Facebook has been left red-faced after having to admit that it hired a PR agency to plant negative stories with the press about privacy concerns on Google.
The irony is, of course, that Facebook is hardly a shining example of how an online firm should protect its users’ privacy.
Here’s what happened:
* Facebook secretly hired giant public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to seed stories in the media about privacy concerns with Google Social Search.
The Social Search feature of Google scours the web for publicly available information about you from sites such as Twitter, Yelp, Picasa, and FriendFeed, and displays it in the search results of your online friends.
* Facebook’s plan backfired badly when Burson-Marsteller approached former FTC investigator and blogger Christopher Soghoian…
Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.
Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.