• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 1, 2010

Web users probably should know by now that whenever they generate media by posting to a blog, a message board, or social networking sites, they run a risk that others will see the posts.

But consuming media is different. By and large, people still seem to expect that they can read something online without broadcasting that information to the Web at large. That's why Scribd's launch of Readcast -- which broadcasts information about documents users download -- blindsided people.

Scribd rolled out the service on an opt-out basis but, on Monday, changed Readcast to opt-in -- apparently in response to a public complaint by Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.

But don't assume from that move that Scribd has solved its privacy problems. The same day that Scribd changed the default settings on Readcast, it also announced it was joining Facebook's instant personalization program. That program shares information about Facebook members with outside companies -- including Microsoft Docs, Yelp, Pandora and Rotten Tomatoes -- by default. Scribd said that it would only use Facebook data to make recommendations to new users and that neither those recommendations or any other information would be shared with others, unless people affirmatively opted in to sharing.

Unfortunately, something appears to have gone wrong. Wired writer Priya Ganapati details her own experiences in the piece "Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is a Privacy Nightmare."

"On Wednesday -- two days after Scribd launched its instant personalization service, of which I was completely unaware -- I found a Scribd link in a Google search I ran," Ganapati wrote. "After spending a few minutes on the Scribd link to scan through the document, I moved away to do other things. Barely three hours later, I got an e-mail from a co-worker who is also a Facebook friend saying I had subscribed to him on Scribd."

Ganapati adds that she had never opted in and didn't notice an opt-out link, which appeared inside a banner at the top of the page.

Scribd spokesperson Michelle Laird told Ganapati that her co-worker shouldn't have gotten a message stating that Ganapati had been subscribed and that the site is reviewing what happened.

Even if the disclosure was accidental, the sloppiness calls into question whether Scribd is serious about protecting people's privacy. Given the recent controversy over Readcast, the company certainly could have been more careful about how it rolled out instant personalization.