and this time, dear readers, we'll focus on photos and tagging.
Facebook very kindly gives us the option to choose privacy settings for each photo album. Nice, I thought. Except that they then totally ignore those settings if someone is tagged in the album.
Here's a live scenario I've got right now. (except that I'll change the names of the people involved, because, unlike a certain mark z, I do care about people's privacy...)
My live news feed tells me about one of my contacts, let's call her Elizabeth Hopkins:
Elizabeth Hopkins was tagged in an album.
It then shows me the photos in which my contact was tagged, and underneath that there is a live link to the album in which she was tagged.
I click on that album and get to see all the photos in that album, as well as any comments (by people I don't know) and the full info about who else was tagged there (again, mostly people I don't know).
Now, the album was posted by someone - let's call her Orla Edwards - who is not a contact of mine, in fact she and I don't even have any contacts in common, and she has set the privacy for this album so that I'm not allowed to see it. How do I know? When viewing this album - which I reached through the notice about my contact Elizabeth being tagged - there's a link at the top which says "Back to Orla Edwards' photos", and guess what happens when I click on that link? I get a message that says:
This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.
Seeing as I've just been viewing this album, my guess is that it's the last option: "you may not have permission to view this page."
So, Facebook, if I do not have permission to view it, why did you just show it to me?
and by the way, just to make double sure that I really do not have permission to view that album, I visited Orla's profile and, no, there are no photos viewable to me.
so, to sum up, what I have found is this: if person A (in my example Orla) posts an album and sets it for friends only, and someone then tags person B (in my example Elizabeth) in that album, each and every contact of B's can see the whole album which person A set for her friends only.
and they call this privacy?
Facebook very kindly gives us the option to choose privacy settings for each photo album. Nice, I thought. Except that they then totally ignore those settings if someone is tagged in the album.
Here's a live scenario I've got right now. (except that I'll change the names of the people involved, because, unlike a certain mark z, I do care about people's privacy...)
My live news feed tells me about one of my contacts, let's call her Elizabeth Hopkins:
Elizabeth Hopkins was tagged in an album.
It then shows me the photos in which my contact was tagged, and underneath that there is a live link to the album in which she was tagged.
I click on that album and get to see all the photos in that album, as well as any comments (by people I don't know) and the full info about who else was tagged there (again, mostly people I don't know).
Now, the album was posted by someone - let's call her Orla Edwards - who is not a contact of mine, in fact she and I don't even have any contacts in common, and she has set the privacy for this album so that I'm not allowed to see it. How do I know? When viewing this album - which I reached through the notice about my contact Elizabeth being tagged - there's a link at the top which says "Back to Orla Edwards' photos", and guess what happens when I click on that link? I get a message that says:
This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.
Seeing as I've just been viewing this album, my guess is that it's the last option: "you may not have permission to view this page."
So, Facebook, if I do not have permission to view it, why did you just show it to me?
and by the way, just to make double sure that I really do not have permission to view that album, I visited Orla's profile and, no, there are no photos viewable to me.
so, to sum up, what I have found is this: if person A (in my example Orla) posts an album and sets it for friends only, and someone then tags person B (in my example Elizabeth) in that album, each and every contact of B's can see the whole album which person A set for her friends only.
and they call this privacy?
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