A couple weeks ago I posted Social Me being shut down. Today the application was resurrected but it appears that there are still some substantial privacy loopholes. According to theharmonyguy, there is still a substantial privacy flaw which enabled him “to send a message to anyone and make it appear to be from anyone else. This also includes sending flirts, slaps, ‘interested in you’ notes, etc.”
While I’m not sure what the original cause was for a violation it appears that not all issues have officially been resolved. There is a larger problem at hand though. How does Facebook plan on enforcing all of these privacy violations? In theory, their API should simply grant or deny access information to applications based on some sort of pre-determined algorithm. Instead, due to the complexity of the platform, there are substantial loopholes that enable users to violate users’ privacy.
Policing the platform is simply not a scalable solution. In my own opinion Facebook know this and is part of the reason they made Elliot Schrange the head of the Facebook platform. As more privacy violations come to light there is no doubt that more applications will be shut down. I still don’t think this is a scalable solution. Instead, Facebook should have an API which makes it easier to automatically grant and remove access to user data based on automated systems.
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Thanks for the link, Nick. From what I gather (though I hadn't used Social Me previously, so I'm not 100% sure), the privacy problem that shut them down related to their photos feature.
And I completely agree on the need for an API improvement in this regard – Adrienne Felt has a great report on both the problem and a possible solution.
Comment by theharmonyguy — July 16, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Thanks for the link, Nick. From what I gather (though I hadn't used Social Me previously, so I'm not 100% sure), the privacy problem that shut them down related to their photos feature.
And I completely agree on the need for an API improvement in this regard – Adrienne Felt has a great report on both the problem and a possible solution.
Comment by theharmonyguy — July 16, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
and it's gone again … just too funny!
Comment by ned — July 16, 2008 @ 6:49 pm
and it's gone again … just too funny!
Comment by ned — July 16, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
Update: They've implemented a patch some time in the last 10 hours or so. Good work, Social Me developers. I've edited my post accordingly.
Comment by theharmonyguy — July 16, 2008 @ 10:28 pm
Update: They've implemented a patch some time in the last 10 hours or so. Good work, Social Me developers. I've edited my post accordingly.
Comment by theharmonyguy — July 16, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
I am unable to access social me from my pc, is the site down. I can access other fb applications but not this site. Can you tell me why?
Thanks for your prompt reply
Continued blessings
PS: Please be warned that there is a Mrs. Carol Baker (London England),.. posing as a terminally ill cancer patient, and is asking people to get in contact with her lawyer so she can leave them 2.4 million dollars. This is occurring on social me.
Comment by Lorraine Brown — January 28, 2010 @ 8:03 pm
should come back ,given another chance ,,use this site to make frieds ,,please face book bring it back ,please sort the problem out ,was a popular site.bring it back please ,jo
Comment by jo — August 13, 2010 @ 5:21 pm