Website Exposes Embarrassing Facebook Status Messages

Much has been written about the benefits for Facebook members to properly adjust the privacy settings for their profiles. Still, many people don't. There is a new website, "We Know What You're Doing (WKWYD)," which collects and publishes status messages by Facebook users who make their status messages publicly available to everyone. As the WKWYD website explains in its disclaimer:

"All data is pulled directly from Facebook, it is not censored, and it is publicly accessible via the Graph API... the information is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind..."

So, the website is doing what you could do by searching for members' Facebook profiles that are open to the public. The WKWYD site describes itself as a "social networking privacy experiment" to get people to correctly use the privacy settings on their Facebook profile. The WKWYD site focused upon four types of embarrassing status messages:

1. People who trash their boss
2. People who show up at work hungover/drunk/etc.
3. People who admit to takeing drugs (e.g., illegal substances)
4. People who disclose their (or others) telephone numbers

I read a few of the messages, and they are truly embarrassing -- stuff you might tell close friends, but not publicly to everyone. Some of the messages could get some people fired from their jobs:

To avoid having your Facebook status messages published on the WKWYD site, sign into your Facebook account, select "Privacy Settings," and under "Control Your Default Privacy" select either the "Friends" or "Custom" option. If you already see your Facebook status messages on WKWYD, to remove them delete the message(s) from your timeline.

To learn more about the WKWYD site, read CNN, or the Sophos Naked Security blog, or the Huffington Post.

A warning to the wise: use the privacy settings on your Facebook profile.

Comments

[aron whisely]

I love the status of the @Anastasia R. However Graph API is used for the information of getting the info about their profile not about the email. I think it must be hacks.

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