5 Most Controversial Privacy Mishaps By Facebook

Bangalore: The consistent assurance by Facebook to its users on privacy policies fail to prove true most of the time. There are many instances of leaking out users’ personal information by the social media giant, where the  phone number, address and age have been provided to app developers. The facial recognition system designed to identify a person is the insecure tagging system where anyone can tag you without much of your permission. All these are considered to be violations of privacy. Listed below are the 5 most controversial privacy mishaps of Facebook as compiled by Business Insider.

1 Information leakage

The malfunctioning of a third party app hooked up with Facebook led to a huge data leakage in 2011. Personal information of about 500 million users were in the hands of advertisers and analytic platforms. The trouble was notified to Facebook by the Internet security company Symantec.

2 Concerns behind facial recognition

The facial recognition features coupled with the auto tagging facility introduced by Facebook in 2011 were looked at with raised eyebrows by much of the users. Using the software, Facebook could automatically tag people without their knowledge and this interference to ones privacy was brought forward to the notice of Electronic Privacy Information Center which compelled the social media giant to take off the feature.

3 ‘Was with me’ tagging

The feature added by Facebook in August 2010 granted permission to tag you without your permission. However the saddest thing is that Facebook has no way to resolve the issue. The social media giant commented saying, “You can't block people from tagging you in a post that includes a location, but you can stop it from showing up on your timeline”

4 Private Chats made public

A glitch in the security system of Facebook in 2010 made the private chats of the user visible to their friends. The complaint filed by Electronic Privacy Information Center said "Facebook now discloses personal information to third parties that Facebook users previously did not make available. These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations. These business practices are Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices."

5 Ad product Beacon caught negative attention

Beacon, a third party site which provided Facebook with ads to be displayed to the users based on the websites they visited raised a lot of hue and cry among the users. The ad product launched in 2007 broadcast what you purchases to your friends if you don’t care to turn off the feature. Beacon was dismantled in 2009 following a class action lawsuit.