Facebook Privacy Notice Is As Fake As It Gets

Over the past few months, a number of privacy issues regarding Facebook and other issues related to it have cropped up in the news. Remember when employers began stepping all over their employees' privacy by asking for their Facebook passwords?

There have also been cases where school officials and even the police used information from the social network to track down or charge people on related cases. Naturally, this has given less-than-squeaky-clean individuals many reasons to fear for their online privacy and security, which has given rise to the very silly but fast-spreading Facebook Privacy Notice posts.

What's making the rounds is a long notice that falsely claims to protect the poster's privacy rights when it comes to Facebook. Once posted, the user is allegedly protected from various forms of snooping from the government or any other official institutions or agencies in existence.

You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein.

The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student or any personnel under your direction or control. The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law.

-- Excerpt from bogus Facebook Privacy Notice statement

Note that the notices are fake and won't keep anyone, including the government, from coming after you for what you've posted on your Facebook profile. They're pretty harmless as far as scams go, although you will end up looking (and feeling) like an ass for having posted something as silly and nonsensical on your profile.