500,000 Facebook Members Protest New Personal-Data Feeds
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By Anick Jesdanun  Operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages. Instead, the new feature has drawn complaints from thousands of its users and even threats of a boycott.
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Facebook is suing seventeen people and a Canadian Internet porn company for allegedly trying to mine the popular social networking site for its users&#39; personal details.Facebook alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook&#39;s site. The allegations are contained in an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.The company first filed suit back in June, but amended the complaint this month after obtaining court orders to identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site.Experts have warned people against publishing too much personal information on social networking sites for fear it could be collected and then abused by fraudsters.Facebook, one of the most-used social networking sites after MySpace, said the automated scripts caused error messages to be generated, but the company did not say if user information was successfully collected.Named in the suit is Istra Holdings, which controls SlickCash.com, an affiliate advertising business that offers commissions to Web publishers for referring Internet surfers to its portfolio of adult sites.It also names Brian Fabian and Josh Raskin, both of whom the suit says work at Istra in Toronto, and Ming Wu of Markham, Ontario, as well as 14 other unidentified people.Facebook said the hacking attempts cost it at least US$5,000 to investigate. The company has requested a jury trial and is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future, in addition to damages.&#160;
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A new study says the big social networking sites are splitting up along familiar lines.
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WASHINGTON -- Even though the move was expected, civil libertarians are protesting a directive by the government ordering airlines to turn over personal information on their customers that can include credit card numbers and addresses and even indicate a
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Facebook.com, the No. 2 U.S.  social network site that is quickly expanding beyond its  college student base, has been met with a sudden privacy  backlash by users after it made design changes this week.
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Fast-growing U.S. social network Web   site Facebook said on Friday it has adopted new privacy   controls following an unprecedented online backlash over a new   feature that let users track their friends online.
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There's a fascinating debate today going on about Scoble and his Facebook data. Here's the story so far. Plaxo, on behalf of Scoble, ran a screen scraper on his Facebook account to download information about at least some of his Facebook friends. Facebook detected the scraper and turned off his account, with an email explaining that he had violated their terms of service. The debate: Who is right -- Scoble or Facebook? While there are certainly arguments that Facebook has some rightness, most of it, imho, is with Scoble. Sure, some of the data may "belong" to his friends, like their birthday and mail address. Technically of course the data doesn't belong to anyone, it's data about them, and many organizations have this data. Are bloggers really saying that organizations have more rights than people? Isn't blogging all about a level playing field? My bank knows my birthday and my email address. Why shouldn't Scoble? (Maybe he shouldn't.) Scoble called a few minutes ago. I asked what the consensus was. He said it was about 70 percent in his favor, 30 percent in Facebook's. I think we can win over the 30 percent by saying that there should be a system whereby people can decide how much information they want to share with Scoble, or people like Scoble, or me, or people like me, or BofA or the DEA, KGB or CIA. Further, that system is not Facebook, unless they change.  Now, I think there's a pretty good chance that Facebook will change and give Scoble his data and turn his account back on. I think Facebook wants to give us access to our data, but if they just turned the feature on, there would be a shitstorm, kind of like the one that's raging right now. Except this time Facebook has defenders, which they must find refreshing, because every time there's been a shitstorm around Facebook they've always been seen as 100 percent evil by most people. (Not by me, btw.) Maybe they're getting smart there over at Facebook. Maybe they will relent, kind of admit they were wrong, and secretly be happy that they got to open their network up some more.  However, if Facebook doesn't open up and allow people a system to say who can access what information, we still have to create that system somehow. Google could have done it, but they didn't. Same with Yahoo or Microsoft. These companies don't want to empower the users, but if they studied history, they'd see that the evolution of computers always comes in fits and starts. A period when the technology is new and people are snowed by the companies and let them have full control. Gradually people understand what's going on, and figure out they're being screwed but they accept it. And then explosively the whole thing disintegrates in a new layer of technology.  It's a big effin loop we're in. One of these times around one of the companies that feels (incorrectly) that they have a lock on their users, will voluntarily give it up and be a leader in Generation N+1. I've never seen it happen, but in theory I think it could.  In other words, Apple and Microsoft could have invented the web instead of TBL. DEC and Data General could have invented the personal computer instead of Apple and Microsoft (I know this is a simplification, there were lots of individuals and small companies that did it.) And IBM could have invented the minicomputer instead of DEC and Data General. And btw, the NY Times and CNN could have invented blogging and RSS.  So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice. And it's fitting somehow that Scoble is the poster child for users in this cycle.
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The influx of business users into Facebook's formerly college-centric community has led to a culture clash for some longtime users, leading them to reconsider how much personal information they share on the site.
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By Alan Sipress and Sam Diaz, Washington Post Staff Writers  Facebook announced yesterday that it is taking the unusual step of allowing the public to develop features for the popular social-networking Web site, permitting any software designer to access the company's millions of members.
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For students at the University of Oxford, Facebook is a great way to keep posted on gossip and parties. For campus officials, it's a new way to find &#151; and fine &#151; troublemakers.
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Members of the social news site's community meet resistance as they attempt to out an anonymous group of no-goodniks. By NewAssignment.Net's David Cohn.
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Stalks you, sir The introduction of new features on social network site Facebook has sparked a backlash from users. Design changes to the site violate user privacy and ought to be scrapped, according to disgruntled users who have launched a series of impromptu protests. One protest site is calling for users to boycott Facebook on 13 September in opposition against a feature called News Feed, which critics argue is a Godsend for stalkers.â¦
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25% now strongly against their use, amid fears over sharing of personal details, says ICM survey
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Stricter legislation Flickr's introduction of content filters in Germany last week has provoked protests in blogs and web forums globally.â¦
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'Quit it! You're mean!' Facebook has silenced a 20,000-strong campaign group dedicated to the seemingly innocuous goal of stopping the site from forcing people to use the verb "to be" in their status updates.â¦
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The idea was born less than a month ago on the social networking Web site Facebook: marches in cities across Colombia and around the world to denounce the country's main leftist rebel army.
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International agitators join mass protest