Grump

[Ragnar]

(sigh) I don't find the new update to be really compelling. In fact, it's the first one in a long while that I really think is deserving of complaint.

Adding a bunch of people you don't know as friends is generally a really bad idea in Facebook. The site leaks data all over the place; when you add an app it collects data about you and about your friends that publish data. I added people in order to get my Army up to 501, and while I've kept a few of them (notably people who comment regularly on the boards here), I've cut 490 of them back out of my friends list for precisely that privacy concern.

The previous alchemy updates were bad enough; neither of the rewards were particularly compelling, so I've picked up a few but I haven't cared so much that the friends list has been cleaned out. Now with the Dragon update, there's an entire block of the game that is effectively walled off until the 10 friends I have that actually play this game send the items around.

Unless I change all my privacy settings again, go through a week of re-adding friends on my Army list, blocking all of the new applications that I'll get invites to go play, go back though my profile and change what I share with friends, etc.

I understand that the developers want a certain level of balance in the game economy. Part of that is putting barriers in front of awards, so that all the players in the game have a goal to shoot for. Making those barriers different classes is a good thing, since it means that players who focus on battle (or quests) don't necessarily have an advantage over the other class when an update comes out. But making "your friends give you something" an unlocking element is a *really* bad idea, because it goes back to that common problem that facebook games have; encouraging people to open up their friend's list to the entire damn site, and pretty heavily penalizing those who don't want to do so.

They need to stop doing this.

[Luxor The Moonprince]

You can still kill the dragon.

In your case I would just respond to a call to arms rather than hope that your very small CA playing friends list responds to yours when you eventually make a dragon.

According to the blurb on the page... you will recieve an equal share of the booty dependant on the amount of attacks you launch against the friends dragon.

Doesnt look like there is much of a penalty to me. If I were in your shoes Id try it with someone that already had a few players assisting them take the dragon down...

[Lori]

While I understand your complaint, let's look at the reality...they devs want more people to play the game. It's a business, and the more that play the better income the game can generate. That's business :)

[tedZilla99]

(sigh) I don't find the new update to be really compelling. In fact, it's the first one in a long while that I really think is deserving of complaint.

Adding a bunch of people you don't know as friends is generally a really bad idea in Facebook. The site leaks data all over the place; when you add an app it collects data about you and about your friends that publish data. I added people in order to get my Army up to 501, and while I've kept a few of them (notably people who comment regularly on the boards here), I've cut 490 of them back out of my friends list for precisely that privacy concern.

The previous alchemy updates were bad enough; neither of the rewards were particularly compelling, so I've picked up a few but I haven't cared so much that the friends list has been cleaned out. Now with the Dragon update, there's an entire block of the game that is effectively walled off until the 10 friends I have that actually play this game send the items around.

Unless I change all my privacy settings again, go through a week of re-adding friends on my Army list, blocking all of the new applications that I'll get invites to go play, go back though my profile and change what I share with friends, etc.

I understand that the developers want a certain level of balance in the game economy. Part of that is putting barriers in front of awards, so that all the players in the game have a goal to shoot for. Making those barriers different classes is a good thing, since it means that players who focus on battle (or quests) don't necessarily have an advantage over the other class when an update comes out. But making "your friends give you something" an unlocking element is a *really* bad idea, because it goes back to that common problem that facebook games have; encouraging people to open up their friend's list to the entire damn site, and pretty heavily penalizing those who don't want to do so.

They need to stop doing this.

I think the call to arms should be an update like the gifts are, that way you can target your allies which = CA friends. I am sure they want this to be another update for your wall to get more players, but the term "allies" implies CA army members.

[chupacabra]

(sigh) I don't find the new update to be really compelling. In fact, it's the first one in a long while that I really think is deserving of complaint.

Adding a bunch of people you don't know as friends is generally a really bad idea in Facebook. The site leaks data all over the place; when you add an app it collects data about you and about your friends that publish data. I added people in order to get my Army up to 501, and while I've kept a few of them (notably people who comment regularly on the boards here), I've cut 490 of them back out of my friends list for precisely that privacy concern.

The previous alchemy updates were bad enough; neither of the rewards were particularly compelling, so I've picked up a few but I haven't cared so much that the friends list has been cleaned out. Now with the Dragon update, there's an entire block of the game that is effectively walled off until the 10 friends I have that actually play this game send the items around.

Unless I change all my privacy settings again, go through a week of re-adding friends on my Army list, blocking all of the new applications that I'll get invites to go play, go back though my profile and change what I share with friends, etc.

I understand that the developers want a certain level of balance in the game economy. Part of that is putting barriers in front of awards, so that all the players in the game have a goal to shoot for. Making those barriers different classes is a good thing, since it means that players who focus on battle (or quests) don't necessarily have an advantage over the other class when an update comes out. But making "your friends give you something" an unlocking element is a *really* bad idea, because it goes back to that common problem that facebook games have; encouraging people to open up their friend's list to the entire damn site, and pretty heavily penalizing those who don't want to do so.

They need to stop doing this.

I'm in the same situation, with the same issue. I'll probably do as someone else suggested and find someone else who wants my help, rather than killing my un-beatable dragon alone.

[Alundra]

You can still kill the dragon.

In your case I would just respond to a call to arms rather than hope that your very small CA playing friends list responds to yours when you eventually make a dragon.

According to the blurb on the page... you will recieve an equal share of the booty dependant on the amount of attacks you launch against the friends dragon.

Doesnt look like there is much of a penalty to me. If I were in your shoes Id try it with someone that already had a few players assisting them take the dragon down...

Only problem with this is do you have enough people that can chip in to kill the beast in time... Also people are getting stretched to help other people since too many of these buggers are being hatched. If they're not killed in time, that's a lot of wasted stamina... I opted for option number two and to help someone else and used the 1st come 1st served rule.

[Satori]

I'm also in the same boat. I just went and added a handful of new Castle Age friends so I could get access to their dragons and do a little gifting. I don't mind adding 10 people I don't really know. I won't ever suffer through having over 500 again though.

But yeah. Beat up on other people's dragons.

[Ragnar]

While I understand your complaint, let's look at the reality...they devs want more people to play the game.

That may or may not be true, but Tess was the one that *started* the Fast Add thread, if I recall correctly. If "getting more people to play the game" was the reason, they shot themselves in the foot there by making it so that people could get to 500 Army without inviting any new people to the game.

So, if that's their reason, they're executing horribly.

[Ragnar]

Doesnt look like there is much of a penalty to me. If I were in your shoes Id try it with someone that already had a few players assisting them take the dragon down...

The Army browsing feature is horrible. Since my Army members aren't on my friends list, finding someone who's fighting a Dragon isn't trivial.

Oh, and if you don't think it's much of a penalty, drop those extra Army members and try the experience directly :)

[Ragnar]

Regardless of the workarounds, from a design standpoint it's still a legitimate criticism.

The developers, by their game structure, are encouraging people to add people they don't know to their friend's list. For a wide variety of reasons, this is not generally a good idea. Yes, I'm aware that other game developers do the same thing, here. I'm not singling out CA.

It's still bad IS design. I don't necessarily expect them to change it, I just want them to think about it.

[chupacabra]

Regardless of the workarounds, from a design standpoint it's still a legitimate criticism.

The developers, by their game structure, are encouraging people to add people they don't know to their friend's list. For a wide variety of reasons, this is not generally a good idea. Yes, I'm aware that other game developers do the same thing, here. I'm not singling out CA.

It's still bad IS design. I don't necessarily expect them to change it, I just want them to think about it.

I couldn't agree more.

Unless it's somehow directly tied in to their add revenue, but I can't see how because all you are doing is adding people who ALREADY use the application, so you aren't doing any of the legwork to get new users.

IMO changes to the Army page and Home page to make it more user friendly, and require less effort to add army etc would be nice. IIRC there are some facebook application limitations involved, so they may be constrained by the platform.

[Lori]

That may or may not be true, but Tess was the one that *started* the Fast Add thread, if I recall correctly. If "getting more people to play the game" was the reason, they shot themselves in the foot there by making it so that people could get to 500 Army without inviting any new people to the game.

So, if that's their reason, they're executing horribly.

Oh I disagree. Since you don't have many friends playing the game, you're not seeing the amount of "Help me battle my Dragon" posts that are going out. I already had one actual friend become intrigued by the post and joined up...multiply that by all the players posting for help.

Facebook games are supposed to be socially interactive, every game I've ever looked at on Facebook has some way of trying to attract new players. Even non battle games have gifts, and friend requirements to enhance play.

[Ragnar]

I already had one actual friend become intrigued by the post and joined up...multiply that by all the players posting for help.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Granted this may be the case for that individual friend, they might also have become intrigued through any number of other venues. Not to mention the fact that you're discounting friends who may have now *blocked* the application (like I have with about 1/3 of the applications on Facebook, notably Mafia Wars) because they're sick of seeing a gazillion updates in their news feed, which are drowning out that social networking information that they get from their actual friends that led them to sign up for the site to begin with. In order for it to be effective, it would have to attract more people than it repels.

And of course, even if it's completely effective, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Facebook games are supposed to be socially interactive, every game I've ever looked at on Facebook has some way of trying to attract new players. Even non battle games have gifts, and friend requirements to enhance play.

Like I said, I'm not singling out CA here. "Everybody else does it" is also not a compelling argument.

It's a bad idea. It has led to a number of problems *for* Facebook in the last 18 months... witness the FB trojans that made the rounds not too long ago.

It's a major privacy problem, as virtually every privacy control in FB is (a) buried and difficult to find and (b) opt-in, rather than opt-out.

[Lori]

The plural of anecdote is not data. Granted this may be the case for that individual friend, they might also have become intrigued through any number of other venues. Not to mention the fact that you're discounting friends who may have now *blocked* the application (like I have with about 1/3 of the applications on Facebook, notably Mafia Wars) because they're sick of seeing a gazillion updates in their news feed, which are drowning out that social networking information that they get from their actual friends that led them to sign up for the site to begin with. In order for it to be effective, it would have to attract more people than it repels.

And of course, even if it's completely effective, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.



Like I said, I'm not singling out CA here. "Everybody else does it" is also not a compelling argument.

It's a bad idea. It has led to a number of problems *for* Facebook in the last 18 months... witness the FB trojans that made the rounds not too long ago.

It's a major privacy problem, as virtually every privacy control in FB is (a) buried and difficult to find and (b) opt-in, rather than opt-out.

I do get that you don't like the games requiring friends. But no matter how you discount my thoughts, the bottom line is that it does work. It's a business and they have to keep current players interest, while reaching out to new players. Not everyone likes Coke, but they have found enough customers to become quite successful, despite competition.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think people dislike adding people they don't know? I honestly wonder about this. There is nothing in my FB profile that anyone could use to damage me, except my name. Since I use my familiar nickname and isn't even my full legal name, it would still be difficult to misrepresent me. I wonder just how much information people are putting out there. Everyone can see my name, even if they aren't on my friend list.

[Ragnar]

I do get that you don't like the games requiring friends. But no matter how you discount my thoughts, the bottom line is that it does work.

I don't discount the fact that it's a common strategy among facebook developers (not just those who make games). I *do* dispute the assertion that it "works", in that I don't believe that it's necessarily the best way to attract attention to your application. If you're going to convince me otherwise, you're going to have to do some research on viral marketing, consumer backlash, and alternate marketing models before I'll buy it :) I agree that it's commonly *presumed* that it works (which is why the general community of facebook developers does it).

Just out of curiosity, why do you think people dislike adding people they don't know?

Aside from the fact that I don't like it, so at the very least there's a sample size of one? Well, there's people who agree with me on this thread alone; there's also other threads about adding army size where other people have mentioned the same complaint.

Even if most people are completely comfortable with adding people they don't know, that *still* doesn't mean that it is a good idea.

There is nothing in my FB profile that anyone could use to damage me, except my name... I wonder just how much information people are putting out there.

People are putting all kinds of information out there, often times unknowingly. There's all sorts of research on this, you can Google Scholar "Facebook" and "Privacy concerns" or more generally "Social Media" and "Privacy concerns" and you'll get quite a large set of results. Facebook generally opts the users into all sorts of information disclosure once they accept someone as a "friend", because in the facebook context (as far as the original philosophy of the site goes), it's presumed that you want friends to see everything and anything you want to keep some other level of "private" you have to independently control who can see it.

Facebook app developers pretty much ignore this design consideration. They encourage you to "friend" people indiscriminately, because the privacy concern is an externality in the classic economics sense.

In my particular case, there's information that I actually want certain groups of people to be able to see. I want my friends to be able to find my cell phone number, so that they don't have to contact me directly if they lose their phone, they can just look it up here. I want my classmates to see what sort of research I'm reading. I want my coworkers to see other things. I want old classmates who might be looking for me here to be able to discern that I'm me from a search.

I'm reasonably concerned with privacy, so I take steps to make sure that what is published through my facebook profile is only published to those people that ought to see it. That's a level of work. Making it so that I have to do it five times over in order to interface with your application is bad design.

It's also irritating because it's *completely unnecessary*. You want the game to be encouraged? I can think of at least a couple hundred marketing strategies that will do a better job of bringing people into the game, rewarding those people who are effective recruiters, and don't have any relationship whatsoever to FB "friend" status. Quick example: give every player a link they can distribute *via their own chosen method*, and if someone clicks on the link to add the game, the player gets a reward. Now the player can be rewarded for actually marketing the game, the game gets new players, and I don't have to screw around with my Facebook account to add or remove friends that aren't really friends to begin with.

This whole "add friends to pimp my app" thing is lazy design. Yes, everybody does it. Brick and mortar retail and service organizations used to require your social security number as a unique ID, too, and that's likewise a horrible design decision with lots of externalized consequences.

[Kael]

I don't discount the fact that it's a common strategy among facebook developers (not just those who make games). I *do* dispute the assertion that it "works", in that I don't believe that it's necessarily the best way to attract attention to your application. If you're going to convince me otherwise, you're going to have to do some research on viral marketing, consumer backlash, and alternate marketing models before I'll buy it :) I agree that it's commonly *presumed* that it works (which is why the general community of facebook developers does it).


I think you are the one that should do the convincing. You are the one with the complaint, you dont think their way of doing things is good. Why dont you come up with this "best way" and explain it to us to prove YOUR point.

You're basically saying, well their way works but it sucks cuz I dont like it. Theres clearly a better way to do it, why dont you guys figure it out. Feel free to criticize but come up with an alternative or its pointless

If you are concerned about privacy, dont put private info up, or dont give game friends any access to your stuff. Or play a game that suits your requirements. Nobody is forcing you to play. Feel free to argue that this defeats the purpose of the Devs seeking more players but the simple truth is that you can't design a free game that suits everyone, that would just be a bad game. They design their game based on what most people would like, it works and clearly you are still playing.

[Ragnar]

I think you are the one that should do the convincing. You are the one with the complaint, you dont think their way of doing things is good. Why dont you come up with this "best way" and explain it to us to prove YOUR point.

I did.

Apparently you don't read other people's posts before commenting, allow me to copy and paste:

"It's also irritating because it's *completely unnecessary*. You want the game to be encouraged? I can think of at least a couple hundred marketing strategies that will do a better job of bringing people into the game, rewarding those people who are effective recruiters, and don't have any relationship whatsoever to FB "friend" status. Quick example: give every player a link they can distribute *via their own chosen method*, and if someone clicks on the link to add the game, the player gets a reward. Now the player can be rewarded for actually marketing the game, the game gets new players, and I don't have to screw around with my Facebook account to add or remove friends that aren't really friends to begin with."

You're basically saying, well their way works but it sucks cuz I dont like it. Theres clearly a better way to do it, why dont you guys figure it out. Feel free to criticize but come up with an alternative or its pointless

That's not "basically what I said", at all. Look, if you're not going to read what I write, don't bother to comment and go troll someplace else.

And if you're going to blithely assume that I'm a complainer, you may want to actually look at the message board content I've created, among other things.

There are clearly better ways to do it. I've already given one example. It not only serves the purpose (promoting the game), it rewards those players that actually market the game (since you can tell *how many people* a player has brought into the game) and it doesn't have anything to do with facebook friend status.

If you are concerned about privacy, dont put private info up, or dont give game friends any access to your stuff. Or play a game that suits your requirements. Nobody is forcing you to play. Feel free to argue that this defeats the purpose of the Devs seeking more players but the simple truth is that you can't design a free game that suits everyone, that would just be a bad game. They design their game based on what most people would like, it works and clearly you are still playing.

You're being an ass, on several different levels. I'm not saying, "Change this or I quit". I'm not demanding that they change what they're doing. I'm offering a reasonable critique of the method they are using, (including explaining why that critique is substantive) and offering a possible solution. Criticism is not always negative; it's intended to give the developers some constructive advice.

Even if I *didn't* play this game, it's still a reasonable critique of the method used, since it demonstrably makes the Facebook friends networking system work less like it's supposed to. Friendship, as defined by FB's original design, includes the sort of transitive trust relationship that comes with IRL friendship. Adding friends because an app encourages you to do so breaks that relationship.

[Kael]

fair enough, I missed a couple of your posts, but what your example entails is a complete rework of the game that you are not following up on.

Take gifting for an example, you're disadvantaged because you choose to remove all your friends. Are you going to use the link idea to get gifts? does that mean you have to bring in 20 new people to get 20 gifts?

Or you want to do away with the whole invite people theme? You're not considering the fact that although Devs want more players, its a free game, and the effort does not balance out any rewards. If you want to offer constructive criticism, you have to compromise a bit and offer a readily available solution that will be worth the time spent to implement it.

[Ragnar]

What your example entails is a complete rework of the game that you are not following up on.

How so?

Take gifting for an example, you're disadvantaged because you choose to remove all your friends. Are you going to use the link idea to get gifts? does that mean you have to bring in 20 new people to get 20 gifts?

I can think of several dozen different ways you can do gifting without having to go through the facebook interface, which nobody likes doing and is buggy anyway. Why can't you just gift in the game? You can send messages in the game. *You can send tributes in the game*, so the mechanism is *already there*. You can certainly send gifts in the game. If you want to make gift-giving part of the invite as well, I imagine that wouldn't be too difficult.

Admittedly, I don't know what the game back-end looks like. I don't know their database design. I have only a loose idea how much work this would take (probably not a lot unless their DB is completely denormalized, which of course it may be). The only stumbling block I can think of is potential load on the database, but I don't see how that can really be a major issue given the amount of lookups that are done during a combat session. People only gift once a day, they do that all the time.

Or you want to do away with the whole invite people theme?

How does this "do away with the whole invite people theme"? It's just a different method of doing invites. Arguably, it would work out better for *facebook*, as well. If you can send invites as a simple link, you could send them in IM, email, on Facebook (if you want to go that way), here on a discussion board, whatever. The people you're sending the invite to don't even need to be Facebook users... which would draw users into FB.

You're not considering the fact that although Devs want more players, its a free game, and the effort does not balance out any rewards.

Unless you're a closet member of the Dev team, I would hazard a guess that I have a much better idea of what the backend of this looks like than you do, since I've been building IT systems for a living for over a decade, and I research IS systems as part of my Ph.D. program. This is certainly an amount of work, yes, but if you can't see that there are advantages (for the devs, the players, and facebook as a community) to doing it my way, I'm not going to be able to convince you that any amount of effort is worth it.

If you want to offer constructive criticism, you have to compromise a bit and offer a readily available solution that will be worth the time spent to implement it.

I'm very close to losing my temper. You have no grounds whatsoever to pass judgment on whether or not my suggestion is time or resource intensive, thus you have no grounds whatsoever to judge whether or not my criticism is constructive or not. I have a pretty good idea (from experience) that it should be both feasible and not a terribly large amount of work. Again, I'm not demanding that they do it. I'm perfectly aware that the dev team builds this app on their own resource allocation, and they invest their time as they want and as they judge to be most effective. It's certainly within their rights to ignore my suggestion.

I know that the facebook developer community, as a whole, does not regard this as a significant problem, because the costs are all external to the development community. That is not grounds for poor systems design; presumably most people who write apps for FB on their own time are at some point going to come looking for a job. Guess what? I'm the type of person who would be interviewing them, and if I'm working for corporation that's worried about my userbase's privacy, I'm going to quiz them on these sorts of problems when they interview.

If they don't want to listen to me, that's completely fine with me.

[Ragnar]

fair enough, I missed a couple of your posts

That's an amusing assertion, since the quote *you put in your post* is actually *from* the post where I gave an example.

[Ragnar]

(sigh) I don't find the new update to be really compelling. In fact, it's the first one in a long while that I really think is deserving of complaint.

After 24 hours, I'll revise this. From a gameplay standpoint, the addition of dragons is great. It's pretty trivially easy to find a dragon to attack, because they take so damn long to kill. So, in fact, the "adding friends" problem is no worse now than it was before; this update didn't make it worse.

That doesn't mean that it's not still a problem, and that they should change the invite/add setup :)

[Kael]

First of all chill out, I admit I was not reading everything since I didn't have a lot of time, most of your points are legitimate, and I agree I said a couple things you had already talked about, my bad but, I would still have to stick with my claim that Its pointless and not worth their time and effort. here are the reasons:

1. If you've played the other facebook games you'll notice that they are pretty much the exact same engine and setup. I would almost call them the exact same game except the setting and a few minor details. I'm not saying anyone can do it but clearly did not take them that long to do it. I implied that modifying would be tough but only because the amount of work that needs to be done is more than what they put into it in the beginning.

2. This is also backed up by that whole 'issue' we had a while back. We both know it happened. That's most likely because they were lazy and didn't bother doing it correctly. So if they are ok with that, then how do you think your ideas are gonna get implemented? I'm pretty sure they operate on a dont fix if its not broken/I'm in trouble policy

I had thought you wanted them to really change stuff. I guess if you're not actually looking to change things its alright to think of a list of things that are wrong. I'm an analyst who does strategic project work and I know you have to keep it simple and realistic, with decent rewards that outweigh the effort "in the eyes of the money spender' if I expect it to be approved.

[PawisBetlog]

As far as it not being a good idea to encourage friend adds, that just, like, your opinion man (I'm channeling the dude). I don't put any info on Facebook that I wouldn't want anyone else to have so I don't really give a care about who sees it.

What they're going to have to help us with is too many people summoning dragons and not enough of them getting killed. If that happens for too long the pendulum will swing the other way and no one will summon them.

Plus the damn page is flaky as hell now that I have 18 monsters on it. I can't even get the page to lo0ad right now.

[Ragnar]

First of all chill out, I admit I was not reading everything since I didn't have a lot of time

It's a discussion board, Kael. If you don't want to read what you're actually going to comment on, you're going to be commenting without context. That means your comment is probably not going to be all that valuable. I'll give you a pass, here, but 99% of the threads on any discussion board devolve into crap from a signal/noise ratio standpoint just because people do this. If you don't have the time to read it, why are you taking the time to comment on it?

1. If you've played the other facebook games you'll notice that they are pretty much the exact same engine and setup... I implied that modifying would be tough but only because the amount of work that needs to be done is more than what they put into it in the beginning.

I don't write Facebook apps; for all I know this is part of the Facebook API and everyone uses it because it's there. That doesn't make it tough.

2. This is also backed up by that whole 'issue' we had a while back. We both know it happened. That's most likely because they were lazy and didn't bother doing it correctly. So if they are ok with that, then how do you think your ideas are gonna get implemented? I'm pretty sure they operate on a dont fix if its not broken/I'm in trouble policy

Granted, but that's not a reason to point out problems when you see them, is it?

I had thought you wanted them to really change stuff. I guess if you're not actually looking to change things its alright to think of a list of things that are wrong. I'm an analyst who does strategic project work and I know you have to keep it simple and realistic, with decent rewards that outweigh the effort "in the eyes of the money spender' if I expect it to be approved.

Of course I want them to change it. I think it's ****ty system design. I agree that generally in business the eyes of the money spender are usually the resource gateway, that's why I talked about the effects of this particular ****ty design as being externalities to the developers. Making decisions based entirely upon economic incentives works fine when you're dealing with a free market with no externalities. Facebook, in many ways, is actually a commons, with all the normal tragedies that come with being a commons. Usually, the only way to repair broken things in a commons is to come to a consensus, or to use social pressure to enact change.

So, as one of the dozen or so highest level players in this game, when I see something that's worthy of commentary, I'm going to comment on it. Maybe they'll read it, maybe they won't. If people swing by the thread and agree with me on principle, that adds to the social weight, making it more likely that they'll change it.

As far as it not being a good idea to encourage friend adds, that just, like, your opinion man (I'm channeling the dude). I don't put any info on Facebook that I wouldn't want anyone else to have so I don't really give a care about who sees it.

Okay, do I really need to go through this again? One last try...

Just because you don't put info into Facebook doesn't mean that other people don't. Just because you don't put info into Facebook doesn't mean that someone you like doesn't. Your parents might. Your grandparents. Your cousin. The guy next door, the gal you think is cute who serve you coffee at your local coffee shop.

Okay, if you're a creepy stalker that last might be considered an upside. :)

Bad design is bad design. When I got a cell phone 6 years ago, Cingular wanted my social security number. I had to pay $200 as a deposit to get a damn phone without putting my SSN on some paper form that would be touched by a half-dozen people who make minimum wage and put into a corporate database with cruddy security and no access controls. Companies *still* ask for your SSN - not because they need it (it's trivially easy to generate a unique key for each customer) but because everyone asks for it.

"Everyone else does it" and "It doesn't effect me because I'm not affected" are really not substantive counterarguments. If you guys don't care, fine... I'm not asking you to care about problems I see.

But I will ask you not to fill up the thread arguing that it's not a problem. You're actually making it *less* likely that they'll do anything to fix it.

[Gwen]

I agree with you Pat.
I know quite a few people that REFUSE to use facebook for those very reasons.
You can delete your account, then YEARS later open it back up. They save everything.
No one really understands until you've had your identity stolen. Then it's too late. You deal with that for the rest of your life! ! ! !
Now a days you can't even trust banks and businesses with your personal information.

[PawisBetlog]

Okay, do I really need to go through this again? One last try...

Just because you don't put info into Facebook doesn't mean that other people don't. Just because you don't put info into Facebook doesn't mean that someone you like doesn't. Your parents might. Your grandparents. Your cousin. The guy next door, the gal you think is cute who serve you coffee at your local coffee shop.

Okay, if you're a creepy stalker that last might be considered an upside. :)

Bad design is bad design. When I got a cell phone 6 years ago, Cingular wanted my social security number. I had to pay $200 as a deposit to get a damn phone without putting my SSN on some paper form that would be touched by a half-dozen people who make minimum wage and put into a corporate database with cruddy security and no access controls. Companies *still* ask for your SSN - not because they need it (it's trivially easy to generate a unique key for each customer) but because everyone asks for it.

"Everyone else does it" and "It doesn't effect me because I'm not affected" are really not substantive counterarguments. If you guys don't care, fine... I'm not asking you to care about problems I see.

But I will ask you not to fill up the thread arguing that it's not a problem. You're actually making it *less* likely that they'll do anything to fix it.

Ok I'm not going to respond point by point because it won't go anywhere obviously. All I'll say is this; just because you don't like the design because of your personal opinions on data privacy doesn't make it bad design, it makes it design you don't agree with. Putting this out there as if it is fact doesn't make it so, and don't expect people who can tell the difference to just ignore it all the time.

If you take off your tinfoil hat for a minute, you'll realize that Cingular wasn't asking you for your SSN as part of a vast conspiracy to eventually install cameras in your house, its because it is a number that is unique to you and that you will likely remember (vs. some random number they could generate, give you, and have you promply forget). Now whether they put the right controls in place to protect your SSN once captured, that's an entirely different discussion, but doesn't invalidate their original reason for choosing to use SSN.

[Alvar]

I have a long army (800+) and investigate a lot about security facebook settings so i block some things such as now nobody can actually post on my wall, nobody can send me chat messages, it´s not perfect but at least it´s acceptable.
The facebook security settings are better than other programs, the only thing you need to do it´s use them.
If you want more security first you need to do it´s to use the tools you have.

[Ragnar]

Some day I'm going to decide not to feed trolls. Until then, Su-wheee! Here, troll!

Ok I'm not going to respond point by point because it won't go anywhere obviously.

It might if you would actually respond point by point. Or even if you offered something new that could be interesting.

All I'll say is this; just because you don't like the design because of your personal opinions on data privacy doesn't make it bad design, it makes it design you don't agree with. Putting this out there as if it is fact doesn't make it so, and don't expect people who can tell the difference to just ignore it all the time.

Since you're not bothering to explain why I'm wrong, and on what grounds you think I'm wrong, what we actually have here is my professional estimation of data privacy vs. your opinion. Unless you're going to demonstrate some sort of expertise on the issue of data privacy, you really don't have much to say, do you?

I've been working in the computer field for a while. I've been a security wonk for over a decade. I've read every line of every piece of data privacy legislation that's been enacted at the federal level (yes, including all of HIPAA, FERPA, GLB, SOX and a half dozen others), all of my state's DP laws, and a half-dozen other states as well as data privacy laws in the EU (where, in fact, they're not completely insane). I've followed data breaches since they were required to be public, and I've read business journals (no, not the WJS, but actual business journals) about data privacy, data integrity, corporate liability, and legislative trends. I've followed the ACLU and the EFF's criticisms of Facebook and other social networking sites. I've undergone dozens of security audits on systems I've built, federal audits, state audits, internal corporate audits, you name it. I've dealt with discovery subpoenas.

In short, the odds are very good that what I have is an informed opinion.

If you take off your tinfoil hat for a minute

Let's see... repeatedly offering criticisms without offering substance, and now you're dipping into ad hominem attacks.

you'll realize that Cingular wasn't asking you for your SSN as part of a vast conspiracy to eventually install cameras in your house, its because it is a number that is unique to you and that you will likely remember (vs. some random number they could generate, give you, and have you promply forget).

Nice fail at a reducto ad absurdum while you're at it. I'm not a moron, I know why Cingular wants my Social Security Number (I've actually talked to the ex-CSO of Verizon at a security conference). Guess what? You're... ah, *totally wrong*. They have no valid reason to ask for my SSN, except for the fact that they want to be able to sell my data to someone else who will aggregate it together with other companies who sell my data which is tagged with my social security number. Oh, and to run a credit check. Which, actually, they can run without my social security number, but if you call a credit bureau with an SSN, you don't need anything else to run a credit check... whereas if you don't have the SSN, the phone call takes about 4 minutes longer; or 12 minutes longer if you've hired someone who can barely tie their shoes.

Hey, uh, you know what unique number Cingular could use to identify me that I won't forget? Gee, how about MY PHONE NUMBER?

Now whether they put the right controls in place to protect your SSN once captured, that's an entirely different discussion, but doesn't invalidate their original reason for choosing to use SSN.

No, see, uh, that's tightly coupled to the discussion, not an entirely different one (it's sort of my whole point, which apparently has gone over your head).
Listen, dude, I'm *not* a tinfoil hatter. Tinfoil hatters *don't use Facebook at all*.

You want to debate data security with me, show up to LISA or Black Hat or some other conference. Or at least say something of substance. Otherwise, pick someone else's thread to troll on, please.