I started this as one blog, but by the time I had written about the stories and then added some opinions and conjecture to the mix, it became a little too long, so I’m going to split this into two. This first part will cover the recent stories about sexual orientation information on Facebook not being as private as you might think, and the second part will address some more general questions along the lines of sharing and privacy.

Part 1 – Targeted Ads on Facebook & The Cost Of Sharing At The Expense Of Privacy

There has been growing concern recently over Facebook’s privacy settings in relation to targeted ads being used to reveal information that users assumed was private. Stanford Computer Science researcher, Aleksandra Korolova, described in a recent paper how she used a highly specific targeted ad on Facebook to determine that a female user was gay, despite the fact that this user’s sexual orientation information was set to friends only within the privacy options. Find out how she did it here.

And now Facebook’s targeted advertising has been blamed for ‘outing’ a gay British teen to his parents. Privacy International reported that “David” was thrown out of home after his parents discovered “incriminating” gay content on his Facebook page – however it was not his profile information, but instead targeted advertising placed by the site based on David’s activities and relationships.

The report stated: “He never mentioned anywhere on his profile that he was gay, and was not openly involved in any online gay groups… The company placed that material on his page without notification, without his consent and in violation of every principle of care that the company claims to stand for… On this occasion he made the mistake of leaving his computer screen on while going to the shop, unaware that his parents were to return earlier than expected to the house.”

Facebook expressed their support for David, saying that they “sympathize with anyone who has been the victim of discrimination and we are saddened by the story Privacy International shared on its blog,” but added that “Our ads are only shown to people based on the information they have chosen to post or add to their profile — the same information that would have been visible as a result of the unauthorized access.”

So it hardly seems fair to blame Facebook for what is ultimately a clear case of user error. Any information on his profile would have been willingly submitted, and in any case, the specific targeted ads only show up on the user’s own browser when they are logged in – the whole point is that they are targeted to that individual account. No one can logically hold Facebook responsible for a user inputting information about themselves, and then leaving their account unlocked in a shared residence for this information to be viewed by someone else. It also begs the question, if you didn’t want anyone to know this information, then why put it on Facebook in the first place?