facebook

cross-posted at my education blog, Drexel LibWebmaster

This past Sunday, an article on Consumerist.com brought to light a new aspect of Facebook's Terms of Use

"Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed 
an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the 
original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. Now, 
anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way 
they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.  Want to close 
your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do 
whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense 
it if they want." -Chris Walters, Consumerist.com 

According to an article on Wired, Facebook has debuted Facebook Connect, a one-stop sign-in for social networking and interaction sites including Facebook, Digg, and Vimeo that could give OpenID a run for its money.

So what’s the big deal? Like so many other things with Facebook, it’s not as innocent as it seems.

By making a deal with these connectors–several of which include US universities–Facebook is able to gather even more data than you willfully give it every time you log in and “Become a fan” of things. Think those targeted ads are eerily personal now? Just wait a few months.