Leonard Jones is afraid Facebook is going to get him killed. At the very least, he’s worried about being hurt or harassed because of the social-media outfit’s desperate drive for revenue.
Facebook seems to be against murder. Pedophilia? Well, that’s another thing. But the site did take down a page someone posted, titled “Kill Romney.”
But some of Facebook’s actions are reckless, says Jones, who works in law enforcement in the tri-state area.
“For a short time, I had a Facebook account, and I was very particular about setting all my privacy accounts to the strictest [levels] possible,” said Jones, whose name has been changed here so that I won’t put him in danger. I also am altering some of the details of his story so he can’t be identified by bad guys.
Jones wanted what everyone else on Facebook seems to want, which is to stay in touch more easily with friends and family. But once Facebook sold his information to a third party, there was suddenly no privacy.
The criminals that Jones had interacted with during the course of his career were soon able to find him. Worse, because Facebook also sold his photos, the bad guys even knew what he and his kids looked like.
“I eventually quit Facebook because I detest the company,” said Jones. “They can’t be trusted.”
And that proved to be an accurate assessment.
“A year later I had a run-in with a criminal, and the criminal was none too subtle that he had information about my family — names and descriptions,” Jones continued.
When Jones asked where the information came from, the felon was more than happy to oblige. The criminal said he got information about Jones from the Internet, and the law-enforcement officer investigated.
“Even though I had canceled my Facebook account, my information is still up there, thanks to a third party. And I still have a Web footprint that I can’t erase,” said Jones, who called me for help. “Anyone who types in my name sees my friends and family.”
The “third party” Jones is referring to is a company called ProfileEngine.com, which operates from Auckland, New Zealand. Profile Engine was started in 2007 “as the world’s first dedicated search engine for Facebook,” according to its own profile.
Profile Engine paid for Facebook’s data. The company proudly says it “is unique among social networks because profiles here only include information which the owner has made completely public.”
Jones admits that he might have messed up when he set the privacy settings on Facebook, which he found confusing. But he doesn’t think one error should subject him to a lifetime of looking over his shoulder.
And, he says, he might have escaped Facebook’s clutches if he hadn’t made a rookie mistake. After he canceled his Facebook membership, Jones said he went back on the site to see if his information was gone. That move automatically reactivated his account.
Others have complained about the lack of transparency in Facebook privacy settings. Jones said neither Facebook nor Profile Engine will help him.
“The underlying vibe is, that’s just the way it is,” said Jones of the companies’ attitudes toward his complaint.
Facebook’s stock, of course, is well below the level at which people bought it during the initial public offering earlier this year.
General Motors stopped advertising on Facebook right before the IPO because the carmaker didn’t feel it was getting much bang for its buck.
And Facebook is also having a difficult time convincing other advertisers that users will click on ads as the social-networking site becomes more cellphone oriented. Because of that, the company is relying more on the sale of the data it collects from members — like its deal with Profile Engine.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook was revving up the sale of access to its 900 million members.
So, do you have anyone who dislikes you and would like to hunt you down? Facebook will help them.
If anyone knows how Leonard Jones can solve his problem, please let me know.
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I spoke recently with the leader of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, which thinks “Facebook must stop allowing hate speech” on its site.
In one instance of many, the group doesn’t think Facebook should allow a page that contains a picture of a smiling Anne Frank with the superimposed words “What’s that burning? Oh, it’s my family.”
The group’s spokesman, who lives in Australia, said Facebook has been responding more quickly to complaints about hate pages — and rejecting nearly all of them.
Meanwhile, American Express still hasn’t amended its statement to me of a few weeks ago about how it couldn’t do anything about Facebook’s taste in humor — namely, that it thinks a page devoted to pedophilia is a joke.
So, I guess that’s where it stands: AmEx, which wants your credit-card business, likes the sort of “controversial humor,” as Facebook refers to it, that involves raping children.