Facebook Lets Advertisers Use Pictures Without Permission

Krokz sends in an LA Times piece that begins "A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: 'Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.' It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos." The attention-grabbing incident in this furor involved a married woman, whose photo appeared in an ad for a dating service that was presented to her husband to view. Fortunately, both husband and wife had a sense of humor about it.

Comments

Unfounded rumor - Read the official facebook blog.

[jdigital]

(From http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=110636457130)

In the past couple of days, a rumor has begun spreading that claims we have changed our policies for third-party advertisers and the use of your photos. These rumors are false, and we have made no such change in our advertising policies. If you see a Wall post or receive a message with the following language or something similar, it is this false rumor:

FACEBOOK has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission.

The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading. We are as concerned as many of you are about any potential threat to your experience on Facebook and the protection of your privacy. That's why we prohibit ads on Facebook Platform that cause a bad user experience, are misleading, or otherwise violate our policies. Along with removing ads, we've recently prohibited two entire advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their practices.

They had permission; headline wrong.

[a whoabot]

Read the terms of service.

When you sign up you agree to the terms of service, which clearly says you grant Facebook an unlimited, worldwide licence to use anything you post on Facebook. Unfortunately, no reads it!

Re:Unfounded rumor - Read the official facebook bl

[ghostis]

Mod up please. /. really should check snopes/company blogs before posting summaries like this... :-/

Re:Unfounded rumor - more background

[1sockchuck]

The ad network misbehavior that fueled this rumor was covered by VentureBeat in early June, when these networks were banned by Facebook.

Even the linked article claims they were mistaken

[Vetala]

Okay, first off, the article has a follow-up posted at the top of it saying they made a mistake and were corrected. But for the interest of people who would rather read comments than articles, here's what I've been telling everyone on Facebook who keeps passing around this foolishness:

First off, the claim that Facebook is allowing 3rd party advertisers to use people's photos isn't quite the case. In fact, Facebook Terms of Service (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) state (section 10.2) "We do not give your content to advertisers."

Yes, Facebook may pair up your name and profile photo with an ad that gets sent to your friends, and yes, that can be blocked with the option mentioned in the message going around (Settings->Privacy->"News Feed and Wall"->"Facebook Ads" and select "No One" - or this link might work to get you there faster, since I'm feeling useful http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=feeds&tab=ads )

This is not, however, 3rd party advertisers using your photo. Section 15 of the advertising guidelines for Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php) state that an ad won't even be accepted if the advertiser is using photos for which they don't own copyright.

Now for the useful: A Facebook application that has not been authorized by you or a friend cannot access any information about you other than what's in your public search listing. This means, though, that if you have a public search listing displaying your photo, an unscrupulous advertiser could get your profile photo.

Any application you have authorized will be able to access information it requires to work. Definition of "requires to work" may vary. If you play a lot of 3rd party Facebook games, or do a lot of those quizzes going around, remember to check the Privacy Policies and Terms of Use for the application if your worried (or if you're really worried, don't do them).

Any application your friends have authorized may be able to access any information about you (on behalf of your friend) that your friend can access. To limit what the applications can see, go to Settings->Privacy->Applications and go to the Settings tab (or have another link http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other ).

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/downloadsquad-and-facebook-users-get-confused-about-facebooks-advertising-policy/ pointed out what more likely happened and downloadsquad corrected their position.

And apparently, as jdigital noted already, even the official facebook blog says that's what happened. So yeah, if you've posted stuff online, somebody may take it and abuse it.. but no, it wasn't Facebook's doing in this case. RTF....Retraction?