Facebook Responds to Privacy Concerns, Says They are Better than Gmail
Facebook Responds to Privacy Concerns, Says They are Better than Gmail
Posted 09/24/2009 at 1:52pm
| by Jason Barry
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The folks over at The Register got a response from Facebook about all the flak they’ve been catching about their Mailbox API. Facebook says that their new API is less intrusive than Gmail’s scanning efforts.
Gmail is known to sift through an email and provide targeted ads depending on what it finds. Facebook claims they will white list approved applications and the user will still need to explicitly grant the application access to their information. Also according to Facebook, the fact that they don’t stand to make money (via ads) means their effort is less litigious than Gmail’s.
They offered that the potential applications of the API might outweigh the risks for some users. One likely use will be to expose your Facebook inbox through POP, making it accessible on devices in a similar way as email applications.
It is still debatable whether it is advantageous to give developers access to potentially sensitive data within Facebook. Which do you think is worse: Facebook’s mailbox API or Gmail’s email scanning?
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Yusonice
September 25, 2009 at 3:24am
It doesnt matter. google is already being very nice by offering good email service. if they want o scan email, it doesnt matter. mine would be like what.. one in a billion?
COMMANDER_COOK
September 24, 2009 at 7:51pm
I don't see what the big deal is with gmail scanning mail. When you use gmail, your email is being handled by their servers anyway, same with other sevices.
ogremustcrush
September 24, 2009 at 4:44pm
The difference is that with gmail, any scanning of personal information and the serving of ads is done by google itself. No third parties have access to it, they just bid on keywords and google serves up their ads if your email contains them. With Facebook, this is an API we are talking about, a specific method for a third party application to access the data and potentially use it for nefarious purposes. Facebook applications by default already have access to a rediculous amount of personal info, the thought of them also getting to scan your email is kind of scary.
Tekzel
September 25, 2009 at 12:59pm
I got quite a good belly laugh at Facebook comparing their opening up Facebook profiles to third party apps to Google's scanning of emails for targeted adsense ads. Then, I remembered that the vast majority of people who read that wouldn't understand that it's complete bullshit. That is marketing in a nutshell: lie convincingly.
As for me, I have no problem with Google scanning my emails, I "trust" them. Facebook, not so much. I would have even less trust of third party apps on there. Not that it really matters to me, as I have as little to do with social networks as humanly possible.
bikerbub
September 24, 2009 at 3:36pm
i don't really care that facebook can see my stuff. if i post it online, it should be available to them, it's their website. It's when they say that they can do whatever they want forever that bugs me. if i run for president one day, they could use my pictures and posts for dirt. I think people should be able to delete their posts from a certain date to the present status, or all of the posts up untill a certain date. That way, facebook could relieve some of its memory consumption, and users could delete posts that arn't relavant anymore.
dreamsburnred
September 24, 2009 at 3:25pm
Facebook definity has the worse side of the privacy box. With friends, and apps, and ads...its horrible.
And I have absolutly no problems with gmail scanning my email for ads/where the location of the email came from.
DBR - http://dreamsburnred.blogspot.com
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