Just recieved this – thought it may be of interest?! I certainly didn't know about it.

You may or may not know this: Your Facebook photos might appear in third-party advertisements on Facebook for your friends and others to see. You can stop this.

I read last week this post on Mashable about a man who saw a photo of his wife in a Facebook ad that read "Hot singles are waiting for you." Hmm.. good thing the two had a sense of humor, according to the user's wife, who documented the account on her own blog.

Apparently, Facebook allows third-party advertising developers to tap into members' photos to make ads more interesting. Well, here's what an explanation on Facebook says: "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, you get the choice – you can choose to appear in advertisements your friends see, or not. Here's how NOT to allow third-party advertisers to use you as a poster child: under "Settings" at the top of the Facebook home screen (near the logout option), click on "Privacy Settings," then "News Feed and Wall," then "Facebook Ads" at the top of that box, then beside "Appearajnce in Facebook Ads" choose "no one" from the drop-down menu.

facebook still allows third party users to tap into pretty much all you and your friends info. all this does is stop the information being used to advertise within facebook

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

I realised that Michael but this at least stops them using your pics for adverts.

I hadn't realised that they could and thought to share.

You hereby grant Facebook….

That is exactly why I don't use Facebook.

I don't use Facebook but all of a sudden this week I've had 10 or so emails saying someone had added me as a friend

Strange thing is, I know all these people
Is this likely to be someone who's set up an account in my name? or some other innocent [or not] explanation?

someone will have allowed facebook access to there outlook/msn/googlemail/whatever address book. part of the facebook dodgyness is that you allow it access to all your friend stuff as well as yours (i have a facebook account by the way, i just wear a tin hat when i'm using it)

There's no law that says you have to put the correct information into facebook. Surely that's the whole point of the internet. Just make any old crap up. The fact that this doesn't occur to some people baffles me completely.

Date of birth? Think of some random numbers. And if you put your mobile number in etc then there really is no hope for you

So, you get the choice – you can choose to appear in advertisements your friends see, or not. Here's how NOT to allow third-party advertisers to use you as a poster child:

Don't f**king use Facebook…

Thanks for that. Have suitably adjusted my FaceBook.

I have nothing on Facebook that I don't mind the world seeing. I've not lied about my various details (DOB, phone number etc) as all that info is already held by stacks of other parties anyway. You can't hide, assuming Facebook is the enemy to hide from is rediculous. You're using their service, they take some thing as payment, everyone happy. Symbiosis. Apart from those who seem to think you get something for nothing.