Ads on Facebook that inappropriately used members’ profile pictures set off a mini-firestorm online this week –- and got lots of people talking about how to avoid unwittingly becoming a shill for products on Facebook.
Attention on the issue was brought about with an outraged post on AOL’s Download Squad blog about a man who, while using a third-party app, saw an ad for a dating site that, to his surprise, was dressed up with his wife’s picture. No, she wasn’t looking for a lover. Her picture had been usurped by an ad network in the employ of a third-party application developer, which she believes was a quiz app.
Later that day, the blogger acknowledged that the incident was similar to a problem Facebook has been dealing with for some time. It takes down offending ads and has even kicked two ad networks off its site. Facebook says it prohibits ads within apps that cause a bad user experience, are misleading or otherwise violate its policies. And it requires developers to get permission from any users before using their photo in an ad.
In light of major confusion about Facebook ads and user privacy, it’s worth reviewing how this works.
Facebook has a program for advertisers called Social Ads, under which it may show ads to your friends with your picture included if you have associated yourself with the advertiser by, say, becoming a fan of its Facebook page.
You can choose not to become an endorser of these products or companies by making tweaks to your privacy settings. Hover your mouse over “Settings” and choose “Privacy Settings,” then “News Feed and Wall.” Then click “Facebook Ads” tab, which will take you to a setting for “Appearance in Facebook Ads” where you can select “No one.”
You can’t do anything to stop unscrupulous apps, or the ad networks many of them use to make money, other than to avoid using third-party apps or remove the ones you have from your profile. Certainly, you ought to consider staying away from apps with a spammy patina -– and there are a few –- as they simply may not be worthy of your trust. Facebook shares quite a bit of data about you and your friends with app developers –- a situation that has been protested by online-privacy advocates -– and you should keep that in mind when deciding which apps to let onto your pages.
Expect more scrutiny of this and other privacy issues on Facebook. Last week, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released a report on privacy practices at Facebook. It issued a complaint containing 24 allegations of missteps, including around its default privacy settings, advertising practices and policies for third-party applications. The commissioner called for more safeguards and gave Facebook 30 days to respond.
In a statement, Facebook says the commission has since dismissed some “inaccurate claims” and that the two parties have resolved some of the other issues raised in the document. Facebook said it would soon introduce additional privacy features “that we believe will keep the site at the forefront of user privacy and address any remaining concerns the commission may have.” Facebook said that it “will also continue our efforts to work with the Canadian Federal Privacy Commissioner to address the outstanding areas highlighted in the report and will continue our efforts to raise awareness of the privacy controls on Facebook.”
Separately, two researchers at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory earlier this week released the findings of a study scoring the privacy practices of 45 social networks against 206 criteria. It gave the best marks to the larger, most-established sites, and worst marks to niche sites. Bebo and LinkedIn were the highest scorers, while Facebook and MySpace came in slightly above average.
