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Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public

Posted by kdawson on from the red-face-book dept.

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."

10 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. I'll never use Facebook by vawarayer · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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?), IP addresses, friends' lists, and other info. It worries me enough on a personnal level, so I'll never register, but what worries me more is on the macro level. Even if such company did not want to 'do evil' with this tremendous amount of info, I feel that the power they posess is ultimately too big to be own by a for-profit company.

    1. Re:I'll never use Facebook by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have a profile for an inflatable sex pig, with a name clearly implying it's a sex pig, and a photo of the pig for the profile pic. They aren't completely on the ball. I also have a profile for a character from a very popular book series, and the profile pic is a still from one of the film adaptations, and both of these profiles have existed for over two years.

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
  2. too funny by pertelote · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have spent the best part of the week trying to adjust my facebook profile to some level of discreteness that I am comfortable with. Have been very unhappy with the "all or nothing" choices, and have started just simply deleting content. I feel a little better, because now I am sure the settings will get some fine-tuning.

    Just for fun:
    http://www.facebook.com/pertelote

    And this is after I have locked down as much as I can without insulting my family and classmates.

    1. Re:too funny by gleffler · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it isn't. If you go to the URL of the friends list, you can view anybody's friends list.

      See http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck even though if you go to http://facebook.com/zuck, there's no way to view his friends list.

  3. he meant to do it, then had the pictures removed by Mr.Zuka · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it says a lot about his personality that he posted to his newsfeed that he meant to post the pictures, then somehow the pictures mysteriously disappear. Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small. If there ever was a security breach would facebook ever admit to it?

  4. Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I vaguely remember automatically being "friends" with mark zuckerberg when I originally signed up for facebook eons ago... (This was before "fans" existed...).

    In any case, I wouldn't think someone like mark would want most of his pictures private.. it is his site after all!

  5. Re:Karma. by mwvdlee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My guess is it's fake.

    They either had the choice of (A) cleaning up his profile and "accidentily" making it public or (B) setting his profile private by default thereby admitting it's a bad idea to make profiles public by default.

    Obviously there's choice (C) of making profiles private by default, but the marketing people probably didn't like people having privacy.

    The lesson is simple; never trust any company to keep your stuff private.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  6. What am I missing? by BlueWaterBaboonFarm · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is an honest question. I've seen numerous stories about how terrible Facebook's privacy setting are but I just don't understand what is wrong. I've made a dummy account with the same settings as my personal Facebook account. Tell me what you can find out about "Billy Slashdot Perkins". The answer is nothing as far as I can tell. Searching for him on Google or Facebook gives no results as far as I can tell.

    As far as I can tell there are two options for privacy on Facebook

    (1) Be 'searchable' which means some information about yourself should be included otherwise the search is useless

    (2) Not be 'searchable'. Everything you have is private and between you and the friends you have

    I have option (1) and I haven't had any problems with it yet.

    Please tell me specifically what it is about Facebook that is violating your privacy?

  7. Re:It's too hard to manage privacy on Facebook by complete+loony · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I hovered my mouse of the "old facebook" a tooltip was displayed that showed what the old setting was. But still, not very obvious.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  8. Google Wave by JNSL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We all know that Facebook is afraid of Wave. Now why don't they behave like it?