Facebook normally catches flack for making private information available to advertisers. But last month, the social networking site with half a billion users quietly added a feature that makes your private information available to the friends of your friends, which may be a much more nefarious group. A button called “See Friendship” aggregates onto a single page all of the information that two friends share: photos both people have been tagged in, events they have attended or are planning to attend, comments they have exchanged, etc. To see this stuff, you need only be “friends” with one of the people. So let’s say I’ve turned down an ex-boyfriend’s request for friendship; he can still peruse my pictures or trace my whereabouts by viewing my interactions with our mutual pals.The “See Friends” feature was launched by Facebook developer Wayne Kao, who credited his inspiration to the joy of browsing through friends’ photos. “A similarly magical experience was possible if all of the photos and posts between two friends were brought together,” he wrote on the Facebook blog. “You may even see that moment when your favorite couple met at a party you all attended.”
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2032030,00.html
The Trouble with Facebook’s New ‘See Friends’ Feature
Facebook normally catches flack for making private information available to advertisers. But last month, the social networking site with half a billion users quietly added a feature that makes your private information available to the friends of your friends, which may be a much more nefarious group. A button called “See Friendship” aggregates onto a single page all of the information that two friends share: photos both people have been tagged in, events they have attended or are planning to attend, comments they have exchanged, etc. To see this stuff, you need only be “friends” with one of the people. So let’s say I’ve turned down an ex-boyfriend’s request for friendship; he can still peruse my pictures or trace my whereabouts by viewing my interactions with our mutual pals.