Posted on 10/13/2012 8:11:08 AM PDT by billorites
AUSTIN, Texas—Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.
One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties.
The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.
Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.
The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the choir's Facebook group. The president didn't know the software would automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members of the chorus.
The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents.
"Our hearts go out to these young people," says Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. "Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls."
In the era of social networks like Facebook and Google Inc.'s Google+, companies that catalog people's activities for a profit routinely share, store and broadcast everyday details of people's lives. This creates a challenge...
(Excerpt) Read more at professional.wsj.com ...
ever hear of don’t do anything you don’t want printed in the paper?
why do people think they have a right to secrecy?
Exactly so. Don’t want your parents to know - don’t post it on facebook ffs. This isn’t exactly hard.
I'm a long-term, but infrequent, user of FaceBook. Last summer I bought a lightweight travel backpack on line.
Later, I see that purchase broadcast over FB. I must have OK'd sharing that, but don't remember doing so and normally wouldn't.
Must check my privacy settings to make sure I'm not sharing what's kept in the back of my sock drawer...
What, she isn’t homosexual proud?
WELCOME TO FACEBOOK - it’s about social networking and sharing anything and everything about your life instantly!
This is why the US Intel Community strongly suggests that people delete their FB account and stop using such invasion of personal life events network platforms!
Facebook is such a HUGE waste of time and commitment!
Unlike F/R....
There’s secrecy and then there’s privacy.
if you are living a life you are ashamed of, change it to one you aren’t ashamed of
I’ve never had ‘social sir accounts’, but here’s the long and short way to get-off Face-Butt:
http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
I’ve never had ‘social site accounts’, but here’s the long and short way to get-off Face-Butt:
http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
I spent an entire day in a seminar devoted to stalking people on the Internet. We had a whole section on Facebook. If you have your privacy settings totally locked down but one of your friends “likes” or comments on a post you make, and their settings are not totally locked down, then it can be found with a simple search. I sort of have assumed this so don’t post private things on my page. I mainly use it to check up on my kids and my niece and nephews whom I dearly love. So far none of them have unfriended me but I’m pretty sure that they don’t allow all of my postings on their wall. I’m not sure how to do that but I’ve been assured by one of my sons that its possible.
FaceBook did not out her, her own stupidity on how to set her privacy, notifications outed her.
Facebook has entered ecommerce.
Call centers are now linking Facebook to customers when they call in to place an order or place the order on-line. The agent can have access to your Facebook account and see what your likes and dislikes are to help you with your purchase.
We are all living in glass houses now.
I have four children ... all straight ... but if any had turned out to be gay I certainly would not react in this way.
Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
What’s really sad is that this young woman has gotten drawn into this lifestyle. I’m 64 and I remember when I was in college that culture was hitting on me and there was a concerted effort to bring me into it. I cannot imagine what it’s like now. Sad.
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