Facebook – Fun or Fraud?

On July 16, 2009, David Gelles from Financial Times reported that for “the first time a government has found Facebook in direct violation of its laws, and comes as the world’s largest social network with 250m users, is pushing its users to share more of their information with everyone on the Web.”  Personally I think this is a bit scary.  Even though I jumped on the Facebook bandwagon in 2004, I have a hard time accepting the fact that I am being shared with 250 million people.  To me this is absurd—but if you were to monitor my social media activity, you would question the above statement because I find myself logging into Facebook every time I re-open a Web browser.  It has become as habitual for me as checking my e-mail.

In my defense, this past weekend I was more concerned with Facebook than I had been previously.  Last week, both Jill and my friend Dave brought to my attention something suspicious when they logged on to their accounts.  Under “Suggestions,” Jill and Dave had an icon named Chrissy Buckley.  This concerned me because we were already friends, and I do not have multiple accounts.

I did some research, Googled myself, looked up my profile privacy settings—everything seemed to be fine and very secure.  Long story short, somebody had cloned my account.  This means someone or something had copied my account and privacy settings and set up an identical Facebook page.  After a few days, back and forth with what seemed like a machine automated e-mailer named “Will,” I was finally able to get this cloned account deleted.

This ordeal got me thinking: how secure am I when I log in to my account?  Who’s to say my privacy settings are even working? I felt violated.  I felt as though someone had taken a piece of me and taunted and teased me.  In a way, isn’t it a form of identity theft?  If I found out who did this, could I press charges? Unfortunately, the answer is probably not.  I do, however, think that Facebook needs to reform its privacy settings now that this tool is available to 250 million people.  It’s just a thought.

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said it right when she stated: “Facebook has to be more transparent about telling people what they do with their personal information, how long they keep it, and who is able to use it.”  Isn’t that already a standard practice when it comes to collecting and utilizing personal information such as credit cards, birthdays and other such important details?

I’m not sure what to do or how to solve this problem; however, I do think that Facebook could come up with a system that checks on new accounts. Maybe it is the idealist in me that thinks employing actual humans to monitor the activity could fix the problem of offensive and cloned accounts.  Not only would you be setting up some sort of justice system within a social networking program, but you would also be providing more jobs for people to fill.  It seems like a win-win situation.  What do you think?