Did you know...
- That FACEBOOK was launched on February 2004 by the Harvard drop out Mark Zuckerberg (who was 19 years old). By the end of the month more than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.
- that in June 2008 Mark Zuckerberg paid a 65 million dollar settlement to close a long- running legal battle concerning whether Mark stole the FACEBOOK idea from his former room mate [R].
- That FACEBOOK has more than 200 million active users (active at least once a month) and more than 700 employees [A].
- that 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day.
- that on this planet more than 3 billion minutes are spent (or wasted) on FACEBOOK - every day.
- FACEBOOK is only a low security web service. This means that you should never use the same password for your FACEBOOK account as you use for more important services (e.g. webmails or netbanking).
- that FACEBOOK leaves quite a few cookies in your browser which enables other Internet sites to identify your FACEBOOK identity. (If your browser does not accept these cookies you won't get access to your FACEBOOK account).
- With more than 10 billion private photos FACEBOOK is the no. 1 photo sharing application in the world. Agreeing to FACEBOOK Privacy Policy means that you waive all your rights, as they can use all your photos freely [A,B]. (Nobody knows whether this claim would be legal in court).
- That from 2004 to 2009 FACEBOOK has reserved every right to register and keep all kind of your private information – even for profiles now eliminated [B]. FACEBOOK now claims the terms has been changed (however there are reasons to be very critical).
- that the general counsel of FACEBOOK, Ted Ullyot, is a former attorney of CIA, famous for neglecting privacy issues in CIA’s war against terrorism [P].
- that FACEBOOK "does not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons” [B].
- FACEBOOK is informed about your activities from over 40 big Internet sites that have partnered with Facebook [E].
- That more than 100 administrators of the biggest Facebook groups have organized in a secret lodge (called SLfA).
- That the owner of FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg has rejected offers in the range of $975 million to hand over Facebook. If FACEBOOK is sold, all registered private information will be handed over to the new owners - probably even after you have deleted your profile. It means you have no control who will end up with your personal data.
- October 24, 2007, Facebook has agreed to sell a 1.6% stake of the company to Microsoft for $240 million. This means Microsoft, as an exclusive third-party has access to all personal FACEBOOK information [M].
- How come? Because in cyberspace private information is hard value – and all kind of private data is recorded on FACEBOOK.
- That Mark Zuckerberg, founder and owner of ca. 30% of FACEBOOK is the world's youngest billionaire (worth 1,5 billion Dollars) [N].
- that the FACEBOOK Term of Agreement is changed almost every month without informing the users about it
- that FACEBOOK is assigned to the legislation of California. The national Danish institutions have found that the FACEBOOK privacy is intimidating Danish privacy legislation (www.fs.dk).
- that after heavy public debate Mark Zuckerberg (owner) admitted that FACEBOOK receives personal information from other Internet sites without users permission (even after the user has deactivated his FACEBOOK account!) [E,F].
- that although you change your name, email, address etc., your old data can still appear in the FACEBOOK Friend Finder.
- that adding your mobile phone number to your FACEBOOK profile increases the risk of mobile spamming
- that in the past year 1,000 applications were officially shut down by FACEBOOK administration for privacy violations. Be careful with FACEBOOK applications [K].
- that 34% of the Danish and Canadian population are active on FACEBOOK
- that eg. the Danish Federal Bureau of Investigation had advised people in certain positions (eg. police officers) to delete personal information on FACEBOOK. Personal information can easily be misused [J].
- that, even though FACEBOOK claims to have high security standards, two MIT students were able to download over 70,000 Facebook profiles, using an automated script [F].
- that the normal state of the laws has little effect in cyberspace. This means that if somebody starts e.g. a FACEBOOK campaign claiming that you are a paedophile, drug dealer etc. normal civil rights will usually not protect your reputation.
- that a big number of FACEBOOK profiles are professional fake. Think twice before accepting a friend request from a stranger [I].
- that people with strange sounding names (e.g. Leboe' or 'Allien') can have their FACEBOOK accounts deleted without any further explanation - although these names mean nothing in the local language.
- that FACEBOOK accounts with more than 4.000 friends are often closed down with no further explanation. This is not mentioned in FACEBOOK's Term of Agreement [O].
- that Facebook removes photos uploaded by mothers breastfeeding their babies; accounts have also been deleted for this reason [F].
- that in the near future your Facebook account may hold not only all of your photos, but your movies (streamed to your HDTV), home movies, and music files. This means that cyber privacy becomes an even more important issue in the future.
- that by using FACEBOOK you are an essential part of the global cyber economy. Personal information about you is being transferred between partners you probably never heard about [F].
- that recently a number of serious viruses which attempt to infect users by promising free videos have been tracked (October 2008). Be careful and don't follow strange links [H].
- that psychologists have introduced the diagnosis FAD (Facebook Addiction Disorder) as a new kind of addiction disorder [Q].
- that professional hackers are stealing users' Facebook profiles [S]
- that everyday pictures are deleted by the FACEBOOK administration with no other reason than "violation of terms of agreement". The reasons for such censoring is never explained to the user [G].
- that by "posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise" (FACEBOOK terms of agreement)