Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public
jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."
I clicked the link in the summary and I didn't find any pictures. So after a quick search I found this http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-private-photos-2009-12#with-girlfriend-priscilla-chan-from-her-album-moments-have-you-seen-a-sweeter-thing-today-probably-not-1 Enjoy!
I am really worried about the fact that Facebook has access to data such as people's real name (that's the point of it, right?)
Um, no it doesn't. It has no real name verification mechanism, so if you are like me and you go by a nickname among your friends, you can register using a nickname. I think at some point they changed it so that you couldn't change the name easily once you register ('didn't used to be that way in its first year), but if you start out with a pseudonym, they don't stop you.
As for other infos, well, use TOR and litter your profile (and friend list) with a lot of false information so that they cannot separate the truth from lie.
Or, as you said, don't use Facebook.
You used to be able to exclude yourself from the system. Now you can't even opt out of the Facebook API, there is information that is accessible to 3rd party developers as long as your friends install an app. Used to be you could opt out of it though. After this whole debacle I ended up requesting deletion of my facebook account, which should be processed in 10 days.