Facebook Sneaks Up on BlackBerry Users

One-quarter of survey respondents admitted to altering their info

(NEWSER) - How to protect your privacy on Facebook? For an increasing number of users, the answer is simple: Lie. A quarter of respondents in a new Consumer Reports study admitted that they “alter personally identifiable information,” such as birthdate, on Facebook. Technically, that’s a violation of the social networking site’s Terms of Service, the New York Times points out. And more than twice as many people are doing it now as were two years ago, when the same question was asked. More»

Company warns of possible legal action

(NEWSER) - Facebook has taken note of the recent trend of employers demanding that prospective or current employees hand over their passwords, and it issued a clear warning to such companies today: Knock it off. "As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job," writes Facebook privacy chief Erin Egan in a blog post . "We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges." More»

Suit alleges invasion of privacy after she has to hand over password

(NEWSER) - Maybe this kind of thing will start sounding familiar soon? A 12-year-old girl in Minnesota is suing her school with the help of the ACLU because she says administrators made her hand over her Facebook password and pored over her account, reports CNN . The move came after the girl got into trouble for some posts: In one, she wrote that she hated one of the school's adult hall monitors; in another, a mother complained to the school that the girl was talking about sex on the site with her son, notes Courthouse News Service . More»

Maryland may ban practice

(NEWSER) - Some employers and colleges have found an ingenious way around Facebook's pesky privacy settings: Simply demand that applicants or students friend you, give you a tour of their account, or even divulge their usernames and passwords. MSNBC reports on a number of places instituting the troubling practices:

• At Maryland's Department of Corrections, job applicants are asked to log in to their account and allow an interviewer to watch as they click through their photos and posts. The Department of Corrections used to ask for username and password outright, but stopped after an ACLU complaint last year.
• Colleges are requiring student athletes to "friend" a coach or school official so that their Facebook posts can be monitored. If they refuse, they don't play. "Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings," reads the University of North Carolina handbook.
• Though social media monitoring seems to take place mostly with student athletes, non-athlete college applicants have reported to one lawyer that they were asked for their login information during interviews.

Flirting, cheating ways often uncovered online

(NEWSER) - All that flirting on Facebook is leading to a sad but hardly surprising outcome: divorce. One-third of divorce filings based on unreasonable behavior are citing Facebook these days, and such filings are up by half over the past two years, says the law firm Divorce-Online. "People contact ex-partners and the messages start as innocent, but lead to trouble," says Mark Keenan, the firm's managing director. "If someone wants to have an affair or flirt with the opposite sex then it’s the easiest place to do it." More»