It appears that being a sister to the founder of the world’s largest social network does not give you the immunity against privacy breaches that have become quite a common place on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) these days.
Ironically, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, Randi, has experienced the lack of profile’s privacy on Facebook, when a photo she meant to keep private on the social network went public, against her expectations.
The 30-year-old former marketing director of Facebook, shared a picture on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) believing that once a photo has been made private, it can never go public without a change in user’s own privacy settings. To Randi’s immense displeasure, a friend of a friend saw the photo and reposted it on Twitter, turning what was initially believed to be a family’s private moment into a very public one.
Forbes reports that as soon as the picture was posted on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), it appeared on the newsfeed of Callie Schweitzer who, assuming that the photo is meant to be shared publicly, tweeted it to her nearly 40,000 followers on Twitter.
In response to this breach of privacy, Randi reacted in a tweet to Schweitzer where she said :“Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it to friends only on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool.”
“I would hate for a private photo of mine to be public and would never want to do same to others,” replied Schweitzer, deleting the photo.
Apologizing for her confusion to mistake a supposedly private picture as a public one, Schweitzer explained in a tweet that the photo popped up in her news feed as a public feed which is why she felt the need to share it with her followers on Twitter.
Realizing that she had become a victim of Facebook’s complex privacy mechanism, Randi explained that she’s sensitive to private photos becoming “news”. Later in a micro lecture over digital etiquette, a digital reprimand appeared in a tweet where Randi explains Why is it important to respect a user’s privacy even if the content they share is public?
Now what lesson does it hold for us?
Its simple. No matter how strong a privacy mechanism appears or how promising a privacy policy looks like, the assumption that anything you share on internet is safe and can never fall into wrong hands is only a myth. Be careful about whatever you post on internet. Once the information goes digital, it gets public. Chances are,you might end up becoming one of the victims of a privacy breach, just like Randi was.