When Facebook announced sweeping changes to its ad policy earlier this week, declaring that it will begin tracking its users’ off-site web browsing for its targeted advertising, it was easy to guess the move would stir up controversy. Indeed, privacy watchdogs have already responded negatively to the change, including Jeff Chester, executive director of the…

Facebook announced this week in a blog post that it will begin to keep track of users’ off-site web browsing information for its targeted advertising. Facebook also announced it will not honor the “do not track” setting found in many web browsers. Many of the site’s competitors, including Google, Pinterest and Twitter, similarly ignore the…

A tech company has created a Facebook app that utilizes artificial technology to analyze Facebook users’ personality based on their posts. The tool can then use the information it gathers to compare users to friends or public figures on the site. The tool, created by San Francisco tech company Five, pulls key words from users’…

Last week, Facebook revealed that it had blocked pages for a popular rock band and several left-wing political groups in Pakistan. The move stirred up a firestorm of accusations that the site was giving in to government demands for censorship. After the outcry, the government indeed decided to unblock some of the pages. “Facebook claims…

Justice ministers in the EU reached an agreement this week that will force companies outside of Europe to follow European privacy practices. Facebook’s European headquarters are based in Ireland, though the company has faced pressure from European governments over their privacy practices before, notably earlier this year when a German court ruled that the site…

An Ohio woman who underwent treatment for syphilis at a Cincinnati hospital is suing for $25,000 after employees at the hospital allegedly posted her medical records to a Facebook page called “Team No Hoes.” The woman claims that three employees posted screenshots of her records to the page in September of last year, and that one…

After Facebook announced a new audio recognition feature for mobile users last month, many became concerned for the tool’s “Big Brother” potential. (A popular petition was even started to block the site from launching the feature.) That’s why Facebook responded this week in attempt to assuage user concerns. Gregg Stefancik, Facebook’s head of security infrastructure,…

Facebook users can limit the visibility of just about every aspect of their online personas, including the list of their friends on the site. However, as detailed in Mashable this week, even your private friends list can be partially visible to the public. Even if you set your friends list privacy to “Only Me,” other…

According to a report in The New York Times, the National Security Agency intercepts about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” per day. The information, which was obtained from Edward Snowden’s leaked documents from the agency, also indicate that the NSA now believes images are as important as written communications in tracking down targets online. The…

In a post published on The Huffington Post this week, the COO and chairman of Ziklag Systems, a mobile security company, detailed how Facebook’s new Smartphone microphone feature could be hacked. The tool, which was introduced last week, is an opt-in-only feature that can identify what users are watching or listening to, and then automatically…