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Privacy fears as Facebook
reveals member list
Ben Martin
London
Telegraph
Wednesday September 5, 2007
Facebook, the internet networking phenomenon, is to open its
member list to internet search engines, prompting privacy concerns
among its 39 million users.
The California-based site today started notifying members of
its decision to make member names and photographs available to
non-members using popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
advertisementUntil now, Facebook has not allowed external websites
to trawl its member database, which includes about 5 million UK
users.
Only Facebook members have been able to type in the names of
friends and acquaintances to see whether they have a profile.
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Starting early next month, non-members will be able to use a
new search box on Facebook’s home page - www.facebook.com
- to search for names on the site.
A notification posted today on the website said: “Public
Search Listings only include names and profile pictures.”
Members will be able to control whether outside users can find
them by altering their privacy settings.
“No privacy rules are changing; if you do choose to make
this public search listing available, anyone who discovers your
public search listing must sign up and login to contact you via
Facebook.”
But the reassurances may do little to ease concerns among members,
who prize the relative privacy offered by Facebook offers, compared
to other networking sites such as MySpace.
Celebrities have already found that what they thought was their
closely-guarded list of friends and contacts has been exposed
to all Facebook users because they failed to choose the “hide
friends” privacy option offered by the site.
With rapidly expanding membership, which grew by more than sixty
per cent in the past three months, Facebook has database which
is regarded as a lucrative marketing, business research and advertising
tool.
But the absence of overbearing on-screen marketing, which is
usually limited to a single advertisement on each page, is one
of the qualities that sets Facebook apart from other networking
sites.
A year ago, Facebook weathered a privacy storm among students
disturbed by changes that exposed users’ postings to their
friends.
More recent changes that attracted more adults to the site also
provoked concern among the Facebook’s core student base
that parents and authority figures could monitor their activity.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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