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Canada Facebook Privacy Social Networks

Married Woman Claims Facebook Info Sharing Created Dating Profile For Her 189

Posted by samzenpus from the looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places dept.
jenningsthecat writes A happily married Ontario woman was shocked and dismayed last January to discover that she had an active account with dating site Zoosk.com. Mari Sherkin saw a pop-up ad on Facebook for Zoosk, but wasn't interested, so she "clicked on the X to close it. At least I thought I did." She immediately began to receive messages from would-be Zoosk suitors in her Facebook mailbox. When she had a look on Zoosk she was horrified to find a dating profile with her Facebook picture, name, and postal code. Zoosk denies ever setting up profiles in this way, yet their terms of service explicitly allow them to do it, and there are apparently several Facebook pages with complaints of similar occurrences.
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Married Woman Claims Facebook Info Sharing Created Dating Profile For Her More

Married Woman Claims Facebook Info Sharing Created Dating Profile For Her

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  • Honest, honey... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jawnn ( 445279 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:47PM (#48450825)
    ...I would never have done something like that.
    • Unless you are drunk and have a different memory after you sober? :P

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Matheus ( 586080 )

      "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

      I believe this as much as I believe every friend of mine who's virus ridden computer I end up cleaning who says "Honestly I didn't click on anything"

      There's a lot to not like about Facebook if you so choose to concern yourself with such things but this lady's pants are on fire (in more ways than one) Someone should call the fire department.

      • If you are not careful, you absolutely can click on the X and count as a click through, because some of these scum sucking low lifes just put a picture of an X there and it is not really the close button. Sometimes you can tell because your windows theme is different and they have made a static picture of the standard close X. I'm sure plenty of people are fooled by that. Then there are all of the onClose exploits, which you can defeat with some javascript, but a small minority of people know how to do that

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SQLGuru ( 980662 )

          This is one of the reasons that I kill the Chrome task if I get anything even remotely fishy (phishy) looking popping up.

        • The fake X close button is something I really fear will become a broad way of exploiting vulnerable users. Many of the X buttons even in seemingly legitimate pop-ups don't tell you anything about the action it will take even by doing a mouse over. Users are accustomed to blindly clicking the X to close even if it doesn't look like a regular Windows close button. I spent some time using the Firefox "inspect element" feature and I didn't find any that did something nasty on close, but it seems like this trend

        • If you are not careful, you absolutely can click on the X and count as a click through, because some of these scum sucking low lifes just put a picture of an X there and it is not really the close button. Sometimes you can tell because your windows theme is different and they have made a static picture of the standard close X. I'm sure plenty of people are fooled by that.

          Actually, with the rise in Flash-based ads (including autoplay videos), more and more ads appear in the browser with a custom close button anyway. There is no way of telling the real ones from the fakes any more.

      • I just created an account for myself. Apparently men can't see what the competition is like (males interested in women can't search for other males). I picked a few people (friends) who haven't used the site, and they aren't present. I don't see anything on the site that shows how old my account is, but it only has the very basic information that I just provided, so I'd say they hadn't previously auto-created my account from Facebook.

        When I "created" mine just now, I did the lost password search us

      • every friend of mine who's virus ridden computer I end up cleaning

        They stopped asking me after I stopped attempting to save their data. Makes life simpler.

  • She thought she was the customer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:47PM (#48450827) Homepage Journal

    but found out she's the product.

    • That's why The Inquirer [theinquirer.net] calls Facebook the People Catalogue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      Which would explain how Zoosk got her postal code. Your Facebook name and profile picture are (by default at least) entirely public. Anyone going to your Facebook page can see them. They're available through Facebook's Graph API [facebook.com] without any form of authentication.

      Your postal code, on the other hand, is not. In fact, Facebook doesn't even record that type of information. Your "current location" is basically freeform. (Technically it's a "page" for a given city. But I think you can enter anything you want in

  • "Happily married" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:48PM (#48450839)

    Facebook knows her true feelings about her husband.

  • So either this lady went through a lot of steps to create a profile, or this company is lying and actually created it for her.

    I'm far more likely to believe the combination of Facebook and whatever this Zoosk thing is are the culprits.

    That's pretty slimy as far as I'm concerned.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by greenwow ( 3635575 )

      Sounds like what mint.com was doing. Bank of America gave them information including account numbers, names, and email addresses. mint.com then created accounts for those people without their permission. I had never heard of mint.com when they sent an email to me with the last few digits of my BoA account and the balance. Later they added information with Chase so they sent an email with my credit card balance. I had never use mint.com, but they created an account with my private information. They are

  • Anyone who has ever been a programmer at a social networking company however will know it was management's decree. This type of stuff doesn't happen on accident.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I'd say its more likely to be user error. The article references oauth and facebook so it seems likely the user clicked through things without reading unless there was an xss vulnerability.

      • Me, I'm less willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Facebook or the people who advertise on it.

        In fact, I just assume Facebook is a malicious entity and block it from most browsers.

      • It's actually more likely user bamboozling. Since nobody on /. has a facebook account let me use a comparison you've likely run into.

        Have you ever clicked a link to download software from one of the umpteen free file hosting sites and get greeted with a page full of ads and three or more links on the page that simply say download now? You have to decipher the page to determine which link/button on the page actually downloads the file you want. Have you ever just clicked the first download now link you sa

  • Same problem (Score:3)

    by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:56PM (#48450919) Homepage

    I had the same problem, I clicked the wrong button and Facebook loaded up all these photos of my ex-girlfriends! Hopefully if I show this article to my wife she will take me back.

  • But she agreed! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    From the fine print:

    "By accessing or using our services through a social networking site, you are authorizing Zoosk to collect, store, retain and use, in accordance with our privacy policy, any and all of your information that Zoosk has obtained from the social networking site, including to create a Zoosk profile page and account for you.”

    So by closing the pop up (the ‘service’), she was technically ‘using’ the service - and Zoosk can now create a profile page. Looks totally le

  • Great PR company of a service I haven't heard before. Seems that paid article on cbc is chepaer than using AdWords to attract new customers.
    • Are you sure? They have had quite a lot of advertising across many forms. I distinctly remember a bunch of ads involving some woman's talking pillow who was kind of an asshole.

      My guess is that even with that advertising, they aren't getting enough women to sign up (because what's going to attract women better than an angry pillow berating them for spending an evening at home instead of on a date) so they resort to stuff like this to make their male customers think they actually have real people to talk

      • What is this "advertising" of which you speak? Oh, you mean that stuff in between songs in restaurants whose owners are too cheap to pay license fees, and to dumb to hit up Jamendo?

        These days we have AdBlock Plus, TiVo, Netflix, and lots of other great ways to avoid advertising. Lots of us simply do not experience any significant quantity of it except in still image form. Netflix content producers are beginning to use proper interstitial video, though, so I guess I still see some there.

    • I've heard of them, somebody managed to steal my CC # and spend $150 on Zoosk, followed by charges at Target and Macy's. I didn't find out until Macy's called me to confirm the purchase. Bit odd the first transactions were Zoosk. You've gotta wonder what kind of site would cost $150...

    • A dating site where the majority of the women on there are not even looking for someone. What use is that to anyone?

      • To charge lonely men money for the privilege of sending "flowers" or "notes" to women that cost nothing to create in the database.

  • Morpheus was right (Score:3)

    by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:09PM (#48451025)

    Morpheus: What is Facebook? Control. Facebook is a computer-controlled world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.
    [holds up an ad]
    Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.
    Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.

  • I have the same problem, unfortunately my Zoosk account doesn't bring me the candidate pool that I seek,
  • Our algorithms analyzed the tones of your status updates and thought you might like a change of scenery. You're welcome

  • This is just a friendly reminder that the purpose of Facebook games is to get your personal information. When you "install" the game you get a EULA that grants the game access to your profile. But, as far as I know, clicking on a Facebook ad should not give them your profile. The article mentions OAuth, but that should not be relevant to an advertisement.

  • Popup ads? (Score:3)

    by tompaulco ( 629533 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:40PM (#48451297) Homepage Journal
    How did she get a popup ad on facebook? I finally succumbed to getting a facebook account because that is how the big band I am in communicates. I have literally never had a popup ad while on facebook.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      How did she get a popup ad on facebook?

      I wondered about this as well. Who in their right mind would use Facebook without an adblocker? I've seen it on a friends computer once, and couldn't even find the content that's supposedly hidden somewhere between the 300 layers of crap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Laypeople often say things "popped up" on their computer when they really mean it just appeared on their screen. Same way they call their PC a "hard drive".

      They heard someone saying it and try to use it themselves, like a child does when first learning a language, and get it wrong.

  • After some of the post I made on Facebook, I automatically had profiles of me created by the FBI and the NSA. And dating sites as well, I suppose.....

  • Obviously she clicked "X" for "X"-treamly interested. Isn't that how everything works these days?

    in case of whoosh [brobible.com].

  • Doesn't have to be Facebook/Zoosk's or her fault. Well not completely anyway. Could be another party doing this just to troll, maybe someone who doesn't like her.

    Think about it, why would Facebook/Zoosk create a profile of her with her real contact info? It's not uncommon for shady dating sites to use someone's pic and some info to create fake profiles, but they do it for the pretty pics and are gambling that the owner of those pics doesn't find out about it. It would be really stupid to give out the owner'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Probably some guy* who got tired of waiting around for that marriage to end.

      *Could also be a woman who is after her husband.

  • ...the one where all the celebrities with sexual addiction problems blame it on the alien wizard. It was Facebook that created all those dating site profiles honey, honest. Yeah, the alien wizard.

  • Meh (Score:1)

    by Falos ( 2905315 )
    > socnet user is surprised to learn her Facebook dataz aren't under her control
    I am shocked. Shocked, I say.
  • She got caught, and now she's lying. Simple as that.
  • Zoosk sent me an ad where they randomly took two names from my facebook friends list, male and female, and heavily implied they were dating after meeting on Zoosk, with their stylized heart graphic. In fact they had never heard of each other. The man, my next door neighbor, was very angry and i don't blame him.
  • ... rather than having their own web page, and then the only way you can find out about scheduled events etc. is if you log into Facebook. It's even more of a "walled garden" than Compuserve or AOL used to be.

  • "A happily married Ontario woman was shocked and dismayed last January to discover that she had an active account with dating site Zoosk.com."

    At least, that is what she told her husband.

  • Subject sums it up really.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      No, Facebook misusing her personal information is by far the simpler explanation.

      • Facebook are a bunch of shady assholes, I bet Zoosk are too - but dude, please apply Occams razor here, as if they just 'make' people a profile - bullshit.
        She's made one, got busted and is freaking out, simple as that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )
          I don't think so... something strikingly similar to what she is describing happened to me as well, although in my case, it wasn't with a dating website. The website had clearly scraped facebook for its info about me. It got my full name, my city and postal code, and the image I was using for my main facebook profile pic, exactly as she described happened to her. In my case, if it hadn't been for the image associated with my name, I wouldn't have had a clue where they got the info, but facebook is the onl

          • Well if you've set the info to open and something else scrapes it, then it's a, your fault for leaving too much info open but also b, the fault of the dating site - not facebook.

            I wouldn't be surprised if some sleazier companies did this - but facebook probably don't need to stoop that low, yet.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mark-t ( 151149 )
              Before that happened, I hadn't realized how much of my profile was public, but I do now, and I've long since gone through the facebook privacy settings, and turned it all off so the info is no longer publicly visible. I'm just saying that the similarity between what happened to her and what happened to me is striking, especially with regards to the actual data that they obtained, and I thought that it could be the same thing. Facebook's default privacy setting suck, and not everyone necessarily realizes u

              • Just a piece of advice- my personal profile is locked down you can't go to facebook.com/username and see my profile, you can't search for me. IF you're not logged in.

                IF you're logged in though? Different story, even if you do not know me at all (I have a 'spare account') you can see my profile pic, profile name, background image etc.
                These companies might have look "zooskscraper" accounts that can see that bit more than a truly anonymous one. - Worth considering.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by mark-t ( 151149 )
                  My point is that amidst all of these people here suggesting that she is lying about the dating site, the similarity of information she claims was found elsewhere and what info was gathered from myself suggests to me that she is telling the truth about what happened.

        • I've had a lot of sites (eg. MyLife, Classmates.com, LocalBlox) create profiles based on my basic info (name and such) without me ever visiting their site. It's an easy way for them to boost their "user" numbers without having to actually attract users. I can easily see a dating site doing the same thing. In fact it probably created the profile the moment the ad appeared for her and had nothing to do with her clicking the close button.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yakasha ( 42321 )

      Subject sums it up really.

      It does? I would have figured Facebook's past actions, the actions of their "partners", previous similar complaints, and Facebook's TOU would make it not only possible, but very probable, this woman's account is accurate.

      Seriously, if you were starting a "social network" site, would you rather:
      1. Spend thousands to millions of dollars advertising your site; wait for people to join; wait several years for enough people to join to make it "social"; or
      2. Spend a few thousand dollars to sign up as a Facebo

    • CBC did a report on this, it seems that Zoosk has a deal with Facebook where they get all your info, so that creating a full profile (with picture) is a "one click" automated process. As soon as you agree to join Zoosk, you have a full profile.

      So, applying Occam's razor to this story, the simplest explanation is that she accidentally clicked the "OK" or "Next" button instead of the "Cancel" or "Close" button, right?

  • Apparently the red X has a *totally* different connotation on dating sites.

  • Those guys are exactly the reason why people have ad-blockers installed.

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