J.P.

I just posted this on Facebook. It should be shared everywhere.

Facebook has launched a colorful, yet fairly aggressive billboard/advertising campaign in Chicagoland. I’m thinking they’ve done the same elsewhere in the country. A few of things to remember:

1. No matter how whimsical the ads might be, Facebook has not changed their profit model in any way. Your data is their product. You are not a customer or user of Facebook. You are used by Facebook. Always be cognizant of what you are posting on here.
2. There is little in the way of curation when it comes to information posted on Facebook. Any “news” can be posted by anyone. It can be widely publicized, across “followers lines”, by anyone, foreign or domestic, for as little as $50 US dollars.
3. Anything you type into Facebook, whether you post it or not, is logged through keystrokes. Hitting backspace to erase an entry does not erase that entry from Facebook’s servers.
4. Any game you share is pulling data from the people you share the game with, whether they choose to participate or not.
5. Any quiz you do is used for data gathering purposes. You might be telling Facebook that you’re a Valerie in Josie and the Pussycats, but they’ve figured out you’re the brainy one of your group, and they’ve figured out a whole lot more about you.
6. When you tell the world where your first concert took place or who your third grade teacher was or whether you prefer the Ice Follies or the Ice Capades, you are giving Facebook and their customers more data to match up dissimilar data about you from multiple platforms.
7. Any time you have Facebook on your mobile devices, you are taking Facebook with you. Admittedly, Apple devices are little better at guarding your privacy vs Android in this regard, but it’s Facebook that’s tracking where you are, who you’re talking to and who you’re flirting with on text message. Facebook on mobile is Facebook with you everywhere.
8. Facebook is trying really hard to cross-index your data on Facebook with other sources, like public records, financial records, etc. Keep that in mind!

Facebook is a great way to connect with lost friends and distant family members, but please never forget: you are NOT the customer, you are the product. Never lose sight of that. Be safe, be vigilant, and be smart when using Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, creator, founder and CEO of Facebook, has spent the past week apologizing and basically following a PR-spin script to deal with the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytics revelation around Facebook, user data, and the business model Facebook uses to please their stockholders. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, joined him on the interview circuit today, basically apologizing for not having better control of data mined from the profiles of Facebook users.

Amongst all these apologies and explanations, please note Facebook has chosen to exempt North American users from stricter privacy laws being implemented on services like Facebook in Europe.

One interesting thing that Sheryl mentioned during her interviews today is that users would have to pay a subscription fee to have the data they choose to share on Facebook not shared with advertisers. Yes! Please!

I still have not deleted my Facebook profile but I have ramped back my usage of the platform. A lot. My usage has dropped by nearly 90% over the past two weeks. The only reason I haven’t cancelled my account completely is because for many people in our friends and family circle, Facebook is the only way to maintain contact with them. They don’t really exchange email, there’s not really a lot going on in the way of iMessage or text messaging, and some groups and organizations I belong to have chosen to use ONLY Facebook as a way of communicating.

This is a very bad thing.

I have said this repeatedly but I will say it again. The vast majority of “free” services on the Internet are supported by ad revenue. A majority of those services make your data available in some fashion in order to target you with specific ads. I know, you’ll say that you have nothing to hide, but it’s not the data that you’re providing that makes this dangerous. It’s the ability for unrelated companies to independently gather data about you and then connect the dots when they find a common denominator, for example, your circle of friends, your spending habits, or your browsing habits.

In our elementary school years we were threatened from time to time that a bad decision would go down on our “permanent record”. Everything on the Internet is permanent. Once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.

Do you really want Facebook to be handling your “permanent record”?

I hate sounding cynical, but Mark and Sheryl are out there spinning these interviews so they can maintain a revenue stream and please their stockholders. Notice they’re not talking about changing the business model. Notice how dismissive they are about offering a subscription option. They don’t want that. They would lose some control of your data.

Controlling your data is what’s making them rich.

We now have AT&T “GigaPower” High-Speed Internet. I did a speed test this morning to make sure the install over the weekend went well.

I was quite impressed.

In January 2014 I started up a new Facebook account. It was on that date that I abandoned my original Facebook account, opened during the time that it required an .edu email address (I was in school to become a Civil Engineer at the time). I felt that the original account had filled up with too much crud and started fresh with this second account.

Today I downloaded a zip file of all the data Facebook has on me. It was a fairly small download, clocking in at just under 300 MB. Every photo, video, update, message, contact, thought… it’s all in that archive. Any and everything I shared with Facebook is in that zip file. Every time someone flirted with me over Facebook Messenger, every Russian bride wanna be that tried to get my attention, every game request, it’s all in there.

Downloading this data did not remove it from Facebook’s servers. It just gave me a copy of it.

I have been fortunate to have enjoyed online access of some sort since the GEnie service back in 1985. When I was in college (the first time) in 1986, I used to dial into GEnie and chat with other gay men scattered around the country. I remember the first time I saw an emoticon crawl across my Commodore 64. It took me a few moments to realize it was a sideways smiley face. 🙂 At 300 baud, it took a few moments for the smiley face to appear. A man that I was chatting with told me to never share anything on a computer that I wouldn’t mind sharing on the front page of the New York Times. He asked me my phone number. It was 1986, I gave him the number to the rotary phone on my dorm room wall. Two days later a card arrived in the mail. It wished me a Happy St. Patrick’s Day (it must have been 1987, now that I think about it) and it said, “I was able to find your name address from your phone number. Don’t share that information.”

I learned my lesson early.

Anything that I have shared online I would freely discuss in public. But it’s the stuff that I suspected Facebook was pulling from my data that I find alarming. Like every one of my work contacts appearing in the archive I downloaded today. When Facebook synced my contacts with my Facebook friends list to populate avatars in my list, it pulled all of my contacts down at the same time.

I have a record of every poke and every wave.

I’m happy that I use Apple products; Android users are finding that ALL of their messages and the meta data about their phone calls are ending up in their Facebook archives. Apple iOS sandboxes that information and makes it unavailable to third party applications.

There’s something to be said for paying more for Apple devices. Privacy and security are the drivers for me.

I have not deleted my Facebook profile but I have stopped using it. I’m letting it sit dormant for 30 days to see if I feel the same way at the end of April.

I’ll probably delete it then.