Yahoo Inc is looking to revamp itself and improve its position in th emarketplace, and not so co-incidentally insulate itself from a $44 billion MSN buyout offer. Yahoo plans on leveraging its content and portal so that users can manageinformation about themselves in a single place and share it 2.0 style.

Warning corporate shill at work =).  

If you’ve ever wanted to pick the brain (and play golf at Pinehurst) of some of the smartest and most connected people in the industry like:

 Chris Shimojima, Vice President, Global Electronic Commerce of Nike

Stephanie Tilenius, General Manager, eBay North America

Mary Anne Gillespie, Vice President of Sales of PayPal

John Mracek, Vice President and General Manager, Distributed Commerce of Shopping.com 

Vince Monical, Director of Commerce and Analytics of Google  

Sebastian Gunningham, Senior Vice President, Merchant Services of  Amazon.com      

Ben Ling, Director of Platform of Facebook

If the health and direction of e-comm is your thing, then stop by to network and get the opinions of Deutsche Bank, Bears Sterns, Goldman Sachs and Stifel Nicholaus.

Then I’d encourage you to attend ChannelAdvisor’s  Catalyst conference in Pinehurst, April 1-3. It’s only $349 and that includes the conference itself as well as golf, transpo to and from the airport, drinks and meals, parties, etc..  And unlike other company sponsored events….ChannelAdvisor doesn’t pitch its own products…no really! I wouldn’t lie to you.

If you email me and let me know you are coming, I’ll even take you out for an additional round of golf!

The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is investigating Facebook after a user complained that they were unable to fully delete their profile after terminating their account.While users’ information remains on Facebook’s server even if accounts are deactivated. This data is no longer accessible but can be reactivated later on.

Facebook says that this is in ”full compliance with U.K. data protection law” says it does not use the information from deactivated accounts.

“We take the concerns of the ICO and our user’s privacy very seriously and are committed to working with the ICO to maintain a trusted environment for all Facebook users and ensure compliance with UK law,” said a statement from the site.

Senior data protection practice manager at the ICO explains,”If the onus is entirely on the individual to delete their data, they might not find themselves motivated enough to delete information that’s about them on their wall or other people’s sites,”

“We’ll be working with the site to achieve better quality information for users to make it absolutely clear to people what exactly will happen to their information once it’s posted,” said Evans.”

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141607-c,privacy/article.html

— Jeff Buechler

Yahoo News:

“Facebook is suing seventeen people and a Canadian Internet porn company for allegedly trying to mine the popular social networking site for its users’ personal details.

Facebook alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook’s site. The allegations are contained in an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.

The company first filed suit back in June, but amended the complaint this month after obtaining court orders to identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site.

Experts have warned people against publishing too much personal information on social networking sites for fear it could be collected and then abused by fraudsters.

Facebook, one of the most-used social networking sites after MySpace, said the automated scripts caused error messages to be generated, but the company did not say if user information was successfully collected.

Named in the suit is Istra Holdings, which controls SlickCash.com, an affiliate advertising business that offers commissions to Web publishers for referring Internet surfers to its portfolio of adult sites.

It also names Brian Fabian and Josh Raskin, both of whom the suit says work at Istra in Toronto, and Ming Wu of Markham, Ontario, as well as 14 other unidentified people.

Facebook said the hacking attempts cost it at least US$5,000 to investigate. The company has requested a jury trial and is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future, in addition to damages.”

The porn business engaging in disreputable behavior? And its the holiday? Fie! Shame!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071217/tc_pcworld/140604;_ylt=Aik44QjY2L2LhQ51RX5DCf2s0NUE

I have nothing to add, just thought it was funny (I’m sick, I know).

From the Consumerist.com

One of our readers yesterday left a couple of interesting links in the comments section of our Beacon post. They provide the names of the companies that Facebook says are participating in its poorly conceived spy program Beacon. Here they are:

• AllPosters.com
• Blockbuster
• Bluefly.com
• CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
• ExpoTV
• Gamefly
• Hotwire
• Joost
• Kiva
• Kongregate
• LiveJournal
• Live Nation
• Mercantila
• National Basketball Association
• NYTimes.com
• Overstock.com
• (RED)
• Redlight
• SeamlessWeb
• Sony Online Entertainment LLC
• Sony Pictures
• STA Travel
• The Knot
• TripAdvisor
• Travel Ticker
• TypePad
• viagogo
• Vox
• Yelp
• WeddingChannel.com
• Zappos.com

One site points out that Redlight is a mysterious addition—”I couldn’t find any site that went by that name that wasn’t an adult site.” We found something called Redlight Poker—maybe that’s the participating company?

http://consumerist.com/consumer/online-privacy/list-of-companies-that-participate-in-facebooks-beacon-spy-program-329636.php

Computer Associates is reporting that despite Facebook’s assurances that they will be more transparent in their logging and reporting issues, Facebook’s Beacon will report back to Facebook on members’ activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook.

“… investigation reveals that Beacon is more intrusive and stealthy than anyone had imagined. In his note, titled “Facebook’s Misrepresentation of Beacon’s Threat to Privacy: Tracking users who opt out or are not logged in,” he explains that he created an account on Conde Nast’s food site Epicurious.com, a site participating in Beacon, and saved three recipes as favorites. He saved the first recipe while logged in to Facebook, and he opted out of having it broadcast to his friends on Facebook. He saved the second recipe after closing the Facebook window, but without logging off from Epicurious or ending the browser session, and again declined broadcasting it to his friends. Then he logged out of Facebook and saved the third recipe. This time, no Facebook alert appeared asking if he wanted the information displayed to his friends.After checking his network traffic logs, Berteau saw that in all three cases, information about his activities was reported back to Facebook, although not to his friends. That information included where he was on Epicurious, the action he had just taken and his Facebook account name.” 

 http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140182-c,onlineprivacy/article.html