Creepy

Bernard Devlin bdrunrev at gmail.com
Thu Jul 2 01:34:01 EDT 2009


Not being on facebook, linked-in, myspace, etc. I decided to sign up
to the former and see what happens.  I signed up with a brand new
email address (I often use site-specific email addresses).

In step 2 of the signup process they ask for one's email address and
the password to access that. I'm assuming they are expecting all/most
people to be using webmail.  One can however 'skip this step' (in a
very small font).  I skipped every step.  By the time the signup was
complete, facebook told me I had 0 friends.

When I did a search for various friends and relatives, it only found
less than 1/3rd that I could recognize, and I only recognized them
because they had photos up or because they included something in their
summary personal info that identified them (university/small home
town).

Searching by former school/university was more successful, although I
would say that only about 5% of my classmates are on facebook.  I
spent time at multiple universities, and  searching for people I
recognized there was too tiresome to continue.

But fundamentally, I wouldn't say the thing was creepy.  It seems most
people I know are avoiding facebook, or if they are on there they've
suitablly restricted the information they publicly expose.

My guess is that the creepiness arises from allowing facebook to look
through one's email account and/or using the same email address on
facebook that one uses everywhere else.

Bernard

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:47 AM, Shari<shari at gypsyware.com> wrote:
> Not finding this option.  Not seeing anywhere to opt in or out.  Pretty sure
> I would have seen a checkbox and not checked it, though, or unchecked it or
> whatever.
>
> Under Friends, there are several options to help you find your friends.  One
> tells you to give your Email/Password (which I know I didn't do). Another
> has you uploading your contact file. (Never uploaded anything.)  The rest
> are various search methods.  It lists all the friends of my friends, school
> searches, IM searches, coworker searches.  The only ones I've partaken of is
> my high school (after it found all of you) and friends of friends to find
> the friends I missed.
>
> Invite Friends has an option to Import Email Addresses and lists several
> common email sources, Hotmail, AOL, Gmail and Yahoo (none of which I use
> except for gmail, which I've only used to send reg codes to about 5 people
> when my emails didn't get thru the regular way).
>
> I was reading an article in Wired magazine about Facebook and Google being
> in sort of a war for internet domination.  Facebook is doing a pretty good
> job catching up to Google and has a good chance of bypassing Google,
> according to the article.  Google is my best friend and does a lot of really
> good things for me.  I'd be pretty amiss to ignore the thing that's hot on
> it's tail.  Diddled with MySpace but really didn't see much value there.
>  Facebook, however... as long as I don't post information I don't want made
> public, seemed like it was worth checking into.
>
> But the whole where did it find all those people issue, THAT scares me.  But
> I sure do know a lot of folks who are on it... I mean, it wouldn't have even
> found the folks if they didn't have Facebook accounts, right?
>
> Shari
>
>
>
>>  >
>> Ok, to check and see if FB grabbed your email address book
>> (and it does grab the address book associated with the email addy you
>> use to sign up UNLESS you UNCHECK the box. Sneaky, eh?) you want to
>> sign in to your FB account and click on "Friends" at the top. None of
>> the dropdown choices, just the label "Friends" next to Profile. The
>> second option down should show what FB is scanning to look people up
>> and suggest folks to invite. Turn it off or opt out- I'm not 100% what
>> it says as I opted out from the get-go. Lemme know if you run into any
>> troubleŠ"
>>
>
>
> --
>  Dogs and bears, sports and cars, and patriots t-shirts
>  http://www.gityasome.com
>  WlND0WS and MAClNT0SH shareware
>  http://www.gypsyware.com
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
> preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>



More information about the use-livecode mailing list