As if Facebook 3.1 for iPhone and iPod touch didn’t have enough problems, dmackdaddy let us know this potentially embarrassing problem he’s experiencing with the new contact picture syncing functionality:
Beware of your profile pics, or your boss might get one of you doing something you don’t want them to see! What happens is, [Facebook 3.1] takes [all] the emails and phone numbers on your iPhone and sends them to Facebook. It then cross-checks and syncs them back to your iPhone. That’s a major security flaw right there! It should only sync the ones you’re friends with.
So for an example I have my coworker’s email and cell but I am not her Facebook friend. All of a sudden when I got a call from my coworker I saw a picture of her in a bikini because that was her [Facebook] profile pic!
I’m using Outlook 2010 and it has a new feature called Suggested Contacts where it keeps all your emails you been using. Those sync to my iPhone via exchange 2007. So now I have Facebook profile pics in Outlook 2010 for a bunch of folks that I don’t even really know just because I have emailed them.
Given the more casual (read: sometimes drunken and debauched) profile pictures that appear on Facebook, and the potential from cross-contamination between trusted friends and respected colleagues, if this is widespread the potential for embarrassment is high. Even if this is an isolated or semi-isolated incident, as more and more social network contact pools are integrated together, its worth remembering that anything — and everything — you put on the internet will eventually be seen by those people you least want to see it.
Remember, if though Facebook thinks privacy is dead, it may still be important to you and yours. So think twice and practice safe pics!
[Image above is a mockup based on the story -- no real coworkers were embarrassed in the making of this post]
[Via theiphoneblog.com]
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