SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook's stock plunged to a new low Thursday as some of the social networking leader's early backers got their first chance to sell their shares since the company's initial public offering went awry.

Analysts interpreted the unusually high trading volume as a clear sign that at least a few of the insiders were seizing on a fresh selling opportunity. That is stirring a debate over whether they're simply locking in long-awaited gains on investments made many years ago or bai...

Under terms of the settlement, Facebook has agreed to provide users with "clear and prominent notice" anytime their information is shared. But before that can happen, Facebook must obtain its users' "express consent" before sharing any i...

In a big vote of no confidence before Facebook’s IPO, General Motors is pulling its ads from the platform, calling them “ineffective,” according to a Wall Street Journal report.  The automaker determined that its ads on the platform “had little impact on consumers,” according to the report, which cites “people familiar with the matter.” GM will continue to market via Facebook’s brand Pages, which, of course, are free.  The article quotes GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick as sayi...

(CNN) -- Something strange happened Monday on the Internet.

Facebook -- the once-underdog social network founded by a kid in a hoodie in a dorm room -- may have officially cemented its status as a titan of the tech establishment it once challenged.

What changed? Facebook -- no longer a feisty startup but a 3,000-person, soon-to-be-public corporation with $3.9 billion in cash and an $85 billion to $100 billion valuation -- spent $1 billion to gobble up a much-smaller competitor, the photo-shar...

It is perhaps ironic that Twitter’s censorship announcement and Google’s privacy updating came in the week that Canada, along with many other countries, was celebrating Data Privacy Day.

The moves by Twitter and Google underscored just how much people are willing to give up in return for getting free online services. And if that wasn’t enough evidence, we have Facebook now making its Timeline mandatory for its 800 million users.

Privacy is the currency that they are trading and companie...

Facebook is making headlines this week for a flaw that exposed personal photos marked private--including pictures of Mark Zuckerberg and his dog. The glitch is Facebook’s fault, and Facebook responded quickly to address the issue once it was discovered. But, don’t believe for a second that this is the last time private information will be exposed online--on Facebook, or anywhere else.

Privacy advocates like to paint Facebook as anti-privacy. I believe that Facebook has a thin line to walk...

Are you hungry for a piece of the Facebook IPO? If so, then pull up a chair. There's plenty of room at the table ... because the other guests are fleeing.

This may come as a surprise to you. After all, for months all we've heard about this stock sale (whose actual sale date remains unknown) is that it's going to be the hottest thing since Google (GOOG). Valued at the stock prices quoted in private transactions on the stock sale website SecondMarket, Facebook was "worth" $52 billion in Februar...

Fox News - Eight hundred million users are not enough. Facebook, the world's biggest social network, is now building profiles of non-users who haven't even signed up, an international privacy watchdog charges.

The sensational claim is made in a complaint filed in August by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner. It alleges that users are encouraged to hand over the personal data of other people -- including names, phone numbers, email addresses and more -- which Facebook is using to create ...

Facebook is getting more heat over two controversial practices--tracking users after they log out and new automatic "frictionless sharing."

The tracking, done with cookies on users' computers, has prompted criticism from lawmakers and now a lawsuit, while privacy groups and regulators in Ireland are concerned about a new sharing feature that automatically posts user activities to news feeds without users intentionally doing so.

A blogger wrote last weekend that he discovered that his Web surfin...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off some of the most drastic changes ever made to the company's service. And though Zuckerberg is excited by those changes, many folks across the Web aren't so quick to celebrate.

The fear among some users relates to what some say could become a potentially worrisome privacy situation on the social network, led by Timeline and changes to Open Graph.

Timeline provides users with a way to view "the story of your life," according to Zuckerberg, including a col...

(CNN) -- A couple years ago, a Microsoft researcher named Gordon Bell embarked on a personal experiment: He would wear a video camera around his neck all the time and keep this "life recorder" always turned on, so it would record everything he did.

It was like an external memory drive for his brain, he wrote in a book called "Total Recall."

Sounds pretty sci-fi, right? Not so much. The "real-time sharing" updates Facebook announced Thursday aim to do something quite similar -- only for the In...

(CNN) -- The ire and angst accompanying Facebook's most recent tweaks to its interface are truly astounding. The complaints rival the irritation of AOL's dial-up users back in the mid-'90s, who were getting too many busy signals when they tried to get online. The big difference, of course, is that AOL's users were paying customers. In the case of Facebook, which we don't even pay to use, we aren't the customers at all.

Let's start with the changes themselves. Until now, the main thing that sh...

Computer security experts are warning that Facebook users divulge too much personal information which can potentially be accessed by criminals.

Cyber criminals can use this information to steal people's identities and commit fraud in their name.

IT security consultant Rob Vaughan, who spoke about cyber crime at the University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd on Tuesday, said people should think twice before adding details like their address and date of birth to their Facebook page.

"You can change ...

(CNN) -- Apparently, "Anonymous" won't be accepting your friend request.

Members of the shadowy collective known for its politically motivated Web hacks and attacks are targeting Facebook for what they claim to be the social-networking giant's misuse of personal information.

"Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed," the speaker said in a YouTube video, which was posted July 16 but started circulating widely this week.

Using a voice modulator to disguise his (or...

LAS VEGAS--Facebook's online privacy woes are well-known. But here's an offline one: its massive database of profile photos can be used to identify you as you're walking down the street.

A Carnegie Mellon University researcher today described how he assembled a database of about 25,000 photographs taken from students' Facebook profiles. Then he set up a desk in one of the campus buildings and asked willing volunteers to peer into Webcams.

The results: facial recognition software put a name to t...

Facebook has a problem with privacy--but it makes sense.

By Jared Newman PC World

Once again, Facebook has messed with users' privacy in the name of a new feature.

The latest controversy is over Facebook facial recognition, which can automatically tag friends in photos just by matching the image to a massive database of faces.

Face recognition is a useful, time-saving feature -- at least when it works. But it's also a creepy addition to Facebook that opts you in automatically. As my colleague...

A new bill proposed in California could force Facebook and other social networking sites to strip out personal information for children at a parent's request. 

SB 242 -- also known as the Social Networking Privacy Act -- would require Facebook and others to carefully police which pieces of information on individuals under age 18 are accessible to the public. It would also provide a means for concerned parents to demand that a site take down their children's information, or face stiff fines as...

Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg have been hit with a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages over a page on the social network which called for a "Third Intifada" against Israel.

Facebook this week shut down the "Third Intifada" page, which had almost 500,000 fans, but the lawsuit filed in a court here claims that the social network showed "negligence" by not quickly responding to appeals to remove the page.

Besides awarding damages, the complaint calls on the court to bar Fac...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Facebook is temporarily disabling a feature that gave app developers access to some of the most sensitive personal data it possesses: Members' addresses and phone numbers.

The company had slipped the feature in quietly, announcing it at the end of last week in a post on its developer blog. But late Monday, Facebook said it is suspending the feature until it can fine-tune how it works. "Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly ...

The No. 1 reason why people don't sign up for Facebook is not a concern about privacy, but rather a concern about wasting time, according to a report Wednesday.

In November, 56 percent of people who decided against becoming Facebook users cited time-wasting as the reason, according to Wedbush Securities. In September, 52 percent gave that answer.

Privacy was cited as the reason by 42 percent of the Facebook naysayers in November, down from 48 percent in September, according to the survey.

The...

Excuse me for raining on the Facebook parade, but yesterday's news about the $450 million investment by Goldman Sachs (GS) and $50 million from Russia's Digital Sky Technology didn't move me the way it seemed to move others. This despite the suggested $50 billion valuation, as big and beautiful a number as the stock market has seen in some time. I am certainly not moved in the same way it appears to have moved Goldman's own clients: the Wall Street firm has pledged to line up another $1.5 bil...

(CNN) -- All signs for Facebook appear to be pointing up.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time's Man of the Year, the movie about him seems likely to be an Oscar winner, and now Goldman Sachs is raising $1.5 billion from its favorite investors on behalf of the social networking company.

At the very same moment, Facebook's only real competitor --NewsCorps' waning social networking site, MySpace -- is shedding employees and expenses, most likely in hopes of a fire sale.

But appearances can be deceiving. In ...

There is an old question meant to open a door into the human character: If you found a $100 note on the sidewalk, would you keep it if you felt sure no one saw you, or would you try to track down its owner?

But that question is becoming superfluous, because in our hyper-fast information age, it’s more likely you’ll end up on YouTube through the growing presence of video — especially if you’re in an urban area where security cameras abound. Or perhaps, if you’re one of the 175 millio...

- Michael Fertik is the CEO and Founder of ReputationDefender, the online privacy and reputation company. The views expressed are his own. -

Facebook already knows a massive amount about you.  They know your age, what you look like, what you like, what you do for fun, where you go, what you eat, whom you know, whom you know well, whom you sleep with, who your best friends and family are, and, again, how old they are, what they like, and so on.

On top of that, Facebook has a well-known history...

The social network is trying to change the messaging game with its new service

By Brad Stone

The annals of obsolete communication technologies are growing all the time. There's the telegraph, the answering machine, the fax, and the paper-based letter, all artifacts from an analog era where messages had resonance hours, even days, after getting them.

Now Mark Zuckerberg wants to add e-mail to that list. In a rollout on Nov. 15 of its revamped messaging system, Facebook's 26-year-old founder de...

Beset with privacy problems in the past, Facebook faces scrutiny over its new messaging system.

After Facebook's struggle with one privacy issue after another this year, some in the industry are raising privacy questions about Facebook's new messaging system.

On Monday, the social network unveiled Facebook Messages, a system designed to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages -- e-mail, instant messaging, SMS and Facebook messages -- and bring them together under one social umbr...

Ignorance is bliss, so don't read any further if you don't want to panic about Facebook and Twitter security.

Digital Society, a self-professed security think tank, has given failing security grades to both Twitter and Facebook. Both sites are vulnerable to attacks that can give someone partial or full control over your account, the group claims.

According to Digital Society, the main problem with Facebook and Twitter is that neither site allows full Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection. Bot...

Following an embarrassing expose in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has tightened its controls over the ways in which applications that use the social networking platform can share unique user identity information (or UIDs). The company also banned several applications accused of improperly disclosing user data. 

The company outlined its new policy in a post on Facebook's Developer's blog on Friday by Mike Vernal, a company engineer. Facebook has adopted a "zero tolerance" policy for data b...

Facebook's privacy problems are like a centipede with footwear issues. "Other" shoes keep dropping, and there seems to be no end of them.

Lately Facebook's problems have been fueled by Wall Street Journal reporters peeking under the sheets to see what kind of shenanigans Facebook has been up to. That's how we learned Facebook apps have been inadvertently sharing user identities with advertisers, and the personal profiles culled from Facebook data by companies like Rapleaf can get very specifi...

Facebook Inc. said that a data broker has been paying application developers for identifying user information, and that it had placed some developers on a six-month suspension from its site because of the practice.

The announcement, which Facebook made on its developers' blog Friday, follows an investigation by Facebook into a privacy breach that The Wall Street Journal reported in October.

Some "apps," the small programs that let users play games or share information with each other on the ...

Facebook doesn’t just have its own movie it has its own reality show. Nearly weekly, sensational stories have been popping up which go beyond Zuckerberg’s personality to real privacy issues important to consumers. The latest news has Facebook exposed for lobbying California politicians against the Social Networking Privacy Act. A story which offers companies a serious lesson in lobbying.

Facebook spent a rather paltry sum of $6,600 to defeat a bill titled The Social Networking Privacy Ac...

In one experiment, ...

CLEVELAND - Dread of the unknown hung in the air as Lynn France typed two words into the search box on Facebook: the name of the woman with whom she believed her husband was having an affair.

Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen.

"I was numb with shock...

Why do I hate Facebook? The ridiculous, time-wasting applications, that’s why.

I wasn’t particularly interested in signing up to Facebook originally, but since all my friends were on it I gave it a go. I could see the appeal too, don’t get me wrong; connect with old friends, share photos, etc. Unfortunately, this has got completely overshadowed by people throwing snowballs at each other and finding stray cats on their farm. I began to hate Facebook a while ago, but now it’s got ...

This is a sequel of sorts to a column I wrote last week called "Social Stupidity: Am I too social (LinkedIn, so to speak) to ...

Not surprisingly, Facebook's half-hearted attempts to kick its data-sharing addiction have not exactly wowed the privacy cognoscenti. Last week a consortium of groups -- including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Privacy R...

So many people are opening my eyes to Facebook .... I found an article that opens as if it was me starting the story.

Let me start with a confession. I don't like Facebook. I never have. When I joined, five years ago, it was because I wanted an easy way to check on whether my journalism students were correctly spelling the names of classmates they were quoting in their news stories. To this day, that's pretty much my peak Facebook experience.

So it is with more than a little schadenfreude...

Two years ago It wasn’t clear that Facebook had what it took to become one of the great technology companies. They had conquered the college market and were destroying the hopes and dreams of MySpace. But they were also reeling from the Beacon debacle and hadn’t pro...

In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.

Those of you who edited your privac...

Diaspora is up against a true Giant

Sick of the barrage of Facebook privacy scandals?

Don't trust a multi-billion-dollar corporation with your photos and personal information?

Well, there may be an online social network for you yet.

It's called Diaspora, and it's an idea from four New York University students who say in a video pitch that big online companies like Facebook shouldn't be allowed to have access to, and to some degree "own," all of the personal data that flows in and out of ...

There is a website being created to take on Facebook ... I will post more about Diaspora as they progress.

Diaspora is an open source project. I'm sure they will create a GPL license that will set this program free in to the wild. Like Linux and a host of other open source projects, much of the work is done by people for free. It's hard to believe that people donate such energy for free, but Joomla, Drupal, WordPress.... etc all live by this for the most part. FaceBook will not be able to...

I want to share a typical Facbook comment on CNN blog

The problem is not people who are whining about Facebook, and you can say "just don't sign up." The real key are people like myself and other early adopters. We got into this early on, when Facebook was still good, and had good privacy. But they've changed their privacy policy so many times, with no option to opt out, that who knows who has control of my data anymore? I came to CNN a week or two ago and my freaking face pops up on the...

After some reflection, I've decided to delete my account on Facebook. I'd like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I'd like my own social network to migrate...