I was surprised when I was clicking through my Facebook privacy settings to notice that there was now a new tab under Settings|Privacy|News Feed and Wall called Facebook Ads, and that the default setting is “Only my friends” on my Facebook page. The description on of this feature according to facebook is:
Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. These respect all privacy rules. You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Facebook Ads below.
So, it would seem they can use amongst other things, my photo’s to send targeted ads to my friends, which would then appear to have an air of legitimacy to them by associating my name or photo with the ad.
Facebook Ads Privacy Settings
After immediately changing this setting to “no-one”, I dug around a little on the web and sure enough this is exactly what seems to be happening, after I found this disturbing, albeit funny story of someone who’s picture was sent attached to a dating site facebook ad, to her happily married husband…
Just not good…
