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March 1, 2011 • 5:32 pm

The Unblinking Eye of FaceBook and Your Eroding Privacy

Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook - Privacy Issues

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook: Does he get it? The gist of the privacy debate that is. (Photo – Associated Press)

As unsurprising as the story is, there is still something intestinally disturbing about reports that Facebook is mulling over resurrecting plans to share Facebook users’ personal information with third parties. The fact that Facebook has been down this path before makes it a particularly galling. Is this gonna end up being a case of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook ending up doing what Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook want? Check out this Yahoo story and the accompanying video at the end:

It’s been a while since we’ve had an uproar over Facebook’s handling of its users personal information, so we suppose the time is ripe.

So cue the online outrage: Facebook announced today in a letter to Congress that the social-media platform is moving forward with plans to give third parties access to user information, such as phone numbers and home addresses.

In a letter to Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who both expressed concerns over Facebook’s plan to make such data available, company officials reiterated their now-familiar pledge to leave it up to users to decide whether they want their personal contact information to go out to app developers and outside websites. Markey has previously said that “Facebook needs to protect the personal information of its users to ensure that Facebook doesn’t become Phonebook.”

The company, meanwhile, sounds as though it has no plans to trim back its information-sharing ambitions.

“We have not yet decided when or in what manner we will redeploy the permission for mobile numbers and addresses,” the letter states. “We are evaluating whether and how we can increase the visibility of applications’ request for permission to access user contact information. We are also considering whether additional user education would be helpful.”

Facebook has incited user revolts in the past by arbitrarily re-calibrating its privacy settings and then making it difficult for even the most seasoned web geeks to figure out how to reset them. And once again, anger is roiling among tech industry observers.

“Facebook is the slowly warming pot of water and we, my friends, are the frog. By the time we noticed our peeling skin, another hunk of our privacy is long gone,” MSNBC tech writer Helen A.S. Popkin wrote about the latest move. “This is how Facebook rolls: Strip away a huge chunk of your privacy, cry ‘Our bad!’ and roll it back when users and/or privacy advocates complain. Then wait awhile, and do whatever it is Facebook planned to do anyway. Voila! Boiled frog.”

Or as Facebook VP Elliot Schrage bluntly (if less colorfully) put things in the midst of a similar uproar last year: If you don’t want Facebook to share your personal information, don’t share your personal information with Facebook. (Brett Michael Dykes, Yahoo)

The consumer as frog in boiling water analogy is priceless. But the truth is really verisimilitudinal when it comes to Facebook and or the way personal information has been handled in this society. The leakey-faucet stratagem goes beyond what Facebook does. (An trip to the local county detention center, in another realm, can trigger a stream of solicitations from local lawyers wanting to defend your “case”.)

The Prize: Personal Information and Personal Cell Phone Numbers:

Beyond residential addresses, phone numbers, especially cell phone numbers have become the digital equivalent of an ID – and one that has the ability to bestow upon people talismanic powers to reach out and touch you in the cyber- infomercial realms. Think Wall Street marketers. Think texters.

So think about this. The next time a business asks you for your phone number, what he or she really wants is your cell phone number. A landline can be ditched as easily as a new e-mail address. Cell phone numbers (with the exception of newer IP-based alternatives) are for life – potentially. They are national and international and their shelf-life is determined only by your personal whim or paranoia.

So think about this before Facebook gets its grubby little hands on your cell phone numbers and passes them out to third parties. When Facebook does this, it is compromising you in ways more than one.

Facebook will do what Facebook has to do. And we, on our part have to do what we have to do – namely choose how much of our information Facebook can have and or use. Voting with our feet should always be an option. Counting on politicians to stem this tide is dang foolhardy.

Background to the Facebook controversy:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/65903008/

The Youtube Snippet: