News German minister sees Facebook fined over privacy

[ar81]

German minister sees Facebook fined over privacy
Why do you think this happens?
I ahev not registered in Facebook and this makes me to feel some kind of concern.

 

[ar81]

I have not been in need for a facebook account.

 

[n72.75]

I'm getting close to just leaving facebook, it's starting to annoy me.

 

[Tex]

^ me too, it is concerning. It's a shame because it is handy for staying in touch with long lost friends and family.. but I'm not at all one who wants my info shared with sites all over the net!

 

[Enjo]

On Slashdot I learned the following things:

• if you use the default "remove account" option, you're actually only suspending your account. Use this to permanently delete your account (look on the left of the site)
• Facebook reserves right to keep (and sell) your data forever due to change in Terms Of Service a year ago. If you agreed to the earlier TOS, you agreed that they can change it without your later agreement. This means that it seems reasonable to change your data to random stuff before deleting your account.

 

[AirSimming]

Almost the same case as for Google, or rather Google Inc. and some others. People simply aren't aware of, or even don't want to know, that there are some privacy-threatening networks/companies/services on the web which they do love so much. People use the internet too careless and Facebook just is one example (by the way, the search engine I'm using: http://www.ixquick.com/ [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixquick"]Ixquick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]) .

I've never had a Facebook account. I've had my lesson with another, smaller German network some time ago, which learned me to keep my fingers away off such things. I also learned that I don't want to come in contact with old schoolfellows and former friends anyway. There is a reason that I don't have contact anymore. Past is past and those networks is something for kiddies and just a waste of time anyway.

There is a little bit too much information one can get these days. As somebody wrote in the Falcon 9 thread: it is so simple to just google a ships name and find out the owner and maybe more information just within seconds. We truly live in the future already. And I refuse to participate in such a kind of information society as much as possible related to my person and privacy.

 

[Enjo]

I've never had a Facebook account. I've had my lesson with another, smaller German network some time ago, which learned me to keep my fingers away off such things. I also learned that I don't want to come in contact with old schoolfellows and former friends anyway. There is a reason that I don't have contact anymore. Past is past and those networks is something for kiddies and just a waste of time anyway.

What was the problem with that German network? I know that the falling MySpace started selling user data for example.
As for old contacts - exactly. Nothing really changed in my social life after joining social networks. Same for new contacts - no really interesting persons. I'm outta there now.

There is a little bit too much information one can get these days. As somebody wrote in the Falcon 9 thread: it is so simple to just google a ships name and find out the owner and maybe more information just within seconds. We truly live in the future already. And I refuse to participate in such a kind of information society as much as possible related to my person and privacy.

I tend to keep my name on my creations though, because firstly I'm proving that it's my work (for CV), and secondly nobody else can say that it's his/her work, unless they share the same name.

 

[Ghostrider]

There is a little bit too much information one can get these days. As somebody wrote in the Falcon 9 thread: it is so simple to just google a ships name and find out the owner and maybe more information just within seconds. We truly live in the future already. And I refuse to participate in such a kind of information society as much as possible related to my person and privacy.

What's the problem? That information is publicly available. It's like complaining because from a picture taken on the street you can see a plate number and find out the address and number of that person. If you don't want it to be available, you have to blacklist it. The difference from before-the-Matrix and now is that you can now do a search far more easily, while once it would take you some phone calls and visits to offices, and probably you would be put off by the sheer boredom of it.

If you don't want information about you disseminated, you don't disseminate it. Now, where Facebook is a real offender is that someone can tag you in a picture even if you're not on FB, and that's bad. There are laws on protection of private data (usually ignored by large enough companies) but sooner or later someone will disseminate too much stuff on Someone High Enough of, and then There Will Be A Law and People Will Pay (TM).

 

[Urwumpe]

Please include in the discussion that Germany has one of the most powerful privacy protection laws, the case is not so much about the business model of Facebook as about its relation to the German laws. The legal discussion in Germany is pretty much about small details, like who is permitted to get which data and how Facebook has to inform German users about changes to the TOS or the whereabouts of their data.

Especially the handling of photographs is critical in German law, which has absolutely no humor about stealing pictures of you from social networking sites... the "Bild" tabloid does it pretty often, and often shows the wrong person of the same name.

The German law is pretty clear on that one: Facebook needs your formal permission to host it, and let other people see it, but is not permitted to distribute it outside the frame you allowed - if a photo is private and for your friends only, Facebook has to take care that it doesn't violate it.