A site highlighting the dangers of posting on Facebook is contributing to mounting pressure on the social network over its privacy policy.Openbook uses publicly available information from Facebook to highlight potentially embarrassing posts and status updates on the social-networking site.
Visitors to the site can search for terms such as “cheated exams” or “I hate my boss”, and view posts from people using those terms on their Facebook pages.
The founders of Openbook say they are running the site to draw attention to how much information Facebook makes public.
""Our goal is to get Facebook to restore the privacy of this information, so that this website and others like it no longer work""“Openbook draws attention to the information Facebook makes public about its users via its search API," writes site founder Will Moffat. “Our goal is to get Facebook to restore the privacy of this information, so that this website and others like it no longer work.”
Facebook has faced mounting criticism for ongoing changes to its default privacy settings, which make more information publicly searchable.
Last week, the European Union's Article 29 Working Group, which oversees data protection, attacked Facebook's privacy policy and the frequency of changes to its terms.
"The Article 29 Working Party told Facebook in a letter today that it is unacceptable that the company fundamentally changed the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user," the group said in a statement.
The widespread criticism of the social network is having a negative impact with users, according to Google figures. The search term “delete Facebook account” has soared this year, recently reaching ninth place in the list of most popular US searches.
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