In the wake of Facegate, Facebook France has been called to answer to the data watchdog CNIL “The national commission for the liberty of data.” The demand was made by ministers Arnaud Montebourg & Fleur Pellerin, in charge of industrial renewal and the digital economy, respectively. Facebook is being asked to address claims that private facebook messages from 2009 and earlier have been posted publicly on user’s walls; the claim originated in France, and has since become a global scandal, which fell very conveniently on MySpace’s latest teaster video for the revamp of its site.
Facebook has actively denied that there is a bug; however, Facebook is well known to make swift changes in order to test, grabbing isolated subgroups of users. If this is the case, they will have poorly chosen the French market as a place to test anything related to data privacy, as France & the rest of Europe have been constantly looking for grounds to pushback against Facebook. In fact, Facebook recently announced it would be disabling it’s facial recognition software and database in Europe after pressure from European privacy groups.
Facebook has always pushed the limits on privacy – changing everyone’s default email to @facebook.com, defaulting profiles to public, etc. – and this time they may actually have pushed too far. Should it come out that users’ private messages were made public in France, there will be a lot of backtracking for Facebook in terms of privacy liberties.
Facebook will meet with the CNIL today, and while it’s not clear whether Mark Zuckerberg himself will appear for the meeting, an article in the DailyMail seems to suggest that the theoretical bug may be tied to Facebook’s recent rollouts in advanced search capabilities.
Facebook called to answer for its crimes in France
Digital sovereignty
There was no bug to start with. It was just people who forgot that prior to 2009, there were no comments or chat messaging, so people were writing on each other’s walls.
As simple as that.
Please don’t talk about what ignore! My PERSONAL (it means PRIVATE) messages were available. I did not write on the wall, it was not a comment, it was a PERSONAL (it means private) message to ONE person, not a public message, not a comment, not a status. Shame on you, Facebook!
Can you prove it? If you have proof that they were private messages, I’d love to see it. [email protected]
I had to desactivate my account, it was horrible…
lol, so no proof, as all fags saying there was a bug.
lol, so no proof, as all fags saying there was a bug.
I had to desactivate my account, it was horrible…
Can you prove it? If you have proof that they were private messages, I’d love to see it. [email protected]
I’d be curious to know how you sent a private message with private messaging actually NOT implemented in 2009.
Please don’t talk about what ignore! My PERSONAL (it means PRIVATE) messages were available. I did not write on the wall, it was not a comment, it was a PERSONAL (it means private) message to ONE person, not a public message, not a comment, not a status. Shame on you, Facebook!
I agree. What people are prepared to say on others walls has changed dramatically since 2008! Now when you look back at them you think, “noway did I say that publicly!” … I would compare this to old teenage photos and thinking “Why the hell did I think that hair cut was cool?”.
Also the exact same story came out of Finland last year
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mikropc.net%2Fkaikki_uutiset%2Farticle742440.ece [Edit: and it was proved incorrect]
I agree. What people are prepared to say on others walls has changed dramatically since 2008! Now when you look back at them you think, “noway did I say that publicly!” … I would compare this to old teenage photos and thinking “Why the hell did I think that hair cut was cool?”.
Also the exact same story came out of Finland last year
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mikropc.net%2Fkaikki_uutiset%2Farticle742440.ece [Edit: and it was proved incorrect]
There was no bug to start with. It was just people who forgot that prior to 2009, there were no comments or chat messaging, so people were writing on each other’s walls.
As simple as that.