Becky Smith was scrolling through her Facebook feed when something made her stop in her tracks. On her screen was a picture of her three kids. While seeing such a photo would usually undoubtedly raise a smile, this time it was much different. This time the photo was being used as the profile picture of someone else. Someone she didn’t know.
After taking a look at the person’s profile, it turns out whoever it was, they lived over 300 miles away. There was no obvious reason why they would have Becky’s photos as his profile picture.
When reaching out to Facebook for help, Becky arrived at a familiar story. Unhelpful, slow and futile. Initial responses from the social network stated that they didn’t think anything was wrong, and the person in question didn’t appear to be trying to pretend to be her (in what would be a Facebook cloning scam.)
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Eventually, Becky sent the person a message herself asking why they had used her photo. While no response was forthcoming, later that evening the photo was eventually taken down.
It’s a creepy demonstration of user privacy in a social media age. Becky used Facebook to share pictures of her children with friends that lived far away. While many, if not most of the Facebook community, use the social network platform in a similar way, we should always be mindful of basic privacy practises or risk having our personal photos wind up in the hands of strangers.
Becky wasn’t connected on Facebook to the person who stole her photo. This means there are two likely reasons as to how they stole her photo. (For the record, the details about how her photo was stolen were not released, and the below presents two possible scenarios.)
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Firstly, it is possible that Becky used the photo as her profile picture. Profile pictures can be seen by anyone, regardless of whether you are connected on Facebook. While you can prevent others from seeing a full sized version of the profile picture on Facebook, that is still possible on the developer’s side of the social network.
As such, never used sensitive photos for your profile picture, which should include pictures of your young children, since these can be obtained by any Facebook user.
Secondly, Becky’s photo may have been obtained because she doesn’t use the recommended “friends only” privacy option for her account. In this day and age, that would be a significant privacy mishap. If your account is set to public, any photo you upload to the platform can be seen by anyone with an Internet connection, and subsequently stolen. So if you upload sensitive photos to Facebook, make sure you use the appropriate privacy settings available. You can read our guide on locking down your Facebook account here.
And always remember, any photo you share to the Internet, especially social media, could potentially wind up in the wrong hands. Something that is certainly worth considering before you click the upload button.