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Fooled by Facebook?

Posted in Digital, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs August 14th, 2007 by Melinda Varley

Never mind the future of Facebook or what you can do with it - from uploading photos, to poking your friends and throwing virtual food at them - maybe its time to ask what is the underlying reason it exists and how did it manage to secure $13 million in funding (£7.5 million)?

On the social networking site, its policy states: “Facebook’s Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect and use the personal information you decide to share, and help you make informed decisions when using Facebook, located at facebook.com and its directly associated domains (collectively, “Facebook” or “Website”).”

So was Facebook’s primary reason for existence to gather information from its users in a ‘fun’ environment that everyone can benefit from?

According to internet conspiracy theories, Facebook’s investors all appear to have links to In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency, BBN Technologies, a research and development firm known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what is popularly known as the internet as well as the US Department of Defense.

Most disturbingly it has strong links with the Information Awareness Office (IAO), which is an organisation set up to gather information about everyone in a centralised location including internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.

The relationship between Facebook, the Pentagon, the CIA, the IOA is undeniably a little scary, but this is how the social network justifies it: 

“When you visit Facebook you provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected by us and Web Site use information collected by us as you interact with our Web Site.

“When you register with Facebook, you provide us with certain personal information, such as your name, your email address, your telephone number, your address, your gender, schools attended and any other personal or preference information that you provide to us.”

How they use this information is up to them and most of it ends up at third party companies - who then turn it into marketing reports by using the Pulse application on the network, which plots on graphs information about you and your networks and groups.

Further attempts by Facebook to gather yet more information about you is the added Rebtel feature that will launch on the site tomorrow. It requires yours and your friends’ mobile telephone numbers and offers a Skype’ like service.

So is Facebook really a service that allows us to keep in contact with friends, reunite with long lost pals and find out the truth about our Saturday night dates, or is it the best planned modern marketing and data capture tool that ever existed?

Click here to read the feature on Facebook on the mad.co.uk homepage