Facebook in Privacy Breach (Wall Street Journal) At this moment, the must-read stories in technology are scattered across hundreds of news sites and blogs. That's far too much for any reader to follow. Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page. Story selection is accomplished via computer algorithm extended with direct human editorial input. Phreesia - The Patient Check-in Company Software for Visualizing and Managing Information
Fear And Loathing At The Wall Street Journal Ahhhhhhhhhahhhaha! The inmates are now running the asylum. All anyone is talking about today is the series of articles that the Wall Street Journal has written about a “Privacy Breach” at Facebook. Front page above the fold stuff, all the fruit of a “Wall Street Journal investigation.” We’ll put aside the fact that no mention was made of the Wall Street Journal’s sister company and Facebook competitor MySpace. So what’s the big deal? Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Yes, that’s what this is all about. The way this is being done is via referrer URLs (99% of the general population just got lost on what those are), which can contain profile IDs. And then…well, nothing. Is this a real problem?
Amazon Sales Rank Tracking & Analysis PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer Wall Street Journal Investigation Into MySpace Was Quietly Killed A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles about a supposed Facebook privacy breach. We and others noted that the article was complete rubbish. We also noted that the Wall Street Journal’s sister company, MySpace, wasn’t mentioned in the article – either as a disclosure of a conflict of interest or a discussion of whether MySpace was doing the same thing. The WSJ was actually investigating MySpace, says a source close to the company, and were planning on publishing the information the investigation uncovered. MySpace has had three different CEOs in the last two years, as well as a period where they were led by co-presidents. But the story was shelved. Why? Press is being briefed now on the new MySpace, and having a big privacy blowup during the relaunch was exactly not what MySpace management wanted to happen. MySpace’s transgressions appear to go much deeper, so why weren’t they included? Update: Oh look, just a few hours after this post.
asymco | Curated Market Intelligence MySpace, Apps Leak User Data HTTP referrer HTTP referer (originally a misspelling of referrer) is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referer, the new webpage can see where the request originated. In the most common situation this means that when a user clicks a hyperlink in a web browser, the browser sends a request to the server holding the destination webpage. The request includes the referer field, which indicates the last page the user was on (the one where they clicked the link). Referer logging is used to allow websites and web servers to identify where people are visiting them from, for promotional or statistical purposes.[1] Origin of the term referer[edit] Details[edit] When visiting a webpage, the referrer or referring page is the URL of the previous webpage from which a link was followed. More generally, a referer is the URL of a previous item which led to this request. Referer hiding[edit] References[edit]
Referrer URLs and Privacy Risks | Rapleaf The Wall Street Journal’s recent article in the "What They Know" series discussed the problem of Facebook IDs being passed to ad networks. This is a serious potential privacy risk – and most Facebook applications are impacted by this issue. The underlying issue is with a piece of the HTTP header called the referrer URL. We recognize that referrer URLs are a major industry-wide problem with the structure of internet security, so Rapleaf has taken extra steps to strip out identifying information from referrer URLs. When we discovered that Facebook ids were being passed to ad networks by applications that we work with, we immediately researched the cause and implemented a solution to cease the transmissions. We are committed to working with the industry to fix these issues, and all issues that may emerge in the future from this complex ecosystem. Below are more details about referrer URLs and steps the industry should take to eliminate the privacy risk. What are "Referrer URLs"?