Perils of facebook

By now, I am sure many of us have received the forwarded mail regarding an employee who lost her job because she complained about her boss in facebook (“FB”), not knowing her boss is in her friends list. Of course, there is the more erotic one where a woman proclaimed that a particular guy’s d*ck is forever welcomed in her love canal after a sexciting night together.

While we may all laugh at these victims, we should not discount the fact that FB is getting increasingly dangerous. To-date, I have heard of 2 real-life situations where people have been dismissed due to FB.

The first is very much similar to the forwarded mail. The victim explicitly expressed her fury in her status update. Though her boss is not in her friends list, someone captured the screen of FB status and sent it to HR. Though the logical speculation is that a fellow colleague (now ex-colleague) did it, the culprit remains unknown to-date.

The second story is pretty much due to the stupidity lack of reasonable care on the victim herself. She told her office that she was not well and will be on medical leave, which is of course, not true. She attended a party during the day and took lots of photos and happily posted those photos in FB. Someone in her office saw the photos; I don’t need to elaborate further.

Notwithstanding such mishaps, I think FB can be quite an intrusion to one’s privacy. Do you know that a google image search of your name will most probably reveal your FB profile photo?
Of course, there are people who find it glamorous to have their faces plastered all over the web and have people recognising you everywhere you go. The web has indeed given a great sense of celebritism to these people. What used to be only achievable via excellence in acting, singing, sports or other artistic/specialised skills can now be achieved with just a click of a button.

And this sense of celebritism is exactly what online advertisement companies are thriving on. By creating this feel, they can harvest a large number of cheap online advertisement platform for their business expansion. Anyway, I have digressed… let’s come back to FB…

And so, if you are someone who wants to have your face plastered all over the web and have a sense of internet stardom, then FB is a fantastic platform (besides blog). But if you are not, then I think it’s an intrusion of privacy. I am referring specifically to the “photo tagging” function.

Worse, FB even allows tagging of photos for non-FB user. So your face could have been tagged somewhere in someone’s photo. If you are a private person who wants to remain anonymity, FB will screw that all up.

And of course, it also exposes you to a certain degree of risk. Just like the second situation I mentioned above. If you fake a medical leave and got your photos taken somewhere, someone else might post your photo up and tag you as a non-FB user. So even if you are smart enough not to post any picture of yourself, you may still be at risk.

And referring to the first story I mentioned above, you just do not know who are your enemies within your FB list. I know some people will happily add anyone who makes a FB request. Perhaps one should think twice before randomly adding people.

Certainly, those are very specific and perhaps isolated situation. But no matter what, the fact that FB allows visual identification without one’s knowledge and the proven vulnerability of one’s exposure to public is something we should all think about.


1 year ago… From far and near, they all flock here… And you think the big pays big