Privacy on social networking sites such as Facebook was exposed quite painfully with the whole Beacon debacle, which was using user data both on and off site to target ads.

However, more worrying than that (to me, anyway) was a rumour I heard recently that Facebook was selling access to media companies / publishers to use user photos in news articles in exceptional situations.

The story that triggered this rumour was a tragic death in a French ski resort. Soon after the story had broken, photos of the girl in question appeared in news reports. And not just low-res profile pic images that you can see for pretty much anyone from Google, but the higher res ones from her photo albums.

Now, I found it hard to believe that this was the case. As much as I distrust Facebook, I can't imagine them being this blatant with user data. The only way to find out was to email Facebook, so I did, asking them the following:

Could you let me know if you grant access for media outlets (such as Sky or BBC News) to see user content in the event of tragedies. I ask as I heard a rumour after a recent tragedy in the news where a girl died. Facebook photos of her appeared very soon after the incident in news articles (and not just the generic profile pic you can see from Google). I've checked your terms and don't believe that to be the case, so I'm assuming reporters may well just be contacting friends of the person involved and asking for photos for a price. Please get back to me and let me know, as if you do sell photos on to media outlets I'd like to reconsider what photos I and my friends post to Facebook or even whether I [should] have a profile. Many thanks in advance, Edward

 I then received this in reply:

Hi Edward, Facebook was never intended to be a tool for law enforcement officers, school administrators, potential employers, media outlets to monitor people's actions, but we can't always prevent the site from being used in this way.  While these people aren't given any kind of special access to user information, they can still sign up and join networks just like a normal user. By default, only your confirmed friends and people in your networks can view your profile, but you can always restrict access to your information further using the settings on the Privacy page. Let me know if you have any further questions. Thanks for contacting Facebook,

*Name removed* [for their privacy! - ed], User Operations Facebook

So that confirms my suspicions on this erroneous rumour; they're not giving direct access, the media are simply grabbing these photos much like you can grab / stalk anyone else's photos by joining networks or making friends with random people.

This highlights the confusion over privacy settings in Facebook, if you don't already know:

• Set your privacy settings in Facebook via the settings tab
• When you control who sees your profile, remember that allowing a 'network' (e.g., London) access means anyone you don't necessarily know could blag their way onto that 'network' and see all your info.
• If in doubt, put everything to 'only friends', then make sure you know all your friends.
• Change your 'search' privacy to change whether random Facebook users can find you in search and also whether your profile search result appears on Google

Every company in the world (mine included!) is trying to get a piece of the Facebook action considering their huge database of people, profiles, interests and share of the average web user's online time, but they REALLY need to sort out the clarity of their privacy settings if they want to maintain any integrity.