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Privacy Social Networks Your Rights Online

Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public 219

Posted by kdawson from the red-face-book dept.
jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."
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Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public More

Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public

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  • Karma. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SilverHatHacker ( 1381259 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @05:42PM (#30425358)
    It's a b****.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      It would have been if he'd had any pictures that happened to be embarrassing. Instead the most personal thing on there is probably that he's going to visit a facebook company party soon. Woohoo. I was hoping for pictures of Mark drunk with writing or Mark doing a keg stand or something. With the stuff up there that he has, he may very well have left it public on purpose.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlm ( 69642 )

        I was hoping for pictures of Mark drunk with writing or Mark doing a keg stand or something.

        There's always photoshop.

      • Re:Karma. (Score:5, Informative)

        by awehttam ( 779031 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @10:01PM (#30427148)
        Which is apparently what he did.

        http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg [facebook.com]

        Mark Zuckerberg For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)

        • At least, that's what he posted after the fact... it's not like he can say "oh, man that was a total accident, this new privacy setting sux0rz". He can say all he wants but I highly doubt he meant to share 300 pictures of his friends and family to the public.

          Also, I don't know about anybody else, but as of right now Mark has a total of 31 pictures I can access, including only one profile picture. This would suggest that some 270+ pictures were hidden recently.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Rogerborg ( 306625 )

            Yup. Number of people dumb enough to believe what he said rather than what he did: one, apparently [slashdot.org].

            I'm trying to figure out why he'd post such a ludicrous and trivially disprovable assertion. Either he's trying to own another news cycle, he really is that dumb, or he thinks that his customers really are that dumb [slashdot.org].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by u38cg ( 607297 )
          That's his fan page, not his personal profile page. His own username is zuck, IIRC.
    • You know, they could turn this into awesome PR. "The founder of Facebook agrees with our new privacy controls, and really doesn't mind, so the new controls must be awesome!"

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      My guess is it's fake.

      They either had the choice of (A) cleaning up his profile and "accidentily" making it public or (B) setting his profile private by default thereby admitting it's a bad idea to make profiles public by default.

      Obviously there's choice (C) of making profiles private by default, but the marketing people probably didn't like people having privacy.

      The lesson is simple; never trust any company to keep your stuff private.

  • From Mark: (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"

    • Re:From Mark: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:27PM (#30425718) Homepage Journal

      BULLSHIT.

      He set his shit to private, it got exposed, he said "I meant to do that" and then most everything went private again.

      Give me a fucking break. He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face.

      • Re:From Mark: (Score:5, Funny)

        by ardle ( 523599 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:35PM (#30425766)

        He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face

        Did anyone save a copy of that photo?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DMiax ( 915735 )

        It is understandable that he set it to private, just imagine if his employer could see him that way!

      • Do you really think that the CEO and founder of Facebook, didn't know the implications of what is possibly the biggest feature launch so far this year?

        Not to mention, setting 'his shit to private' as you so eloquently put it would contradict the mission statement of Facebook.

        Anyway ... them's the facts* FWIW ... you can choose to believe what you'd like.

        *Why yes, IAAFbE.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Dahamma ( 304068 )

          Well, he originally had hundreds of photos on his public profile, and now there are about a dozen.

          So either he was bitten by the profile privacy issue everyone is talking about, or he did it intentionally and then changed his mind. The first means he was confused by it, and the second means he doesn't think the default settings were appropriate after all. Which is is?

          • Lets double check your logic Dahamma:

            Step 1) Pictures are posted
            Step 2) Media makes a big deal out of it
            Step 3) Less pictures are posted

            Somehow, from this process, you assume step 2, despite occurring before step 3, has no causal relation?

            Seriously ... I need to stop feeding the trolls.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Dahamma ( 304068 )

              I don't think there was anything trolling about my post - sorry, but you are being a bit defensive.

              Anyway, you are saying the media scrutiny made him realize he shouldn't have made everything public, so he made more photos private. Sure, that's a causal relation, which was my second proposed explanation.

              In a broader context, you're welcome to argue that changing a user's privacy settings to something more permissive during an upgrade unless specifically overridden was acceptable behavior. But you're not g

  • too funny (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pertelote ( 37736 ) * <pertelote.centurytel@net> on Sunday December 13, 2009 @05:45PM (#30425392) Homepage Journal

    I have spent the best part of the week trying to adjust my facebook profile to some level of discreteness that I am comfortable with. Have been very unhappy with the "all or nothing" choices, and have started just simply deleting content. I feel a little better, because now I am sure the settings will get some fine-tuning.

    Just for fun:
    http://www.facebook.com/pertelote [facebook.com]

    And this is after I have locked down as much as I can without insulting my family and classmates.

    • Maybe this is just PR for the new privacy controls. Mark Zuckerberg saying its okay for me...

    • The worst part about the new settings: You can't keep your photos from being tied to you. Sure you can make your profile picture a kitchen sink (since you must show your profile picture), but now that you must show your friends list, if any of your friends has an open profile and tags you in a photo, it's game over; cyber-stalker-chick/dude knows what you look like (and your hometown since that's mandatory open now too). So now to be private, you have to police your friends. I'm curious what witness pro
    • Can you tell us what settings you chose? I'm still messing with mine and don't have a complete idea what is exposed and what isn't. Having some idea of what people who have spent a lot of time thinking about this are doing might help. For some of the options it isn't even well explained what exactly the settings do.

  • Ok so where are the pictures? (Score:5, Informative)

    by areusche ( 1297613 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @05:49PM (#30425430)
    I clicked the link in the summary and I didn't find any pictures. So after a quick search I found this http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-private-photos-2009-12#with-girlfriend-priscilla-chan-from-her-album-moments-have-you-seen-a-sweeter-thing-today-probably-not-1 [businessinsider.com] Enjoy!

  • He should've left them public (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karganeth ( 1017580 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @05:58PM (#30425496)
    He definitely should have left them public. He should've made it look as though he meant to do that and left them on. Somebody will have downloaded them all anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )

      Oh, they're out there... So far I've just seen the highlights, but I'm sure people have them all.

  • Um, he did it ON PURPOSE (Score:4, Informative)

    by swein515 ( 195260 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:00PM (#30425514) Journal

    "For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"

    http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg [facebook.com]

    • Right... checkout the post right under yours: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476946&cid=30425522 [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by six11 ( 579 )

      Regardless of if he did it on purpose, those pictures tell me that he is basically a regular dude, or at least plays one on the Intertron. I don't find any of those pictures even remotely embarrassing or controversial. Not that I'm supporting the recent privacy policy changes.

    • Technically, that's illegal too. To publish an identifiable photo of a person, one typically needs a model release [wikipedia.org] from that individual. Yes everybody does it, and most people don't care. But the fact that he owns Facebook and is making advertising money off the public exhibition of those photos could open him up to some juicy liability should anyone in those photos wish to pursue it.

  • he meant to do it, then had the pictures removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr.Zuka ( 166632 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:01PM (#30425522)

    I think it says a lot about his personality that he posted to his newsfeed that he meant to post the pictures, then somehow the pictures mysteriously disappear. Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small. If there ever was a security breach would facebook ever admit to it?

    • Not unless they were legally liable for it and also had a decent chance of being sued at that. But that's pretty much standard operating procedure for any IT company.

      I would not be surprised if PR suggested he take the pictures down just because people THOUGHT there was a security problem because some of them were available to the public. I would also not be surprised if there was a problem and he lied to make Facebook look better so as to try to keep their reputation (read: investors) looking good. I'm not

    • Re:he meant to do it, then had the pictures remove (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well, that's par for the course, isn't it? Naive "I have nothing to hide" never lasts long when the attention comes. Even people who are in the showbiz don't want everybody rummaging around in their private lives. Can you imagine how Zuckerberg's friends reacted to that kind of scrutiny?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      There's been no major hack and subsequent large data leak AFAIK, but Facebook has had countless vulnerabilities, one of which has gone unfixed that allows you to grab someone's private photos, messages and other private information that I discovered and reported over 2 years ago.

      I gather many other people who have discovered and reported vulnerabilities have seen a similar story.

  • DID NOT WANT (Score:5, Funny)

    by phantomcircuit ( 938963 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:18PM (#30425646) Homepage

    Note to self: think before clicking links to private pictures of nerd.

  • my facebook status this past thursday reads (Score:3, Funny)

    by weirdcrashingnoises ( 1151951 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:47PM (#30425830) Journal

    [name] dislikes facebook's new privacy alert that by default would have made my facebook LESS secure... *rolleyes*

    Today's status update is a link to this article with my comment "Oh, the irony!"

  • Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StuartHankins ( 1020819 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:56PM (#30425888)
    Any system which defaults to "share everything" is a fail. You should never have to opt-out, only opt-in, to release data. Otherwise it's way too easy to screw up and show something private to everyone (as in this example).

    • Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Informative)

      by TejWC ( 758299 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @07:42PM (#30426238)

      Oh, this default is even worse than most people could have imagined!

      For example, lets say you go to a party and a "friend" of yours takes a picture of you doing something that looks rather scandalous because you are drunk. And then, your friend uploads the pic to Facebook and tags your name to it. You realize you have been tagged in the photo and you don't want other people to see it. So you untag yourself and send a message to your friend to delete it. However, your friend either doesn't go on Facebook very often or doesn't check Facebook messages so the photo is still up there and there is nothing you can really do about it except pray that nobody else stumbles upon it.

      And then suddenly Facebook decides to make everybody's photos Public to anybody. Now this bad photo of you is available to everybody and there is nothing you can do about it except call your other friends in order to get the cell phone number of the guy that took your picture.

      Yeah, this default sucks real bad.

      • I haven't looked at it in a while, but if you were tagged in an album, any of your friends could view the *whole* album.

    • Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MWoody ( 222806 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @07:59PM (#30426332)

      Any system wherein you upload pictures for the world to see is fail for not assuming that's what you want to do? We're not talking an OS or web server here; it's a social site.

      I have to ask: if you have private pictures, why are they online?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Have you ever told a friend something you wouldn't tell your boss?

      • Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Eskarel ( 565631 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @10:33PM (#30427362)

        I wish people would stop making the assumption that because someone shares something on facebook they want to share it with the world.

        There are levels of privacy and sharing between telling everyone everything and hiding in a secure lead lined bunker somewhere. I might want to share pictures of my kid with my friends and family who live in other states and other countries without wanting to share that photo with the entire rest of the world.

        The reason for using a social site is to allow you to exchange information in a controlled way. If I wanted to just share information with the world I'd stick it up on a public facing web page and let google find it. The problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is an idiot and presumes exactly like you do, that because I want to show my mother her grandchild that I want to share that same information with him and everyone else. Guess what I don't.

        I know that the social networking evangalists seem to think that everyone should be metaphorically naked for the world to see and we'd all get along better, and the tin foil hat brigade thinks we should never give our real names even to our spouses, but a lot of times, people want somewhere in the middle.

        • Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)

          by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @12:05AM (#30427842) Journal
          And i wish people like you would stop assuming that you have a level of privacy when you send your stuff to third parties. Unless you have a privacy service agreement with every link in the chain with every provider between here and the person the information was intended for, presume it to be non-private henceforth.
          • Thus, your online banking information is also public data as you most likely don't have a privacy service agreement with your ISP. Granted, you send it via SSL but if someone gets around that he's perfectly justified to take it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Archangel Michael ( 180766 )

          I wish people would stop making the assumption that things on the web are private. WORLD WIDE WEB is called that for a reason.

          There are no "levels" of privacy on the web. There is only "more or less secure", and Facebook is anything but "secure".

          And if you don't directly control it, you don't have control over it.

          SO, you see, you're just wrong.

      • I have pics of my family online because we have a large extended family and it's easier to share this way, but I certainly don't want every pervert in the world to be able to see them. I use a private site to accomplish this, but I could easily see how others -- who may not be technically inclined to get their own hosting plan and learn how to set this up themselves -- might use private FaceBook (or other pages) to do the same thing.

        There are different levels of privacy -- for instance I'm fine with shari

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tokerat ( 150341 )

        I have to ask: if you have private pictures, why are they online?

        Easy, you're convinced it's "easier" and "More convenient" that way, so that "the cloud" can be forced on you. Then, when everyone is completely dependent on it, they'll start charging (and by "they", I am referring to the entire IT industry).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jimicus ( 737525 )

        It's not just my private pictures I'm concerned about.

        10 years ago the most anyone could do with an embarrassing photo of me was to show it to my friends. Today they can show it to the entire world and because of Facebook's tagging system, the entire world can find it very easily indeed.

  • What am I missing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BlueWaterBaboonFarm ( 1610709 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @07:32PM (#30426162)
    This is an honest question. I've seen numerous stories about how terrible Facebook's privacy setting are but I just don't understand what is wrong. I've made a dummy account with the same settings as my personal Facebook account. Tell me what you can find out about "Billy Slashdot Perkins". The answer is nothing as far as I can tell. Searching for him on Google or Facebook gives no results as far as I can tell.

    As far as I can tell there are two options for privacy on Facebook

    (1) Be 'searchable' which means some information about yourself should be included otherwise the search is useless

    (2) Not be 'searchable'. Everything you have is private and between you and the friends you have

    I have option (1) and I haven't had any problems with it yet.

    Please tell me specifically what it is about Facebook that is violating your privacy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by /dev/trash ( 182850 )

      You have to be like 20 and want to share all your drinking pics with all your loser friends but your boss is like 30 and he's not into that shit, so he'll fire ya if he ever found all those drinking pics.

      • Yeah, but if he's prepared to fire you for things you did not on the job, you're better off not working for him anyway. Better still, if he's stupid enough to come out and say it was about stuff that happened in your personal life, I wonder if you could sue the company and win. Normally I'm not one to sue at the drop of a hat, but the companies who are overstepping their bounds like this deserve to be punished hard.

    • Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sheriff_p ( 138609 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @11:18PM (#30427582)

      Hey buddy,

      I have my account on the highest level of lock-down. However, if you get the URL to my profile, or you're a friend of a friend, you can still see (and I can't block this):

      - My friend list, in its entirety
      - Pages of which I'm a fan
      - Profile photo
      - An option to send me a friend request
      - Some other stuff

      None of which I wanted. My circumstances are somewhat special, because not everyone needs or wants this level of security, but I do, and I used to have it, and now it's gone away.

      -P

      • Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Informative)

        by chialea ( 8009 ) <chialea@BLUEgmail.com minus berry> on Monday December 14, 2009 @01:13AM (#30428194) Homepage

        Go to your profile and hit the little pencil icon next to it. You can hide your friends list from there. (Thanks to another /. commenter, who pointed this out to me.)

        BTW, make sure you lock down the settings on what your friends' apps can see, unless you trust them not to accidentally add malware.

  • Things I love... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nilbog ( 732352 ) on Sunday December 13, 2009 @09:12PM (#30426762) Homepage Journal

    I love it when I read a story about another story that is all about photos, yet neither story contains or links to any.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @01:13AM (#30428202)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • OverflowingBitBucket likes this.

  • Google Wave (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JNSL ( 1472357 )
    We all know that Facebook is afraid of Wave. Now why don't they behave like it?

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