We Are Being Watched

I have had my concerns about Facebook for some time now. There are a couple of games on there that I like to play which is why I had not deleted my page. I do a lot of thinking when I play these games, I mull over work issues, plan, dream and occasionally fantasise. Other than that I don’t use FB very much. Things I don’t like -the status thing, it makes me cringe, the cryptic ones ‘Tom is contemplating the crockery’ just as much as the mundane ‘Laura is so exhausted, gym was tough tonight’ and the only useful purpose it has is for sharing photos, video clips and music (although I often spend Saturday mornings dreading the photos that are going to be uploaded by friends from the night before – why can they never get my good side?). I have friends whose partners complain about the amount of time they spend ‘chatting’ on line and as for the comments, well some of them expose their writers as ignorant, racist or sexist. The ugly face of FB. If you are not on the ball and regularly check your security settings you could be sharing more than you think. For instance every posting you make from your smart phone also includes your postcode ‘Sandra is in SW3 7YT' if you don't uncheck a box buried in the small print.

So tonight I deactivated my account. I unfaced myself. Debooked. What made me make this monumental decision? The fact that I am being watched. And how did I found out that I was being watched?

On Sunday I decided to buy new lampshades for the living room having lived with the orange balloons for far too long. So I logged on and searched the B&Q website and looked at a few. If you click on an image you can zoom in and get a really good view of the items, along with product information. I then had a look on the Argos website and even (I am embarrassed to say) checked out the reviews. Yes, the reviews on the various lampshades. There were pages of the things. People had taken the time to write ‘excellent value for money’ and ‘bigger than I expected’. I said to my friend G that I felt a bit of a saddo checking out the reviews on lampshades. Holidays yes, hairdressers certainly, but lampshades? G reassured me that he researches everything he buys. As I always thought the man has too much time on his hands despite having three kids under the age of 8 I wasn’t that surprised. I imagine him sitting hunched over the lap top as his wife J entertains the children by juggling, singing and pulling faces and, as she breathlessly looks over at him with a sweating pleading face, he shrugs and says ‘I’m a bit busy right now love, we really need to replace our toothbrushes and I’m near to making the final decision, just another twenty three reviews to read then I’m all yours’. Anyway I digress. This was on Sunday. Today, while playing ‘Starries’ on FB what do I see at the top of the FB page? The lampshades I had viewed on the B&Q website! So how does what I looked at on the B&Q website end up on the FB page? What is the point of clearing history if this sort of thing happens? More worryingly I 'reserved' the items which meant giving my postcode and mobile number. Who has this information and who are they sharing it with?

Facebook hit by new security concerns over privacy settings
By Dan Raywood
Users of Facebook could be giving away their personal information due to the way the website's privacy settings work. A team from the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory has showed how Facebook public profiles could be used to find out personal information despite appearing to contain only a few details. In the paper, titled ‘Eight Friends Are Enough', the team pointed out that it was possible to reconstruct a user's friends list in a way that could allow marketers,governments and even criminals to understand the private relationships between different people.
It claimed that a search for a specific Facebook user will display every user's name, photo and eight friendship links. Affiliations with organisations, causes, or products are also listed. The paper's author Joseph Bonneau, said: "This is quite a bit of information given away by a feature many active Facebook users are unaware of. Indeed, it's more information than the Facebook's own privacy policy indicates is given away. "When the feature was launched in 2007, every over-18 user was automatically opted-in, as have been new users since then. You can opt out, but few people do - out of more than 500 friends of mine, only three had taken the time to opt out. It doesn't help that most users are unaware of the feature, since registered users don't encounter it." The paper further claimed that the public listings are designed to be indexed by search engines. In the team's own experiments, it was able to download over 250,000 public listings per day using a desktop PC and a fairly crude Python script. Bonneau said: "For a serious data aggregator getting every user's listing is no sweat. So what can one do with 200 million public listings? Facebook's public listings give us a random sample of the social graph, leading to some interesting exercises in graph theory. As we describe in the paper, it turns out that this sampled graph allows us to approximate many properties of the complete network surprisingly well." "This result leads to two interesting conclusions. First, protecting a social graph is hard. Consistent with previous results, we found that giving away a seemingly small amount can allow much information to be inferred. It's also been shown that anonymising a social graph is almost impossible."

"Second, Facebook is developing a track record of releasing features and then being surprised by the privacy implications, from Beacon to NewsFeed and now Public Search. Analogous to security-critical software, where new code is extensively tested and evaluated before being deployed, social networks should have a formal privacy review of all new features before they are rolled out (as, indeed, should other web services which collect personal information). Features like public search listings shouldn't make it off the drawing board." Facebook claimed that its publicly searchable pages were only introduced after an extensive privacy review. A spokesperson told the Guardian: "Public search listings are a way for those users who wish to allow people to find them in search engines to share limited elements of their Facebook profile. Their creation, continued presence, and the particular elements contained within them are entirely configurable by users. "Changes as to the presence or content of a public search listing may be made easily by any user on the privacy settings page."

Do you have a Blackberry? A smart phone? The following report has been denied by RIM … still it is food for thought.

BlackBerry to allow Indian government to monitor messages
Research In Motion's move could permit officials to lawfully access corporate customers' communications

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) is ready to allow Indian authorities access to the emails and messages of its most high-profile corporate customers, according to a ministry official in the country.The secure communications of India's 400,000 BlackBerry owners could soon be lawfully accessed by government officials, the unnamed interior minister said, adding that RIM is preparing for "providing live access" to customers' encrypted servers. "They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers," India's the Mint business newspaper quoted an unnamed Indian ministry official as saying. "Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server]," the official told the paper. However, the threat of a blackout for the 400,000 BlackBerry owners in India still looms after months of terse, but largely fruitless, negotiations between RIM and India's telecoms ministry. The Delhi government has opened up a front against Google, Skype and the many mobile carriers operating in the country, citing security fears over the level of encryption employed by the companies. Officials suspect the culprits of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which 116 people died, used encrypted BlackBerry devices. RIM today said: "RIM has once again found it necessary to address certain media reports in India containing inaccurate and misleading statements and information based on unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources. "All our discussions with the government of India have been and continue to be productive and fully consistent with the four core principles we follow in addressing lawful access matters around the world. Any suggestion to the contrary is false." The company added that any "lawful access" negotiations would abide by four principles: that it was legal, that there would be "no greater access" to BlackBerry services than other services, that there would be no changes in the security for Enterprise customers, and it would not make "specific deals for specific customers".

Last month RIM escaped a ban on the BlackBerry communications of its 500,000 customers in the United Arab Emirates, while Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Lebanon have also raised concerns about the Canadian company's security policies.
The chief concern of India, which is the world's second largest mobile phone market behind China, surrounds communication passed between corporate BlackBerry devices using Enterprise servers. Organisations using BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES) host their own server and encryption key – which only it can use to unscramble encrypted emails and messages – thereby offering a higher level of security.
RIM has publicly remained defiant, insisting that it would not offer special deals to specific countries and that security measures for its Enterprise customers would not be compromised. Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that there will be more than 600,000 BlackBerry sales in India this year and that India's smart phone market will have reached approximately 12m – a figure forecast to grow to 40m by the end of 2015.
The increasing popularity of smartphones running Google's Android operating system has eroded RIM's grip on the corporate communications market in 2010. RIM's most recent smart phone release, the Bold 9780, has failed to make an impression on consumers or traders since its launch in October.

Use Google as a search engine? Home page? Then Google knows all about you, what you like, what you buy, where you shop, where you holiday, maybe even your sexual preferences. It knows if you are worried about your weight or that little rash on your elbow. It certainly knows your political views. It knows the last restaurant you ate in and the last major purchase you made. It knows if you are married, single, gay, straight. Use a mobile? The phone company knows where you are. It knows who your friends are and someone somewhere in that company will know if you are having an affair and if you are one of the twats voting for Widdecombe and Wagner. If you use a loyalty card in the supermarket even Tesco knows all about you too. They can even predict your weekly shop. Amazon knows what books you read in bed, what music is playing in your car. Texting? Instant messaging? Pinging? Poking? Those words are out there. Emailing? Blogging? More words, thoughts, ideas, words mundane, words profound and words personal. Hundreds of words revealing all. Hell, Google, Yahoo, Tesco and Amazon know more about you than your nearest and dearest.

Before FB let you leave you have to give them a reason. This is compulsory. It lists several and adds a comment box. Did I make a clean break? No, I didn't want FB to know I was leaving it forever so I chose the 'I need a break' option. The 'it's not you, it's me' reason. It was harder than breaking up with a lover. There are things I'm going to miss. The friends, the camaraderie, the odd fun and games. The company. I won't miss the hold it has, the time is demands, the constant bombardment of information and the questions. Best they don't know I'm not coming back. Unless they read this of course.

I am going into hiding.