the art of the brand

It was months ago that i began blogging about the dangers of the datamining
at FaceBook.
Recently, a new trend has emerged…which may sound odd to those who don’t have a FaceBook account…aps started lying to people. Specifically about relationships, the very basis of social networking. In the rest of the Web, it is normal to see flashing banner ads proclaiming that “you are the 10,000th viewer” or  someone is searching for you, find out who”, but it hadn’t become part of the FB world until recently.
On one case, a simple middle-school level psych test changed itelf into a “speed dating” service, that sends emails saying that someone has expressed interest in dating you, but you cannot find out until you invite more friends to install the ap.
In the most blatant case last Saturday night a bot started a game of “word twist” withe me which i accepted, having been told that a real human being had invited me to play a round. After playing it, i found that they hadn’t begun, and was led to “nudge” them. The “nudge” involves sending them a message, with the note that for 30 days they would be able to access my information.
In other terms, a quasi-phishing scheme, being run right through FaceBook, with FaceBook’s evident approval: the approval of promising to provide shelter, and then failing.
A few month ago, i was, by co-incidence videotaped by a guy doing a survey of wht was right about this city.
When he asked me if the women were hot, i asked him if he was turning into a bad FaceBok ap, and he began laughing, saying he had gone to school with Mark Zuckerberg, and knew him.
I told him to tell Zuckerberg he needed to hire me as an ethicist of brand,
to review aps for exactly the kind of thing i predicted they might turn into.
The dataminers have a proper craft. Liars don’t.
Today, i learn that “top friends”–one of the most popular of all FB aps, is easily hackable, and can deliver personal information to 3rd parties, without the owners of the information giving any access at all–that they know of.
I had noticed this possibility a few weeks ago, as something that could be done trolling by hand through the data.
It hadn’t occurred to me that FB would let it get automated, or that somebody with such a long-standing relationship wit FB–the folks at Slide, who are trying to build an enterprise with their flash scripts, would let be that insecure.
Sometime early today, the ap was disabled.
And now, the one top friend i had appears to be gone.
I would rather that, than ever see her come to any any harm.