In the comment section at the bottom of the Songza page, each comment has a photo and a name attached. This is how it looks:
Comments with photos and a name on the Songza site.
As you can see, we get a bit of information from each commenter, always a photo and a name. Why is that? Because you cannot keep your Facebook name and profile photo private, they have to be shared as part of your agreement with Facebook. Just about everything else can be hidden. Just about, those are the key words.
Yesterday, we decided to play with the settings. First, we commented, then we checked the site from another browser, just to see what we could find out from the link to the Facebook profile. Turns out the comment had the name of the poster AND his location.
We headed back to our Facebook profile and hid where the poster was from, simply by setting Location (under Privacy, then About, then Location and Edit) to ‘Only Me’. Back to Songza to refresh the page and see what the comment looked like after the change. We were shocked to see that instead of the commenter’s location, we were now able to see the commenter’s age! Knowing full well that this person had hidden their age, we headed back to Facebook in another browser to check. Sure enough, the year of birth was set to ‘Only Me’. Yes, the day and month were there for friends to see but the person’s actual year of birth was set to ‘Only Me’.
Unfortunately, we cannot duplicate this error today. The point of this post is to show you that, while you think your privacy settings work the way Facebook tells you they do, sometimes they don’t. If you have any piece of information on Facebook that you think is completely private, there are times when it isn’t. In our next post, we’ll offer a solution, one that we’ve suggested before. Stay tuned!
Just when you think that you’ve got your Facebook privacy settings perfectly tuned, a snag pops up. No matter how private you think your Facebook profile is, something always comes up to prove you wrong. This post is about an incident that occurred yesterday so it’s current and, to be frank, it’s troubling. See what you think.
TIP: This post might seem a bit convoluted, maybe confusing, but the point of it is this: Don’t assume that your privacy settings are locked and secure. Facebook treats its users as commodities, not individuals. You’re simply a means for them to make money. Don’t expect fair or even honest treatment.
Yesterday, May 23, 2103, one of our staffers was listening to music on Songza.com. Here’s the site: Songza – Listen to Music
To save time, he signed in with Facebook. That was a mistake, as it turns out. After choosing his playlist, this user noticed that Songza made use of Facebook facepiles. Here is what a facepile looks like:
Technically, this isn’t a Facebook facepile but every user here is from Facebook.
You’ve seen these everywhere around the Internet, right? A box of faces from people who use or like the site. This particular facepile is a bit different from most. When you click on one of the faces, you get the user’s Songza profile, not their Facebook profile. Seems safe enough, right? We clicked on one user. This is what we found:
This is the user’s profile on Songza.
So far, this seems pretty straightforward, fairly innocuous. It’s not. This person’s profile name is cheryl.hatten.3 as you can see at the top. Is this that person’s Songza name or is it her Facebook name? We typed that name into the Facebook search slot and came up with this:
What’s this? A Facebook profile? Sure as hell is.
What do we know about Cheryl? We know her maiden name is Colley, that she probably lives in Lethbridge and that she most likely works for the Alberta Child Care Association. We also have a picture of someone who may be her daughter. Most likely Cheryl knows nothing about this. All she did was sign up for Songza by linking her Facebook account to a fairly popular and, supposedly, reputable website. Songza, in their defence, may not be fully aware of how this particular part of Facebook is being used. These websites are designed and run by professional webmasters who simply follow instructions and, as we all do, fight for their share of visitors.
Not to get too technical here, these facepiles are all part of what is called ‘Social Plugins’. If you want to know more about all of this, here is a link to the Facebook developer’s site: Social Plugins Songza seems to have found a loophole here since their facepile is linked initially to their Songza account, not to the user’s Facebook profile. The only way you can track down the user is to do what we did, search for the user’s name on Facebook. But wait, there’s more to this than meets the eye.
Farther down the playlist page, there is a comment section. Every comment shown on the page is from a Facebook user. Here is one:
Comments with photos. No big deal here, right? You’d be surprised.
Let’s click on one of the photos or names to see where we are lead:
A direct link to Katherine’s Facebook profile.
Here we go again. You can see for yourself what information we can glean from this profile. If you actually go to Songza and click on any photo in the comment section then click on various parts of the profile that comes up, you’ll most likely discover all kinds of things about the person, things that they didn’t feel were worth keeping private. In several cases we found maps which indicated where they lived, what groups they were members of, what networks they were in, who they were following and so on. Honestly, you would be surprised and probably shocked at what bits and pieces of personal information you could glean from all of this. You’d be even more surprised to find that information that you have essentially hidden by making it available to ‘Only Me’, is wide open to the world.
Stay tuned for the next post which examines one particular flaw in the system. This flaw reveals information about you even when you have your privacy settings set to ‘Only Me’. Believe it or not, it’s true.
We got wind of the latest Facebook update earlier this week. After living with it since then, we’re still semi-semi on it. It has some good features but it still seems very busy and cramped. Today’s post will deal with the layout and navigation plus one cool new feature that we’ve discovered.
1.How do you feel? This is silly but Facebook has added a set of smilies to your status updates. Here’s where you start:
Now you can share your REAL feelings! Or simply tell everyone that you’re having a coffee.
Facebook seems pretty happy about their new gimmick, don’t they? Once you get back to your normal status window, clicking on the grey smiley will bring up this:
A wealth of selections to fine tune your mood.
Once you wend your way through these selections and make a choice, then post your status update, this is what your friends see. Clicking on the mood or action you’ve chosen brings up the chance to Like whatever it is that you’re doing, could be drinking coffee or listening to the Beatles.
How many of your friends like coffee? Facebook will tell you.
As you can see, this is just another way for Facebook to get to know you and your friends. Why do they care? Simply because they want to tune their ads to your well-defined demographic. Every time you click like or add a friend or do just about anything on Facebook, your Facebook profile is tuned to a higher level. Think about it. Facebook probably knows you better than your SO! (Significant Other)
2. Post from anywhere: A big part of the new Facebook design isn’t a gimmick, thank goodness. The best part of the change is the ability to post from anywhere on Facebook. Previously, you had to go back to your main Facebook page, your homepage in other words, or your Timeline to post a status update or add a photo or video. Now, you can post from anywhere in Facebook, even if you’re on another person’s page.
This is what you see when you are on your own Facebook page.
See the new button? It’s the word Post up on the top right. Let’s say you are on another Facebook page, a radio station’s page for example. Here’s what happens:
The new status or post menu pop-out.
It doesn’t matter where you are on Facebook, you don’t have to go home to post. Click the word Post and say or share what you will, no problem. We think this is the best part of the new Facebook design, don’t you?
If you have comments or questions on anything related to just about anything, ask us. We’re always looking for new challenges. Better yet, why not Like us on Facebook? Here’s the link:
Facebook’s latest update popped up on one of our profiles this morning. Here’s a preview, just in case you haven’t seen it yet. Trust us, it’s very different. It’s too new to give a real opinion yet but, so far, we’re shocked at the different look. This ain’t your old Facebook, that’s for sure.
Here’s what greeted us this morning:
Coming soon? Looks like it’s already here.
We clicked on the green ‘Give It a Try’ button and this menu came next:
The process takes a while to load. Be patient.
When everything is loaded, click the ‘Take a Look’ button:
You’d better be sitting down. This is a very different Facebook.
First off, Facebook runs you through some explanations of the new GUI (graphic user interface…in other words, what’s in your face now!):
The new Facebook allows you to choose everything or just some feeds. Maybe this is the ‘less clutter’ part.
You decide what is on your main page. Next up is the ‘Easier to get around’ menu. Nothing new here, even though they say it’s different. The look is different, not the clickables:
Everything was on the left side anyway, right? Is this different?
If you need help, Facebook Help is always there. You can even switch back to the old interface. Notice that it says ‘For a while’. Seems like you have to adopt the new look even if you don’t like it. That’s Facebook for you.
For a while, huh? How long before the old is gone forever?
Here’s the total new look, your regular newsfeed; bigger photos, less clutter but a definite feeling of claustrophobia, at least for us. No open spaces, everything is full of stuff. Makes for a very busy look, don’t you think?
When you see your own page, you’ll get a better idea if you like this or not.
We think it’s very cramped, very tight. The space for ads is much larger. We noticed that right away. Facebook didn’t do this for you, they did it for their ads. Here’s what an app page looks like:
Less room for games but more room for ads.
Up on the right, there is the feed menu. Facebook reminds you that you can choose the types of feeds that show up on your main page:
Everything or just one feed. You decide.
That’s the tour so far. We’ve covered the main page differences here but, as time goes by, we’ll share any other differences that we find. Navigation is very different. If you want to get to your Timeline, you have to click on your own profile photo. Once you’re there, you’ll see bigger ads on the right and lots of open space. We wish the open space was on the newsfeed page instead of the huge photos and clutter. You’ll see a very busy look on your new Facebook, that’s for sure. Share your thoughts with us, let us know what you think.
Please Note: Since we wrote this review, ‘Download FB Album mod’ has changed its settings and asks form more permissions than we feel is safe. Here are the permissions it is asking for now:
Too many permission for a Facebook downloading app.
There is no reason why this extension has to access ALL of your data on websites, that would include passwords, by the way. Nor is there any reason for it to access your other tabs or browsing activity. It seems that the creators are involved in data mining, selling your information to advertisers, etc. Beware! We’re going back to Fotobounce.
We’ve talked about this mod before (read that post here: Download Facebook Albums) but since then, the creator of the software has given us a bit more information about it. The basic or Normal option works fine but sometimes you might want to adjust some of the settings. Here’s how you can do that.
1. This mod only works in Google Chrome. As we’ve said many times, you should be using Chrome anyway. Whatever you do, don’t use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Use Chrome or Firefox. We recommend Chrome.
2. Head over to the Chrome app store. Chrome Store
3. Add the ‘Download FB Album mod’ to Chrome.
4. Open your Facebook account and find an album that you want to download. Up on the top right of your url bar, you will see a new icon. Click it. This will begin the process, after you’ve chosen the settings that you want. Here is the icon:
This icon is only visible when you are viewing your Facebook pages.
5. We discussed the normal settings last time. Basically, you go to the album, click on the icon, choose Normal and a new tab opens. Press CTRL and S at the same time and the page is downloaded complete with all of the photos in a separate folder. This process could take some time, depending on how many photos are in the album and how fast your Internet connection is.
6. Here are the choices available from the drop-down menu:
Normal works fine for us but there are other choices as well.
7. If the album you want to download is large, and there are many large albums on Facebook, you might want to select ‘Without auto load’. If you choose this option, only the photos that are loaded will be saved. Some albums have thousands of photos in them. If you don’t choose the ‘Without auto load’ option, the download would take a very long time, if it finished at all.
8. Some albums have nice descriptions beside each photo. If you click ‘Load Captions’, those words will be saved with the photo.
9. If the download gets interrupted, you can choose ‘Load from specific id’. This is good for large albums, just in case the download stops after a few hundred photos. Your download will start from where it left off before the interruption. There is also the choice ‘Large Album Optimize’ which is good for massive photo albums.
Those are some of the choices available to you. We’ve tried to explain some of them here but you can always check out the official details on the download page.
Thanks for reading! Here are the official comments on the mod, as of May 13, 2013:
Download Steps:
1. Click the Page Actions button in any album/profile
2. Select your option:
●1 -> Normal Download: try to autoload all photos
●2 -> Download without auto load: only output loaded photos( For large album )
●3 -> Load from specific id:
useful when autoload stopped due to error and want to load after the last photo grabbed.
( For very large album to optimize loading speed )
( e.g. 500th -> end not 1st -> end )
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=123456 <- Enter this number
● -- Load Comments & Friend tag ( Take longer time )
● -- Large Album Optimize ( Save the page as usual )
● -- Compress data ( save more data for option 4 )
Fast: lzw, Extreme: lzma+lzw. Try none/fast if crash occur.
●4 -> Export last album ( may not work for large album )
3. Save the new page opened. ( Press "Ctrl+S" & save with "Web Page, Complete" type )
**ChangeName is used to rename file name to (ascending) order
Steps to change name:
1. Click 'ChangeName'->'Ok' to reverse photo's order
2. 'Auto Zip all' -> Wait & Done! (html is packed inside zip)
OR
3. Save the page with images -> Drag photos you needed
4. Click 'Change Name'
5. 'Zip all files' -> Unzip & Done!
(6. If you want to view generated page offline,save the HTML in zip again to embed the script )
p.s. Please 'Reset' before download another album
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
