Facebook names alleged Koobface gang
Facebook has taken the unusual step of making public the names and personal details of five men it believes to be behind the Koobface computer worm that attacked hundreds of thousands of computers through the social network’s profiles.
The alleged gang appear to be living in St Petersburg and were tracked by Facebook and a team of researchers over three years.
UK heading for a fight over cookies
The rhetoric over cookie legislation ratcheted up a notch on Tuesday, as the Information Commissioner’s Office told companies they “must try harder” in working out how to comply with the new rules on online privacy.
Christopher Graham, the commissioner, suggested that very few companies had yet come up with ways to get permission from online users to collect their details, as required by the new law.
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Facebook users can rest easier. This week, the social networking site settled a privacy complaint from the Federal Trade Commission.
While Mark Zuckerberg admitted “a bunch of mistakes” had been made in the past, he wrote that the company is “committed to being transparent”. But skeptics questioned whether sharing information on Facebook and user privacy can coexist.
On the heels of launching a series of new products that has Facebook users spilling more details of their lives online, the company has now announced a series of new ad products that give advertisers more information about their prospective customers and expands the tools advertisers can use to turn users’ ordinary Facebook activities into paid endorsements.
Spotify has been forced to introduce new privacy features to its music streaming software after complaints by users about its Facebook integration.
It’s the first climbdown by an app maker after last week’s f8 introduced “frictionless sharing”, whereby every song listened to is shared on Facebook by default.
Google moves to tighten Circles privacy controls
Well, that was fast. Just 48 hours after the FT flagged a loophole that “resharing” on Google+ could in a couple of clicks make a “limited” post visible to anyone, Google has announced a fix will be in place early next week.
The first Google+ privacy flaw
A big part of Google’s pitch for its new social networking service is that it’s easier for users to manage who sees what they post on the site.
Privacy has never been a strong suit for either Facebook or Google, but the Circles feature on Google+ is a simpler way to categorise groups of friends than is available on Facebook. Users are given the option of which Circles of contacts to share a piece of content with, each and every time they post something. Google has today been able to bathe in the rare warmth of widespread praise for its approach to privacy.
But this is a beta and there are going to be bugs. One appears to be in Google+’s “resharing” feature, which works a little like a retweet on Twitter or reblogging on Tumblr.
Facebook admits its PR firm briefed against Google
Facebook has admitted that it hired a public-relations firm in the US with the aim of placing stories critical of Google’s approach to privacy in the media.
The embarrassing disclosure is the latest sign of the increasing rivalry between Facebook and Google, as they go head-to-head over internet users’ time and advertisers’ budgets.
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