Social backlash

• Commentary on Social Media on The Technology Muse

I was re-visiting a page that I penned on the "Facebook Social Plugin", the fact that it could easily be faked and your login details highjacked.

The practice of getting users to sign in to Facebook so that they can access information linked from another website is likely to cause Facebook, and other social networks that try the same thing, more harm than good.

Those that are skeptical about the use of Social Media in the workplace and advertising are going to be even more suspicious if they are presented with this nonsense. If you want that information you are more likely to find it elsewhere and the fact that you are being asked to sign-in to another service should make you think that there is something else going on here.

Asking you to "Like" something is one thing, but in this case you don't even know that you might, but you have to log-in to find out. In either case the potential advertiser has your information.

I hope that the majority of Internet users will work out that these are just ways of "farming" your personal data. I am pretty sure that these techniques are not seen as "good things" by the European Union and probably breach the UK's "Data Protection Act". North America and the rest of the World need to wake up!