Wife Has Face Used in Facebook Hot Singles Ad

I've always found that the amount of hot singles in my area expressing interest in a middle-aged, balding, overweight man tends to be pretty much nonexistent, but that doesn't stop social networking sites from serving those ads up to me anyway, obviously hoping that I click through and generate a little revenue. I never do, but I admire their tenacity.

A Lynchburg, VA man found himself in a similar situation, one that he would similarly ignore, except for one detail - the face in the advertisement that popped up on Facebook belonged to someone he knew.

His wife.

Facebook has long been a privacy punching bag, and for good reason. The breadth and depth of data they capture about users and their usage history is staggering, and how that information is used (and abused) is well documented.

Cheryl Smith's picture had been used to generate the ad after it was captured by a third party that was cranking out advertising for Facebook, who claimed that the company had violated its' policies in how the whole thing transpired. But it does bring up an interesting point. With millions of us posting our pictures on the web these days, what's to keep any of us from becoming an unwitting model for some online dating service? And what if our spouses don't have the same sense of humor and level of trust as Cheryl's?

In this case, even if you implemented the granular privacy settings that Facebook provides, you wouldn't have been protected in all cases. Third party applications that you use via Facebook aren't always covered by the privacy toggles. Sleep on that, people.

Surprise! Wife's face used in Facebook singles ad , via The Red Tape Chronicles