Dark side of the face

First thing first, I am a Facebook user but I never feel comfortable with it. I joined it because one of my friend, who has similar background as I do, joined it and I thought it's okay to follow. The problem I was worrying about was the personal information I'd put there. Facebook is different from many social web site in the way that real personal information is encouraged to post there. This is where I never feel comfortable with using it.

Then came the "Beacon Incident". In case you are not familiar with it, it is a Facebook feature that broadcast your internet activities to your Facebook friends. For example your friends will know what books you've  bought at Amazon or what movies you have watched if you rented them online. This feature attracted a lot of criticisms because Facebook's default setting of it was "ON". It can be too late even if you've managed to find a way to turn it off. Of course, putting these little pieces of information of you together helps them to profile and target you as a potential money spender.

Consequently I never really trust Facebook at all. Yes, I put some personal information there but stopped doing so for a long time. On top of that, there's discussion of quitting Facebook. It was reported that terminating your Facebook account is ridiculously difficult. It required you to remove every single bit of footprint you left there in order to successfully terminate your account. Say if you are active Facebook member for a few months, it will be hours of cleanup before you can bow out of the social network. Thus putting stuff there is definitely not my top priority.

Once in a while, I saw my friends got a "vampire attack" or "attacking some other friends" via Facebook. As someone who never spend much time there, I have no idea what that is. However the word "attack" should be a taboo on the internet as it frequently associates with hacker attack. Honestly I do not think the "vampire attack" is some hacker activities but it alerts me. Sometimes I also see other little programs or games or even surveys in Chinese. I am not against computer stuff in Chinese but these Chinese programs are obviously not developed by the Facebook administration which is in the States.  To me, it is very unlikely that these user-developed programs get any official Facebook seals. Indeed, given the track record of the Facebook administration, I never trust their approval of other third party programs as well. My rule of thumb on these program is quite simple, say "NO"! (Well I lied. I installed one after several friends' invitations and they seem okay using that particular program.)

So, you can imagine what my reaction to the following news is. Perhaps it is time for me to retreat from it!

黑客程式扮鬼扮馬 Facebook 私隱易泄