facebook and hard drive privacy

PeakOutput

right so im pretty sure im right about this but i just want to be sure before i guarantee him im right

there is no way that facebook scans your harddrive for your musical and video tastes and then uses that information to target advertisements for you and that any ads you are shown on facebook are solely targetted to you from the information you have put on facebook?

am i right or is he right insisting that they have scanned his hard drive and are using that information to target ads about his favourite bands at him

DOC09UNAM

PeakOutput wrote: »

right so im pretty sure im right about this but i just want to be sure before i guarantee him im right

there is no way that facebook scans your harddrive for your musical and video tastes and then uses that information to target advertisements for you and that any ads you are shown on facebook are solely targetted to you from the information you have put on facebook?

am i right or is he right insisting that they have scanned his hard drive and are using that information to target ads about his favourite bands at him

He probably filled out a few bands under the "music" part of his biography.

coylemj

DOC09UNAM wrote: »

He probably filled out a few bands under the "music" part of his biography.

Or pressed 'like' on his friends musical favourites.

GarRo247

Facebook can do it, and probably have, but you cant say for definate that they did. Facebook has admitted that is sells your personal data to advertisers before, Unless you disable network access to your Hard Drive they can do whatever they want with it.

leeroybrown

Your web browser won't allow a website to just randomly scan your hard drive. It's be a massive security problem if it did.

DOC09UNAM

GarRo247 wrote: »

Facebook can do it, and probably have, but you cant say for definate that they did. Facebook has admitted that is sells your personal data to advertisers before, Unless you disable network access to your Hard Drive they can do whatever they want with it.

No, no they can't.

They sell your information that you willingly put up, they CANNOT search your hard-drive at all.

PeakOutput

ye you basically said everything i said with the caveat that if they do work out a deal with apple about ping then they could well have access to the music on your harddrive but it would be apple that owuld be doing the scanning not facebook

here is my argument pretty much for anyone who cares if you see anything wrong feel free to correct me

I know you arent going to believe but as someone who studies digital media and has alot of modules on social networking i can tell you that there is no way for them to scan your hard drive without you knowing it.

a web browser will not just let a webpage scan your hard drive and it would be immediately flagged as a major security flaw in the browser if it did.

itunes genius caused alot of controversy when they integrated it into itunes and they had to offer an opt out button as a result, the same with their new ping 'music social network'. when ping was initially set up for two days you could link it with your facebook account if you wanted to but then facebook itself decided to kill this link as it was causing too much traffic to their network(their reasoning) and they are now negotiating with apple to let apple use facebooks api's(so they can make money out of it, probably the real reason)

everything facebook does every day is relentlessly scrutinised by privacy advocates and anyone with a passing interest in internet security i can guarantee you that if they were scanning peoples hard drives we would know all about it

the average user of facebook provides more then enough information voluntarily for them to very very accurately target ads to you based on your interests and your friends interests

i can just picture you now shaking your head at the bad grammar and lack of punctuation in this comment

Dude111

leeroybrown wrote:

Your web browser won't allow a website to just randomly scan your hard drive. It's be a massive security problem if it did.

No and your FIREWALL should block the attempt also!!

Gator

You really need to formulate your megabands to be sure

Cuddlesworth

Dude111 wrote: »

No and your FIREWALL should block the attempt also!!

That's not what a firewall does. It blocks access requests from untrusted sources and random access requests. Facebook or any site which you have established a connection is exempt from this to make your browsing possible.

Facebook can see everything your friend has done on the site. They can also see web pages he visited before the site including google search query's. The logical aim of both Google and Facebook and similar sites is full and persistent analysis of your browsing habits both within and outside of their own domain for effective and targeted advertising.

A good example of this would be the current website. Google ads at the top knows what my email is because I'm logged into it right now on another tab. So its aware of what particular forums I visit and can now both inside this site and outside of it, target my interests and hobby's as it understands them to sell me ****. And company's who want to sell lap this up and direct and effective advertising has been a holy grail for a long time.