First published: 31st July 2009
The implications of scoial networking in general, and Facebook in particular, are under renewed scruitiny after a man with a Facebook account saw an ad for a singles Web site appear on his page accompanied by his wife’s photo. The man's wife had not become a member of the site in question, but the third-party advertiser used the photo from her Facebook profile anyway. Facebook says it was a violation of the site privacy policy and banned the advertiser.
However, the incidents highlight the fact that not all advertisers obey the rules, and might get away with it for some time before being reported. Facebook does have a wide range of options for users to control how their information is used, perhaps too many separate controls and it is often unclear what each option affects. Facebook applications also take advantage of social pressure - friends 'invite' you to join them in using new applications, each of which requires access to your personal information, and it feels like insulting a friend to reject the requests.
Facebook and other social networking sites have grown enormously by playing on people's dislike of appearing anti-social, but will they face a downturn as people become more aware of how their information is misused?