Revealed: Facebook's secret smear campaign against arch-rival Google... over privacy

 

 

By Daniel Bates

 

Last updated at 1:40 AM on 13th May 2011

 

 

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Facebook has admitted hiring a ‘dirty tricks’ PR firm to smear Google and promote fears that it compromised users’ privacy.

Bosses at the social networking website asked Burson-Marsteller to start a secret whispering campaign by planting negative stories in newspapers.

The PR firm, which represented the Argentinian junta during the Falklands War and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, touted scaremongering stories on behalf of an unnamed client, attacking Google’s new Social Circle service.

 

 

Rivals: Facebook paid a PR firm to plant negative stories in the media about Google's social network, claiming it breached user privacy

 

 

Although Facebook was not identified, it owned up to being behind the campaign when it was confronted with leaked emails.

Social Circle is the most direct challenge yet to Facebook. It will reportedly allow users to share photos, videos and status updates.

But Facebook claims the service collects data from it and other services without authorisation.

The plan was uncovered when Burson-Marsteller approached U.S. privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian, asking him to write a blog about Social Circle.

 

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It promised to help him get it published in high-profile newspapers including the Washington Post, and included a damning assessment of Google, saying it had ‘a well-known history of infringing privacy rights’.

It said Social Circle was ‘designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users’.

 

 

Red-faced: The smear revelations are likely to embarrass Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, pictured here with President Obama

 

 

But Mr Soghoian demanded to know who was behind the story. When Burson-Marsteller refused to divulge the name, he published its emails online.

Matthew Ingram, of the technology analyst GigaOm, said Facebook’s actions smacked of ‘desperation’.

He added: ‘Large corporations hiring PR companies to plant negative articles in the press about their competitors isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

 

Powerful enemy: Silicon Valley rivals Facebook and Google are competing on the same territory after Google launched its own social network

 

Source: Blogger Christopher Soghoian became suspicious after PR firm Burson-Marsteller contacted him

 

‘But this is the first sign that Facebook has taken to using these sleazy tactics against Google.’

 

A Facebook spokesman said: ‘We wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Social Circle, just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose.

‘We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organisation or analyst.

‘The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.’

Google and Facebook are increasingly bitter enemies over the future of social networking and internet communications.

Facebook has 600million users and is by far the biggest social network, but sees Google as its closest rival, even though it has just 195million users.

But both have been criticised for their privacy policies.

While Facebook provoked users’ fury when it tried to make more content public, Google was savaged for secretly collecting users’ data from wi-fi networks when filming its Streetview service.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386469/Facebooks-secret-smear-campaign-arch-rival-Google.html#ixzz1MBnwRtWi

Nothing is safe of private on the internet, even if you have secret passwords. An enemy got into my email account and changed the passwords and settings, and I can't get into it. Internet is like a big billboard announcing your intentions.

Maybe you should stop using the internet then.

Especially if your password is that easy to guess...

 

Also this is a very good example of pot kettle and black

The internet should be banned.

The internet should be banned?

Isn't that like banning the phone system, or any other mass communications medium?

I mean, we could try and get rid of the letter Y from the alphabet as well, but whi do that?:laugh3:

'twas a joke, Chuckie.

:D

The internet should be banned?

Isn't that like banning the phone system, or any other mass communications medium?

I mean, we could try and get rid of the letter Y from the alphabet as well, but whi do that?:laugh3:

 

Especially when Coldplay have a "y" in their name and an album called X&Y!!:rolleyes: