People who played with FaceBook and got burnt

Posted on February 29th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,368 views

Back in Dec 2007, I wrote about a blogger on Thought Leader who created a fake FaceBook profile for Thabo Mbeki, which contravenes FaceBook’s Terms and Conditions. IOL reported, at the time, that President Thabo Mbeki’s office was referring the matter of fake FaceBook profiles (which impersonated him) to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Naturally, this threat was not taken seriously by either Thought Leader, the blogger in question or many of my readers.

However, although South African authorities have failed to make good their threats, Morocco has taken action against a fake FaceBook profile creator.

Fouad Mourtada, a Moroccan citizen has recently been jailed for three years for creating a fake FaceBook profile of Moroccan Prince Moulay Rachid. FaceBook has denied assisting Moroccan authorities in this matter. This judgement has sent ripples of alarm through the Moroccan Blogosphere and caused at least one Moroccan blogger to stop blogging altogether, out of fear that other forms of online activities might invite unwanted attention from the authorities.

Unsurprisingly, the sentence handed down to Mourtada has been condemned as excessively harsh by many. Nevertheless, he remains incarcerated whilst his supporters scramble to rally international pressure for his release.

Mourtada played with FaceBook and got burnt. But he is not the only one.

More recently a British policeman, Inspector Chris Dreyfus (30), British Transport Police’s head of royalty and government protection, had his promotion to Chief Inspector denied after his superiors had a look at his FaceBook profile which includes details of his gay lifestyle.

Dreyfus also played with FaceBook and got burnt. Are you next?

It could be that more and more people are becoming aware of the dangers that FaceBook poses to themselves because people are logging off. El Reg reports that FaceBook traffic amongst UK users is down 5%. I know of more than one local blogger who has recently opted out of FaceBook over privacy concerns.

The Canadian military is also concerned that insurgents in Iraq could use FaceBook to gain intelligence about their soldiers deployed there, and has cautioned personnel not to post personal information on their FaceBook profiles.

So, are you worried yet or do you reckon your titanium armour will hold off all comers?

Tags: Chris Dreyfus, facebook, Fouad Mourtada, Thabo Mbeki, Thought Leader
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