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Facebook: You’re Not the Customer, You’re the Product

By Barton Gellman | October 15, 2010 | +

Man, I love Bruce Schneier. Here’s a pithy, pitch-perfect summary of your relationship with Facebook:

Social networking websites are “deliberately killing privacy” in order to make a profit, according to renowned security author Bruce Schneier.

Speaking at the RSA Europe security conference in London on Tuesday, the BT Counterpane CTO cited Facebook as the most heinous example of social networks cashing in on users’ openness toward sharing personal details. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re Facebook’s customer, you’re not – you’re the product,” Schneier said. “Its customers are the advertisers.”

The whole article is here. I don’t say I never use Facebook, but I often think about closing my account.

More on Techland:

Skype Integrates Facebook For Windows Users

Bing Gets Facebook Integration: Be Careful What You ’Like’

Facebook Finally To Create A Dislike Function… Sort Of

Related Topics: Counterspy, privacy, security, Counterspy, Facebook, News
  • thebonafortuna

    Really? Why close the thing? It’s a great way to communicate with people. Just assume everything you do on there is open to the world – because it is – and don’t post personal information. Problem solved.

    I have no problem with Facebook making money from advertisers; that’s why they exist. Just like TechLand makes money from advertisers, as they draw eyeballs (like mine) from across the internet. I have no problem with TechLand making money because I read the content here. Why would you have a problem with Facebook making money on what you voluntarily choose to share?

  • gminnj

    @thebonafortuna, can you explain how “It’s a great way to communicate with people”?

    No sarcasm. Just an honest question. Thanks.

  • thebonafortuna

    Of course – and as a disclaimer, I hardly ever use it myself – but whenever I do login, there seems to be quite a few people posting updates (correct term?), and I often see lots of comments to those updates. A back and forth, I guess similar to an IM, but open to everybody, with lots of people jumping into the “conversation”. On top of that, it offers an IM client – although that’s disabled on my end.

    Is that different from e-mail? I would argue yes, it is. E-mail is great for communication. IM is good for conversations. Phone calls are OK for communication. Hell, even text messages work alright as a communication tool. Facebook is just another platform to communicate with people, even if that communication is sometimes one sided.

  • http://productcommunity.wordpress.com Building A Community

    Just be careful with those posts. It may seem innocent enough to post a picture of your spouse in front of some landmark and say “we are loving it in Paris!!”

    Should your account be hacked (or the account of one of your friends; there are free tools that make this easy), it won’t be long before they start receiving spam claiming to be from you saying “We got mugged in Paris, and they took our passports, can you wire us $2,500?”, since they know that you are in Paris, they believe it and wire the money and then of course, the bad guys get that persons bank info, and the identity theft continues.

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