January 28, 2006

Scandal At Facebook And Myspace? -- Bloggers examine social networks, and much of the evidence seems to point at Myspace and Facebook adware and spyware. Newsfilterish, but these sites affect many people.
posted by VertexOfLife 18 years ago
  • People are surprised by this? When I signed up for facebook, I did it knowing they would sell my information. Basically, I sold my information for access to many of my classmates whom I normally would not know. People really need to learn where they can expect privacy and where they should not.
  • what does selling your information to marketers have to do with adware and spyware???
  • Once again, not having any friends or wanting to make new ones works in my favor! MWA-HAHAHA! If only I had someone to share this victory with...
  • You have me, Layne; I'm in the same boat. But I'm not giving you my email address.
  • Calling Facebook and Myspace ad/spy-ware is stretching the definition a little. *snap* Ok a lot. Wikinews quoted a little from this Economist article:   "As an internet business, MySpace.com considers itself to be an entirely new breed ... The community has grown virally, with no advertising." And then asks this question:   However, this leaves one crucial question unanswered: without advertising, how did the site become popular in the first place? Which the chosen quotes answers directly - it was word of mouth.
  • The Attorney General documented at least ten separate web sites from which Intermix or its agents were downloading spyware, providing either no warning or other misleading disclosures. In this way, Intermix and its agents downloaded more than 3.7 million programs to New Yorkers alone, and tens of millions more to users across the nation. Intermix also went to great lengths to protect the spyware and adware it secretly installed. The programs were hidden in unlikely locations on the computer and could not be removed through a computer's "Add/Remove" function. In addition, the programs omitted "un-install" applications, and even reinstalled themselves after being deleted.
  • MySpace & FaceBook are not anytype of Ware. They are just hooked up with/funded by people and companies that deal in this stuff. At least that is what I got from the wiki article. The websites may have made money from selling the detailed information they collect, but aren't spy/ad-ware in their own right.