(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

The New York Times is running an article about Facebook's data retention issues. If you post to Facebook, even if you delete your account later, they keep the data available for public viewing.

It took Mr. Das about two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook’s customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das’s empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Embarrassed that they got caught, Facebook is now offering a worthless Opt-out policy that will help only the users who know about the problem and manage to find out about the policy and then take the trouble to do it.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Facebook has been caught with a seriously nasty tracking and monitoring program that it's unleashed upon it's users.

Their new ad software broadcasts your current activities to your facebook friends. If you just bought a ticket to a concert, your friends might see an alert to that effect. If you just bought medication for your embarassing personal issue, they might see that too. But it gets worse:

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.