It seems like yesterday Facebook was just being discovered by millions once they had opened their doors to everyone regardless of whether they attended a university of not. It’s expansion and growth isn’t all that surprising as it is a fantastic website and obviously built by some very talented developers. It’s one of the only instances where I’ve enjoyed AJAX on a web page before.

One thing that I find somewhat irritating with Facebook is the amount of information it asks of you. Here’s a small list of what they want to know from you:

• Real Name
• Music
• Books
• Movies
• Address
• Home Town
• Phone Number
• Interests
• Sexual Orientation
• Daily Schedule
• What you want to buy/sell
• Relation to others on Facebook
• Political Affiliation.

All of this is only from using the basic website with no applications! With applications there is no end to what Facebook could eventually learn from you. I bet Facebook knows more about my friends than I do! The best thing about this is that people are being turned down for jobs and even fired because an employee has uploaded distasteful pictures of themselves up on the Internet. When you’re a public company you really don’t want images of your female representatives half-naked in a bush with a bottle of vodka in one hand and five guys in the other.

When developing a website I live by the idea that you should only ask for what you require for your website to run, excluding a username and password but that’ll be for another article on another day. Facebook asks for an obscene amount of personal information and nine times out of ten it will get it from its users.

The first signs of things turning rotten was when rumours were spread about a possible advertising platform rising from Facebook. I didn’t believe it at first but eventually it was unveiled as a momentous occasion for them. Many claimed that Facebook was about to take on Google with Facebook holding the upper-hand due to being able to use information freely given by its users.

What Facebook didn’t count on was the quality of that information. Google track websites that users obviously want to go on, since they’re the ones that searched for them. Facebook relies on the information users input to the website, and a lot of the time that information is in no way fit to process. At the end of the day Facebook probably knew about this, and the platform never launched outside of their own website.

Now, onto the matter of being able to delete accounts. We all know it’s extremely hard to get Facebook to give up your data, but then again getting a response from most other websites with that kind of traffic is near impossible. Just try getting hold of an administrator at MySpace! In all honesty I cannot fault them at being slow.

Still, all this fuss is about very little when it comes to where your data ends up. Most users seem to believe that once their information is removed on Facebook that it is gone forever.

Not a chance.

Even this little Blog gets backed up regularly, so imagine the sophisticated systems behind closed doors at Facebook. I wouldn’t be surprised if the website was in a constant state of backing up, with full backups being made to servers at night to be stored away somewhere. If you’ve been a member of Facebook for two years and your account has finally been deleted do the copies of your information go away also? Unless the staff at Facebook have methods of searching through millions of backups for a few peoples information to delete then I’d say you’re out of luck.

I know that Facebook are probably required by Law to delete backups after a few months, but here’s something worth reading.

“When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.”

From the Facebook Terms of Service

In short, once you’ve uploaded information to Facebook you have created a license to allow them to do whatever they want with your data. If you remove your content manually they may still hold your information, although your data leaves the contract. I’m no expert on Law but I believe that means your information is still with Facebook.

I don’t believe Facebook is an evil company with the intent of selling your information to the highest bidder, but when dealing with the Internet nothing is truly safe. Recently, the BBC showed on their Click programme how they were able to use malicious methods to get users’ data from special applications written by a BBC resident coder. As far as I know Facebook had only issued the following response to this breach of security. The worrying idea behind this and the rest of Web 2.0 is that these websites want you to create your own Internet experience, yet your experience is only as safe as the immature frameworks the website is built on. The only way to protect something is to stop all contact with it from the inside and outside. Facebook is starting to cross the line with many people realising that they actually cannot get their account deleted (not deactivated). Don’t just take my word for it. Have a look at this video for some scary, but sceptical information on Facebook.

In a way I think people are starting to care less and less about what information about them is available on the Internet, with many living by the mantra “I have nothing to hide”. Information is already out there and Facebook can provide a means for this information to be used in a malicious way. What’s worrying is that this isn’t even hacking, it’s misuse of data, and I believe it’ll be a problem for years to come.