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Facebook goes behind your back to present your profile to people you've chosen not to friend
Hot on the heels of Facebook's big username land-grab comes news that Facebook may be using the email addresses you import even after you choose not to add them as friends.
The issue occurs if and when you let Facebook search your email contacts for people to invite to become your Facebook friend. As part of this process Facebook will list every contact you have that is already on Facebook, and offer you the chance to "friend" them all at once. You can choose to uncheck the ones that you don't want to friend, essentially skipping them, or choose to skip all of them.
While Facebook makes it clear that they will not store the password for your email account, what they don't make so clear is that they will store the addresses of everyone it found in your email account and keep them associated with you, even the ones that you chose to skip.
So how does Facebook use this information? They present you as a possible contact to the people that you skipped - even if that person has never shown Facebook a connection of any kind to you. Nice, eh? Effectively, Facebook is ignoring your preference to not contact these people by going behind your back to ask them if they want to friend you.
Now, obviously any social network needs to grow by connecting as many people as possible, but in my opinion both Facebook and Twitter get it wrong by publishing friend (or in the case of Twitter, follower) totals. This encourages people to friend as many people as possible so that they appear more popular, even if those connections are tenuous at best. While this makes the service seem more popular, it actually greatly decreases the value of those connections (something I'm sure all the self-proclaimed "social media experts/consultants/evangelists" would disagree with).
Even worse now, Facebook is using your contact information far enough after the point when you actually allowed it access that it really feels unscrupulous. Couple that with the fact that by using your information in this way Facebook is blatantly ignoring your preferences (to not contact certain people), and Facebook is really appearing to want us not to trust them.
By the way, the only way currently to block this behavior on Facebook's part is to set your privacy settings to not allow your profile to show up in searches. It's ridiculous to liken Facebook actively showing your profile to people who have possibly never shown any sort of connection to you to people actively searching for your account.
Are Facebook in the wrong here? Technically, I suppose not. You do have to give them permission to search your contacts. But it sure as hell feels wrong, and when it comes to building a community that's just as important.
I hope abusing its users' trust is valuable enough to Facebook to warrant the risk to their reputation.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
softgrayclouds said 3:41PM on 6-14-2009
You know what? This is exactly what I was griping about last week. I thought their "suggested friends" were a little bit too accurate. I didnt get wise to it until I allowed facebook access to my AOL addy book and started suggesting ppl from 8 years ago. There's no way that their matrix would have suggested that person to me based on my current friends and friend's friends.
In alot of ways I wish that we had the old FB back - no apps, no stupid sheep to throw, no quizzes and tests, just networked connections.
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shaunisadirty said 4:28PM on 6-20-2009
I agree, I've been thinking of closing my facebook account because I'm sick of all the crap on it. The only reason I still have it is that it's my own means of connection with some people that I don't see or hear from all that often.
gamer4250 said 4:04PM on 6-14-2009
I can confirm this, as it recommended to me somebody that I had IM'd a long time ago from some forum. I guess they never removed me from their buddy list and imported the account.
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nano said 4:39PM on 6-14-2009
Yet another reason to stay away from facebook
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Maverick said 4:50PM on 6-14-2009
Yeah -- when I reinstalled Facebook on my Blackberry, I was given the option to select contacts who are on FB to invite. Facebook then proceeded to invite EVERYONE to whom I had EVER sent email. Argh! Since I have my address book synched to Gmail, I had a bunch of old co-workers, Craigslist trading partners, and "one-hit wonders" invited too.
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Lallo said 6:31PM on 6-14-2009
This happened to me! I'm really disappointed in Facebook.
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alex1jam said 7:47PM on 6-14-2009
Myspace is still king were i live. I always known FB was just for old people and geeks. Who cares about mafia wars or sheep jumping or whatever, Myspace is more fun.
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Alma Fernández said 7:52PM on 6-14-2009
A couple of days ago i was talking with my husband about how weird it was that Facebook recommended me an old friend for no special reason.
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Slappy said 11:53PM on 6-14-2009
Stupid question time: Why would one give Facebook access to any other account?
Sure there's an element of convenience, but, there's the massive security risk of giving a site the password to a different site.
And now there are these shenanigans.
Not really a surprise is it?
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RG said 12:29AM on 6-15-2009
What slappy said. I have never accepted those invite your friends things, not on facebook not anywhere.
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iquanyin said 1:24AM on 6-15-2009
i already knew they were not good news when i learned that you pretty much have to take legal action to have them delete your account. this is true, not an exaggeration. i gave up...my kid's on it, friends. so i use fb but definitely don't trust them.
and i think it feels wrong because it IS wrong. possibly legally--i think it would be an interesting court case. you gave them permission to access your contacts. ONCE. keeping the pass is irrelevant, that's the letter. the spirit is obviously that you're granting them permission so you can maybe do invites. you never granted permission for them to have continual access to your contact list, nor to present you to others without your knowlege.
legal? illegal? i say open question till someone decides to find out.
and i agree about publishing the follower numbers. i've always thought that was silly. (and more follow me than me them. i still think its silly.)
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R said 1:36AM on 6-15-2009
All this complaining about privacy, yet people continue to use Facebook.
Then a few months later, a new feature is rolled out and privacy is compromised again.
People complain again, but still continue to use Facebook.
Conan O' Brien summed it up nicely.. all these social networking sites should merge and form YouTwitFace.com.
LOL.
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Patrick said 2:50AM on 6-15-2009
I use facebook but im trying to understand how it works, I didn't allow it to access my hotmail account as i dont give out access like that, so how do their friend suggestion seem spot on ?
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Rich said 3:12PM on 6-16-2009
Yet another reason to avoid Facebook...
And why in the name of {insert your name of your deity} would anyone give a site like FB access to your email contacts and your password? That's just asking for trouble.
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moby said 7:33PM on 6-16-2009
I'm not the least bit surprised. I'm more annoyed they don't actively disclose it vs actually doing it. (I never let FB search my accounts)
FB (and other social networking sites) has shown from the very beginning they are out to control as much of your data as they possibly can. The only time they reign in is when the membership rises up to complain or leaves en-mass.
As long as people consistently turn over all of their personal data w/o question, sites like this will continue to behave this way.
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