It’s not unheard of for prospective employers or universities to take a peek into the digital lives of their applicants. However, the recent case of a middle school assistant principal allegedly demanding access to a student’s Facebook profile may be a bit too far. An Everett, Washington, middle school student, Samantha Negrete, reported last week…

It’s obvious, but true: the pages, statuses, products and more that you “like” on Facebook say something about your personal preferences. However, a new study by Cambridge University found that a hypothetical system using an algorithm to correlate users’ preferences could predict their behavior, often to scary degrees. It’s pretty simple, really: by deducing that…

As you’ve probably heard by now, Facebook rolled out its new News Feed yesterday, which changed some of the functional navigation of users’ pages, including access to privacy settings. You can click here if you want to get on the waiting list. In old News Feed layout, privacy settings were located in the upper right…

Facebook filed a patent in 2011 titled “Paid Profile Personalization,” and the details of it are just coming to light. The patent contains some proposals that, if they come to pass, could revolutionize the way Facebook makes money. One of the highlights of the patent, and the one that’s getting the most attention, would allow…

Now that Facebook is a publicly traded company, they’re required to make quarterly disclosures about their practices, and that includes disclosing the number of active fake or duplicate profiles. Facebook pledged last year to word toward eliminating scam profiles from the site entirely, and while they haven’t yet achieved that lofty goal, the 2012 fourth-quarter…

A first-of-its-kind seven-year study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that Facebook users became more sensitive about divulging their information over time, even as Facebook ratcheted up the pressure for them to divulge more. Over the timespan of the study, which examined the Facebook habits of 5,000 users from 2005 to 2011, Facebook introduced…

Poor grammar and spelling errors are two of the telltale signs of a fake link on Facebook. But misspelling the name of the website’s CEO? That is the reddest of red flags. The latest malicious scam to go viral on Facebook purports to be a message from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The obvious problems with…

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro is a well-respected and well-known religious figure in Hawaii with many followers; his official Facebook page has almost 6,000 likes. However, being a widely followed public figure has its drawbacks, one of which is being impersonated on the Internet. Cordeiro has found himself to be the subject of several fake Facebook profiles…

A legal battle is heating up in Oregon between that state legislature and tech companies like Facebook over the “Digital Asset” rights of deceased web users. It all started when Karen Williams, the mother of a 22-year-old Oregon man who died in a motorcycle accident, tried to access her son’s Facebook account. Tech companies like…

Facebook will soon release their Open Graph search tool to the Facebook community that allows users to perform a number of advanced searches on Facebook. But the feature is not without its privacy concerns as Facebook’s latest tool could potentially become the most effective tool employer’s use when researching potential job candidates. You’ve almost certainly…