Yesterday I ordered tickets on Fandango, at the end of the process I was rewarded with a familiar popup window at the bottom of the browser.
Turns out, Fandango are nice enough to automagically add a post to your Facebook minifeed when you order movie tickets through them.
The sad part is that this is turned on by default and it’s not immediately obvious that this is happening (why should Fandango & Facebook be linked??).
I’m sure this is terrific publicity for Fandango, but sucks in terms of privacy. Features like this should always be opt-in.
Seems that I’m not the only one who’s troubled by this.
While it may seem like good business sense to not ask the user and increase revenue from advertisers in the short term, I think companies have to really be careful harming their brand with things like this. Personally I think you can only get privacy and security right if they’re designed into the product on day one.
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