Tuesday 27 January 2009

Facebook content viewable when logged out


Go to Facebook's simple, uncluttered homepage and you'd be forgiven for thinking that you can't see any of the content within the site unless you log in. Not so. A lot of information on Facebook is actually accessible through a web search (such as Google).

You'd be surprised at just how much information on Facebook is available to the wider public. While logged out of Facebook, I was able to find the following:

People's search results page (see above). This may include a list of your friends, as well as your photograph. Not only that, but you may be able to see the things that person is a "fan" of - there are a number of Facebook "Pages" dedicated to musicians, movies, brands and so on, and whatever Page you've joined is listed here. You can tell Facebook not to include your name and photo in search engine results via the privacy settings, and you can also choose not to have your friends and fan Pages viewable. But not all people do this.

Groups and Pages. Although surnames are not included in Groups and Pages when you click through to a search result, you can still view the content posted to a Group's website (such as the Jeff Buckley for Christmas Number 1 group). If people choose to let people find them via Google and the like, you can click through to their search results page (such as the one above), and this will include their surname.

Applications. Popular third-party widgets that people add to their Facebook profiles, such as games, are searchable. You can view the Application's Facebook page without having to log in, and see a list of fans. Again, if people's search results pages have been made public, you can click through to see their surname and possibly a list of their friends and fan Pages.

Photos. If you know the website address for a particular photo album, you'll be able to click through to view it without having to log in. This is not necessarily because the person creating the album has chosen to make it available to "Everyone" - I'll go into more detail on this later.

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