Thought Facebook was bad now?

[Nightshade]

Check out what they might be doing soon:

Facebook's new patent could mean you are denied a loan because of your friends


It might be time to purge your Facebook friends list of people you don’t trust.

Facebook could soon take the old adage 'you can judge a man by the company he keeps' to the next level. A patent acquired by Facebook states that users could be denied a loan based on the credit-worthiness of their connections online.

Facebook bought a bundle of patents from Friendster for $40 million in 2010. The patent in question is intended to prevent spam, however it also contains the following paragraph:

"In a fourth embodiment of the invention, the service provider is a lender. When an individual applies for a loan, the lender examines the credit ratings of members of the individual's social network who are connected to the individual through authorized nodes. If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application. Otherwise, the loan application is rejected."

Another way: users could be denied a loan because their Facebook friends have defaulted on theirs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 82622.html

I will never use any "social" site like Facebook.

[woodchip]

I've never signed up for any social medium...which in of itself might make me suspect.

[snoopy]

The problem is....

These companies like Facebook exist to make money off you. If things like this are too blatant, they loose their product (you), if they don't subtly do things like this, they're wastefully leaving money on the table and the stock owners get angry.

[callmeslick]

but, since FB currently isn't in the business of lending money, this is sort of much ado about nothing. By the way, FB is harmless if you set up a certain set of roadblocks to connecting online identity to real-world ID. FB doesn't like that, but can't stop it from being done.



as it stands, warts and all, FB is the best medium for CERTAIN types of interchanges. In my case, I signed up when we transferred a couple of worldwide fly fishing and fly tying groups from USENET when it get unworkable there. I, for one, find it pretty cool for this old guy to exchange thoughts on fly patterns and tying technique and theory with a private group consisting of the 250 most expert tiers on the planet. Plus, I encounter a lot of really funny stuff, and get daily reminders of exactly how stupid the vast bulk of the US populace really is.

[snoopy]

but, since FB currently isn't in the business of lending money, this is sort of much ado about nothing. By the way, FB is harmless if you set up a certain set of roadblocks to connecting online identity to real-world ID. FB doesn't like that, but can't stop it from being done.

I don't know for how much longer that will remain true...

[callmeslick]

will monitor it myself.