Apps Need Your Facebook Login? Count Me Out

Mark Zuckerberg continues his assault on privacy: Mat Honan
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 27, 2011 3:34 PM CDT
Facebook's Open Graph Is New Attack on Privacy
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote during the Facebook f8 Developer Conference.   (Getty Images)

Once again, Facebook has reinvented itself, but its goal hasn’t changed: Mark Zuckerberg wants to “drag us all into publicly sharing everything from everywhere with everyone all the time,” writes Mat Honan at Gizmodo. And it’s getting even harder to keep your online activities private. The key change comes in the form of Open Graph, a system allowing outside sites to tell Facebook all about what you’re up to. "It is the ultimate collection tool, a way for Facebook to monitor you, wherever you go," he writes.

Take the new Spotify, for example. To use it at all, you have to log in with Facebook. In other words, “Spotify isn't asking for access to your data anymore. It's demanding it.” And Spotify is just one company requiring such access. It gets much more personal when everyone knows what articles you’re reading, for example. “I don't want my humanity commoditized,” Honan writes. “From now on,” he promises, if an app demands a Facebook login, “well then I'm sorry, but I'm going to take my business elsewhere. And I won't be alone.” (More Facebook stories.)

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