Boing Boing: Thomas Crampton: How Facebook ended my marriage

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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Thomas Crampton: How Facebook ended my marriage - UPDATED

Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:

A misguided attempt to increase our privacy backfired horribly a few days ago, just weeks ahead of our wedding.
My fiancee and I unchecked the personal relationship box in Facebook to make our personal lives a little more private.
Unwittingly, however, that action sent out a message to our entire social network and newsfeed saying we were no longer engaged. (Complete with a forlorn broken heart.)
Within minutes, condolence notes started coming in from around the world, sending us into even high state of crisis than just a wedding.

Link. In other news, looks like some of Thomas' friends need to learn how to STFU on Twitter.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Boarding pass hacker finds privacy flaws in Facebook

Update: Christopher Soghoian, whose recent security research on Facebook I blogged here, writes:

You just blogged: "Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:"
This is not correct. The Facebook attack I exposed dealt specifically with random strangers being able to play go-fish with private elements in your profile. Facebook fixed this with some haste, such that private profiles of strangers will no longer show up in a search on any sensitive fields.
Crampton's problem stems from the Facebook mini-feeds feature. You covered that train-wreck of a privacy problem last year (Link).
The common theme here is that Facebook has very very fine grained privacy controls - which most users clearly do not know how to use. Crampton could have quite easily modified his privacy settings to stop his friends from seeing changes in his relationship status - but he didn't know to do this.
The cynic in me wonders how we can expect regular users to know the finer details of privacy control customization when a tech journalist can't figure it out.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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Support Bloggers' Rights! HOWTO: Get a link posted to Boing Boing Boing Boing Mobile powered by Winksite Fark rules! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States [and other countries]. Stats (About our stats) defeat censorware Policies Our first five years' worth of posts in one file	View a recent day: August 20 \| August 19 \| August 18 \| previous days \| by month and year Thursday, June 28, 2007 Thomas Crampton: How Facebook ended my marriage - UPDATED Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says: A misguided attempt to increase our privacy backfired horribly a few days ago, just weeks ahead of our wedding. My fiancee and I unchecked the personal relationship box in Facebook to make our personal lives a little more private. Unwittingly, however, that action sent out a message to our entire social network and newsfeed saying we were no longer engaged. (Complete with a forlorn broken heart.) Within minutes, condolence notes started coming in from around the world, sending us into even high state of crisis than just a wedding. Link. In other news, looks like some of Thomas' friends need to learn how to STFU on Twitter. Previously on BoingBoing: Boarding pass hacker finds privacy flaws in Facebook Update: Christopher Soghoian, whose recent security research on Facebook I blogged here, writes: You just blogged: "Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:" This is not correct. The Facebook attack I exposed dealt specifically with random strangers being able to play go-fish with private elements in your profile. Facebook fixed this with some haste, such that private profiles of strangers will no longer show up in a search on any sensitive fields. Crampton's problem stems from the Facebook mini-feeds feature. You covered that train-wreck of a privacy problem last year (Link). The common theme here is that Facebook has very very fine grained privacy controls - which most users clearly do not know how to use. Crampton could have quite easily modified his privacy settings to stop his friends from seeing changes in his relationship status - but he didn't know to do this. The cynic in me wonders how we can expect regular users to know the finer details of privacy control customization when a tech journalist can't figure it out. posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:05 AM permalink \| Other blogs' comments View a recent day: August 20, 2007 \| August 19, 2007 \| August 18, 2007 \| August 17, 2007 \| August 16, 2007 \| August 15, 2007 \| August 14, 2007 \| previous days \| all BB archives by month and year Email this entry to: Your email address: Message (optional):	Boing Boing Sponsored by: Your Text Ad Here Get BB by email: