5 ms·
It used to be that, in order to get access to someone's rolodex, you'd have to befriend them and do a ton of things with them to maintain that said friendship.
by jmix 14y ago
It used to be that, in order to get access to someone's rolodex, you'd have to befriend them and do a ton of things with them to maintain that said friendship. And even then, you still had to go through them to take advantage of that rolodex of connections, where they would keep rough tabs on who you were and how often you took advantage of these connections, so that they could come back to you when they need to take advantage of your connections in turn.
Looks like these days, someone like Wolfram can get full access for the price of a few cute graphs.
At least, the data that the egomaniacal Wolfram gets his hands on is limited to those people who are easily fooled by shiny gifs.
- jcburnham 14y agoUnless you enable Historical Analytics, we delete your data after one hour. http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html "I’m concerned about the privacy of my account information. What is done with my Facebook data? We value the trust that our users put in us, and are committed to maintaining the highest standards of privacy protection. In order to do analysis on your Facebook data, it is necessary to cache it temporarily on our servers. We acquire the data through the Wolfram Connection app using the Facebook API, respecting whatever privacy settings you and your friends have given to Facebook. Our system is set up to cache your data on our servers for one hour, which allows you to perform queries efficiently. The default behavior is to delete personally identifiable data after one hour."
- businessleads 14y agoSchooled by the Alpha Wolfram.
- jmix 14y agoGreat, then you can respond to some observations and answer some questions: 1. Your FAQ is at odds with your privacy policy (http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html) which states that you can collect and retain Personally Identifying Information. How do you explain the discrepancy? 2. In a conflict between a "FAQ" and Privacy Policy, which one is the officially binding document? Why should I entrust my data to comments made by a pseudonymous user or to something that is called a FAQ? 3. Your privacy policy is subject to change without notice. How can I be assured of any guarantee given that you have this blanket clause? Why would you not offer your users to opt out of any changes that weaken their privacy? Please back up your responses with URLs to legally binding documents that provide strong guarantees we can rely on. Thanks.
- tedunangst 14y agoAlternative strategy: don't use it.
- jcburnham 14y agoI'd be delighted to answer your questions: 1. I don't believe that the two documents are in conflict. Our privacy policy states: "When you use any Wolfram|Alpha application associated with a Third-Party Site ("TPS"), including but not limited to social networking sites such as Facebook, we may collect personally identifiable information about you from the profile you have established at the TPS." When you use Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook, we do access your Facebook data, which you have to authorize through Facebook. That data does contain personally identifiable information. That isn't in conflict with the FAQ. The FAQ states (apologies if this is repetitive): "In order to do analysis on your Facebook data, it is necessary to cache it temporarily on our servers. We acquire the data through the Wolfram Connection app using the Facebook API, respecting whatever privacy settings you and your friends have given to Facebook. Our system is set up to cache your data on our servers for one hour, which allows you to perform queries efficiently. The default behavior is to delete personally identifiable data after one hour." We do collect personally identifiable data from Facebook, but we don't save this data for more than an hour (unless you specifically enable Historical Analytics which tracks changes to your Facebook over time). 2. There shouldn't be any conflict between the FAQ and the Privacy Policy, the FAQ is specific to Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook whereas the Privacy Policy is global to all of Wolfram|Alpha. As far as my being pseudonymous, my name is John Burnham and the above link is to my blog post. Send me an email at johnb@wolfram.com if you like. 3. & 4. Yes, the privacy policy is subject to change, which is standard for many TOS's. I'd like to point out though, that our Privacy Policy also states at the bottom of the page that we haven't changed it since March 2009. If we do change it, you can refresh the page at any time and check the bottom of the page for the date of previous change. What's currently on the web is the current legal document. Links: FAQ http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/fbfaqs.html Privacy Policy http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/privacypolicy.html
- jmix 14y ago
- Permit 14y agoI understand that there are people in the world who have to hide their private data for fear of gov't persecution or extreme judgement from family and their peers. That's not the case for me, my Facebook data is useless. If they kept it, it wouldn't harm me in any way. It's not super secret, or very interesting stuff. So why not give it to them to visualize in an interesting way?
- sparshgupta 14y agoI do completely agree here. I don't know why people prefer hiding their email IDs and friends lists, comments they have made and things they liked. Having said that, I might have to make my privacy settings more strong if the Facebook Graph Search turns something like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5100679 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5100679