friends to learn private things about you:
- Facebook gives your data to “third-parties” through your use of apps, and then say that’s you doing it, not them;
- Facebooks creates false endorsements for products from you to your friends - and they never reveal this to you;
- When you see a like button on the web, Facebook is tracking that you’re reading that page;
- They read your private messages and the contents of the links you send privately;
- They can use face recognition to track your location through pictures;
- They track your location, and use that to discover private things about you, like if you’re sick, who you sleep with, where you work, if you’re job-searching, etc;
- They’ve used snitching campaigns to trick people’s friends into revealing information about them that they chose to keep private;
- They use the vast amount of data they have on you, from your likes, things you read, things you type but don’t post, to make highly accurate models about who you are – even if you make it a point of keeping these things secret
Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy
I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy.
– Fábio Esteves in I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy?
Get your loved ones off Facebook…!
Edit: Salim Virani originally wrote this 2015, to explain why the latest Facebook privacy policy is really harmful. It’s since been read by over a million people, and Salim updated it earlier this year. ↩︎
2017 update: A lot of these concerns Salim had have proven true. Facebook has been consistent with its pattern of contempt for its users. Salim hase updated this with a few more points and links. ↩︎