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Facebook Charged with Mining, Selling User Data in Class-Action Suit

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/dapd, Timur Emek

Photo Credit: AP Photo/dapd, Timur Emek

Facebook has been named in a class-action suit over allegations the social media site takes users’ private messages and scans them for potential advertising purposes.

The suit was filed by in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week.

Among the allegations, ZDNet reported: Facebook scans and monitors user messages that are supposed to be private, and then takes select content to generate profiles about online activity — which is then sold for profit to marketers and advertisers. Those advertisers then allegedly use the information to build and target ads specific to those users.

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Facebook Tests Software to Track Your Cursor on Screen

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Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal Facebook Inc. is testing technology that would greatly expand the scope of data that it collects about its users, the head of the company’s analytics group said Tuesday.

The social network may start collecting data on minute user interactions with its content, such as how long a user’s cursor hovers over a certain part of its website, or whether a user’s newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone, Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin said Tuesday during an interview.

Mr. Rudin said the captured information could be added to a data analytics warehouse that is available for use throughout the company for an endless range of purposes–from product development to more precise targeting of advertising.

Facebook collects two kinds of data, demographic and behavioral. The demographic data—such as where a user lives or went to school—documents a user’s life beyond the network. The behavioral data—such as one’s circle of Facebook friends, or “likes”—is captured in real time on the network itself. The ongoing tests would greatly expand the behavioral data that is collected, according to Mr. Rudin. The tests are ongoing and part of a broader technology testing program, but Facebook should know within months whether it makes sense to incorporate the new data collection into the business, he said

New types of data Facebook may collect include “did your cursor hover over that ad … and was the newsfeed in a viewable area,” Mr. Rudin said. “It is a never-ending phase. I can’t promise that it will roll out. We probably will know in a couple of months,” said Mr. Rudin, a Silicon Valley veteran who arrived at Facebook in April 2012 from Zynga Inc., where he was vice president of analytics and platform technologies.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Robert GalbraithFacebook smashes analyst targets but executive comments spook Street

By Alexei Oreskovic.

Facebook Inc posted strong growth in its mobile advertising business on Wednesday but rattled investors after saying that it did not plan to boost the frequency of ads shown to users.

Shares of the world’s No. 1 online social network soared as much as 15 percent in extended trading before suddenly falling to $47.40, down 3 percent from its $49.10 close. The stock settled at $49.16.

In July, Facebook said it was showing one ad per 20 stories in the newsfeed, but Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman told analysts Wednesday that the current ratio, although slightly higher than 5 percent, would not increase much more going forward.

Ebersman’s comments, combined with remarks suggesting that young teenage users in the U.S. were beginning to use Facebook less frequently, soured the mood abruptly on an afternoon when the company topped Wall Street’s targets with a whopping 60 percent increase in revenue, driven by its accelerating mobile business.

“There seems to be concern about the ad load not going up,” said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.

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Facebook Blocks Founders of Patriot Trucker Group for Saying ‘God Bless America’

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Photo Credit: ridefortheconstitution.org

Photo Credit: ridefortheconstitution.org

The administrators of the group “Truckers To Shut Down America” were temporarily booted from posting in Facebook for saying “God Bless America.” On Sunday afternoon, they were finally back up and posting on their Facebook page, which has gone viral.

Today, the Examiner spoke with the group’s founder, Zeeda Andrews. A former trucker herself, Andrews has tapped a nerve by calling for a “General Strike” to protest “the corruption that is destroying America.” Americans who believe that the Government is trampling on the Constitution are welcome to join, regardless of party.

Today, the patriot group “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” offered to be out in full force, calling the effort one of their “patriot waves” to support the truckers making the trek across the nation to Washington, D.C. on the weekend of October 11-13, 2013, as reported today by the Examiner.

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Zuckerberg: US Government ‘Blew It’ on NSA Surveillance

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, struck back on Wednesday at critics who have charged tech companies with doing too little to fight off NSA surveillance. Mayer said executives faced jail if they revealed government secrets.

Yahoo and Facebook, along with other tech firms, are pushing for the right to be allowed to publish the number of requests they receive from the spy agency. Companies are forbidden by law to disclose how much data they provide.

During an interview at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mayer was asked why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the US surveillance industry was up to. “Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated,” she said.

Mayer said she was “proud to be part of an organisation that from the beginning, in 2007, has been sceptical of – and has been scrutinizing – those requests [from the NSA].”

Yahoo has previously unsuccessfully sued the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which provides the legal framework for NSA surveillance. In 2007 it asked to be allowed to publish details of requests it receives from the spy agency. “When you lose and you don’t comply, it’s treason,” said Mayer. “We think it make more sense to work within the system,” she said.

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SC Gov. Nikki Haley Makes a Candid Facebook Confession… and Gets Attacked For It

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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley received a massive public response, and criticism from the state’s Democrats, after posting on Facebook that she locked herself out of the governor’s mansion Wednesday morning wearing a robe.

“What not to do…getting locked out of the Governor’s mansion in your robe while sending the kids off to school. Sigh…” Haley wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday morning, adding the hashtag, “#adayinthelife.”

Photo Credit: Facebook screen shot

Photo Credit: Facebook screen shot

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Test Reveals Facebook, Twitter and Google Snoop on Emails’: Study of Net Giants Spurs New Privacy Concerns

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Facebook, Twitter and Google have been caught snooping on messages sent across their networks, new research claims, prompting campaigners to express concerns over privacy.

The findings emerged from an experiment conducted following revelations by US security contractor Edward Snowden about government snooping on internet accounts.

Cyber-security company High-Tech Bridge set out to test the confidentiality of 50 of the biggest internet companies by using their systems to send a unique web address in private messages.

Experts at its Geneva HQ then waited to see which companies clicked on the website.

During the ten-day operation, six of the 50 companies tested were found to have opened the link.

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Syrians Vow to “Burn America’s Skies” on Obama’s Facebook

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

As the U.S. marches toward war with Syria, thousands of Assad-sympathizers bombarded President Obama’s Facebook page with threats of retaliation.

Comments from seemingly original profiles represented Syrians from the cities of Homs, Tartus, Damascus and Aleppo and more. Warnings of counter-attacks on U.S. soil and against Israel were not confined to one photograph or post, but the most disturbing were observed on today’s picture honoring Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

This comment was pasted 356 times at last check in both English and Arabic:

“We will burn the cities of the United States if it attacked Syria, and will remove Israel from the map.” Others referenced burning America’s skies and called for immediate jihad retaliation should America strike “another Muslim land”.

The second most common remarks were also in English or Arabic and translated by Facebook:

“To the American people: Have you ever asked yourselves why your flag is burning all over the world by protesters? We always distinguish between the American regime and the American people…but if the American people remain silent they will be murders as their government. Wake-up Americans and stand for humanity.”

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Facebook Report: Governments Asked for Data on 38,000 Users this Year

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Government agencies around the world demanded access to the information of over 38,000 Facebook users in the first half of this year, and more than half the orders came from the United States, the company said on Tuesday.

Facebook’s first “global government requests report” covers the first six months of 2013, ending 30 June. It comes as the social network giant and its peers are coming under intense scrutiny following revelations about their co-operation with the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of US and foreign citizens.

“Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook. We strive to embody them in all aspects of our services, including our approach to responding to government data requests,” Colin Stretch, Facebook general counsel, said in a blogpost. “We want to make sure that the people who use our service understand the nature and extent of the requests we receive and the strict policies and processes we have in place to handle them.”

US authorities made 11,000-12,000 requests for information on 20,000-21,000 individuals over the six months. The company complied in 79% of cases. Facebook said it had to give a range for the US figures in order to give an indication of “all criminal and national security requests to the maximum extent permitted by law”.

The figures released by Facebook give no detail on the types of requests received or of what type of information the company handed over. Facebook, along with Google and others, is currently pressing Congress to be allowed to give greater detail the number of requests it receives from the US authorities. The NSA has the the authority to demand data about communications with non-US citizens without specific warrants and gags companies from disclosing even the most basic details of those cases.

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Computer Expert Hacks into Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Page to Expose the Site’s Vulnerability after his Security Warnings Were Dismissed (+video)

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Photo Credit: Facebook

Photo Credit: Facebook

A hacker from Palestine found a Facebook glitch that allowed anyone to post on a stranger’s wall, but when the company ignored his warnings he took them all the way to the top by posting about the issue on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall.

Khalil Shreateh first contacted the Facebook security team after proving the glitch was real by writing on the wall of a friend of the Facebook founder.

But instead of thanking him and fixing the issue, Facebook said it wasn’t a bug. And because of the methods Shreateh used to finally convince them of the threat, Facebook later denied him the reward usually given to programmers who report holes in the site’s security.

‘My name is Khalil Shreateh. I finished school with B.A degree in Information Systems . I would like to report a bug in your main site (www.facebook.com) which i discovered it…The bug allow Facebook users to share links to other facebook users , I tested it on Sarah.Goodin wall and I got success post.’

Shreateh, whose first language is Arabic, lives in Palestine and is in no way connected with Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard alum Goodin. He hoped his ability to post to her page, nonetheless, would help prove his case to Facebook security.

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Miami man Confesses to Killing Wife on Facebook, Posts Picture of her Body (+video)

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Photo Credit: Tampa BayDerek Medina’s life was open to the world.

On YouTube, the 31-year-old South Miami man posted scores of videos of himself enjoying sports.

He wrote six online books with long-winded titles about spirituality, saving the world and hunting ghosts. Medina snapped photos of his arm tattoos, meals, boating trips and drinks poolside with his wife.

But on Thursday, Medina shocked many by making one last announcement on Facebook — he had killed his wife, Jennifer Alfonso, 26, before posting a photo of her twisted, bloodied body lying on a linoleum floor.

“I’m going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife. Love you guys. Miss you guys. Take care. Facebook people you’ll see me in the news,” Medina wrote in a Facebook post that remained public for hours Thursday evening before the site removed his profile page at the request of police.

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