Google have a similar service named Friend Connect, launched earlier. Friend Connect does the same thing as Facebook Connect, but only for users of social networks Orkut and Plaxo.
The Dark Side
I am a bit afraid of using this service. Why? The act of leaving a comment here and there (blogs and other websites) is telling the “Facebook brain” which topics you like. In other words, you just told the system a little bit about yourself. Now imagine with Facebook Connect, such information coming from dozens of Facebook Connect partners websites.
Each service adds a few more data about you inside the “Facebook brain” and Facebook will know all activities inside the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook can use all these information to build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. These informations can be used to target yourself with specific advertisements based on your interests. Just hope that Facebook will respect our privacy. Anyway, I like Facebook a lot.
Forget about these scary things now, I will just give an overview of how it works:
Overview
1. Look for the icon below on any Facebook Connect partners websites:
2. Sign in using your Facebook user ID and password.
During login the user can authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.
3. After login, you can engage in your activities at the third party website. For example add comments, post reviews and among others.
4. Dynamic Privacy, users can control who can see what pieces of their information – the same rules that they set on Facebook can be applied through all your Facebook Connect partners websites using Facebook dynamic privacy controls.
5. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.
6. Finally share all your activites, actions and information with your friends on Facebook.
What is Facebook ?
Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 120 million active users worldwide.
Please take a moment to vote:
Hi there.
I didn’t read all of TFA but I’d like to mention that it is up to the individual to act smart and divulge information online which may not compromise him. Reading the online agreement is a must.
There is no dark side – only dumb people.
There’s a bright side – university networks rely on social networking – linking features such as events to the e-mail notification system of blackboard. I use FB more often to communicate to my mates online than the blackboard discussion board and rooms.
I fear that the whole facebook is collecting information about everyone, but its not only facebook, even google does this through its normal web search.
For those who are not aware, there is something called web history at the top right corner of ur google page. All of your searched terms are collected, just imagine!
If someday, google wants to know who searched for “yashvin” for instance, it wont be much difficult:
Select * from web_history where term = “%yashvin%”
or something like that lol
Nice post…
@Yashvin: Thanks, yeah you are right, Google already knows more about us than the “National Security Agency” ever will.
Google records everything they can (for all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration) and don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret.
According to me, Google is a privacy time bomb, just have to wait for a Google privacy disaster to happen. Google, Orkut, YouTube … fans beware(lol). Anyway, I am still a big fan of Google
.
“Anyway, I am still a big fan of Google
.”
So, you do admit that you’re dumb.
LOL
@ Shah: I did not admit anything. I just said that I am a fan of Google(I like and use most of Google products), that’s all. Anyway, I know that I am not dumb, say whatever you want, you are just losing your time. By the way, thanks for your visit.
You’re welcome.
“Anyway, I know that I am not dumb, say whatever you want, you are just losing your time”
I’ll write the following because I want to, despite the lost in time LOL.
Richard Stallman of The Free Software Foundation stated in an interview that “Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.
If you’re a FAN of say Google or any ‘cloud-excited’ company out there, you’re dumb and an ass.
What are your views on Google Friend Connect? Your blog seems to be nicely setup. Nice to hear a pal from UTM.
@ Shah: If you think so, I can’t do nothing. I don’t understand what you are trying to point out ? What’s your problem if I’m a fan of Google or not?
You know what, you think you are too intelligent but its you who are dumb and you don’t even know it!! That’s what I call a true idiot. You one of those peoples with a ton of opinions but no real knowledge.
@ Ashesh: Thanks for your visit and comment. Google Friend Connect was originally conceived to be more like Facebook Connect, in terms of plugging social network friend relationships and interactions with other sites across the web.
Friend Connect lets you sign in using your Google, AOL, OpenID or Yahoo identity. For the time being, you can only access information about your friends in Google Talk, Orkut and Plaxo. Google will surely try to integrate Friend Connect in more websites which use the OpenSocial social network application standard.
These “connect” products makes it simple for users to instantly interact with websites they like to visit. Additionally, websites that use Friend Connect become OpenSocial containers, capable of running applications created by the OpenSocial developer community. These products will encourage more user interaction across the web.
“I don’t understand what you are trying to point out ?”
Exactly my point.
You are clearly showing a lack of intelligence with your personal attacks. Anyway, you are free to say whatever you like.
[...] interesting post on What is Facebook Connect and the Dark side of it can be found in this post from a UTM [...]
huh