Facebook Privacy and Friend Fails

Are your Facebook posts private? Are you one of the safety conscious people who have spent hours configuring your groups and security settings? All of the time and effort you have put into ensuring your privacy is maintained on Facebook could be for naught if you experience a friend fail. More and more people are finding that their friends have violated their trust and privacy by sharing private Facebook status updates, pictures and other information on public websites. Follow these tips to avoid being the next person ridiculed by thousands for something they posted on Facebook.

First things first, what are these public sites that make fun of Facebook posts? There are several websites that feature embarrassing personal information that was posted to Facebook. On the surface these sites seem hysterical. If you dig deep and find your humanity, you can see that the objects of your uncontrolled laughter are real people with real feelings.

It might be less morally repugnant if these sites displayed information that the subjects had posted themselves for the world to see. In most cases they are unaware that a friend took a screen shot of their failed Facebook moment and sent it to a public site to be entertainment for all.

Check to see if your Facebook fodder has been the butt of jokes by viewing two popular websites; http://www.lamebook.com and http://www.failbook.com.

If you do find yourself featured, an email to the site requesting its removal should be sufficient to get your Facebook fail taken down.

How can you avoid having your Facebook post submitted to one of these sites? The first thing to do is make sure your Facebook privacy settings are configured to share with Friends Only. Remember that activity you did in health class where you recorded everyone you shook hands with, and everyone they shook hands with, etc? At the end of the experiment you were mostly likely riddled with whatever imaginary STD you were learning about at the time. Think of this example when you share anything with using Friend's of Friends privacy setting.

Don't add jerks to your friends list. Sometimes it is hard to tell when one of your friends will show their evil side for a second. The best way to avoid ending up on a site like lamebook.com is to think before you post.

Ask yourself these questions before posting on Facebook. Would you be mortified if your mom, dad, grandparents, or teachers read your status update? Is your post evidence of committing a crime? Would your post make the average person throw up? When your child grows up, will they need therapy if they read what you posted to Facebook? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then do not post it to your Facebook wall.

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