A “privacy notice” that’s been virally spreading on Facebook, supposedly protecting one’s personal details and data from unauthorized copying, is fake.
The notice started spreading a few days after Facebook posted its new privacy guidelines, announcing it would let users comment on proposed changes to its governing documents, but not vote.
The text of the notice starts as follows: “In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, graphics, comics, paintings, photos and videos, etc.”
It then goes on claiming that anyone can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook wall, which supposedly forbids Facebook to “disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate or take any other action against [the user] on the basis of this profile and/or its contents.”
Finally, the notice points out that “Facebook is now an open capital entity” and that all its members are “recommended to publish a notice like this.”
The notice resembles a text from July which also spread virally on Facebook and, just like that notice, the new one is untrue as well.
The idea behind the “notice” is that Facebook’s listing as a publicly traded company will negatively affect its users’ privacy, which is not true. Facebook and its users are still bound to the same terms and conditions that are accepted by users when they sign up for the service, and posting a legal “talisman” of this kind on your profile does nothing to change that.
