Facebook frazzles privacy

GuyClapperton 0 500 Views

Facebook is working to address a new privacy issue even as this story is being typed.

Early today, mid-afternoon in the UK and while much of the rest of the world was asleep, a story got onto the TechCrunch blog about a new bug. It seems that the chat function, which uses the privacy settings, enabled onlookers not only to see whether you were online, but to observe any other chats you were having and who had applied to friend you.

This is of course crazy. Facebook, to its credit, took the chat function down and it could well be that by the time you read this it'll be back up there with its usual reliability duly restored.

It's unfortunate that this should have hit Facebook in particular, a company that already had controversies stacking up over its privacy policy. But it does underline one thing: that Facebook, like any other social network, is still a very new company, and people relying on it to build their marketing efforts and some sort of social networking plan are backing one hell of a new horse.

Dani AI

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's report and 's comment highlight two sides of the same risk: platform faults happen, and the platform — not the brand — holds ultimate control of social data. Brands should treat social networks as distribution channels rather than the master copy of customer records or sensitive conversations.

Immediate, practical steps for marketers and page administrators:

  1. Export and back up page content and audience lists on a regular schedule; verify that exports can be restored.
  2. Enforce least-privilege for admin roles: separate personal from admin accounts, require two-factor authentication, and remove access promptly when staff change roles.
  3. Audit third-party apps and integrations quarterly; revoke any unused app permissions and document what each integration can read or post.
  4. Stop storing sensitive PII in posts or messages; keep canonical contact data in an owned CRM with consent records, retention rules, and hashed identifiers where possible.
  5. Prepare an incident playbook with comms templates, technical export/removal steps, and legal/PR contacts so response is fast and consistent.

Longer-term governance: prioritize owned channels (email lists, CRM, website logins) so relationships aren’t hostage to a single provider; require data-portability and deletion clauses in vendor agreements; run privacy audits and tabletop exercises; and train anyone with admin access on hygiene and escalation procedures.

This combination of technical hygiene, data-minimization, contractual safeguards and an incident plan won’t eliminate platform risk, but it will reduce business, legal and customer-impact when something goes wrong. The thread rightly raises both the immediate technical concern and the wider governance question — both need equal attention.

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InsightsDigital 57 Posting Virtuoso

This also demonstrates that there is no such thing as privacy in the social media rules because our information and content is in the hands of a company, someone else, and most of all... some other eyes....

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