Today I did a test, and facebook was my test subject. Guess what? Facebook miserably failed this test.
As some of my readers may know I legally changed my name in to Khannea Suntzu. The court case was handled on the 4th of july of this year and next month (October) my legal name will be Khannea Suntzu. In fact it’s already like that, however it will be formally changed in the administration where I live early next month in the municipal databases.
Clearly I used to have another name. Lets assume my other name used to be Cassandra Visser. So today I tried something, such as create a facebook account with the name c.visser. I never done this before and never in the pasts did I associate my born (first) name with facebook. So technically there would be absolutely no way for facebook to know how I used to be called. Facebook should have no files on me whatsoever.
Nevertheless upon entering C.Visser, facebook automatically entered the name CASSANDRA visser (or its equivalent) unprompted, AND it filled out an old email address I used years ago that does NOT have either Cassandra nor Visser in it (or its equivalencies…) for me. This email address is no longer in use, and I have never used it in conjunction with Facebook, but clearly Facebook had acquired it. This is quite a worrisome violation of my privacy.
Can you all see the implications? It means that facebook is maintaining a profile with name data on me, most likely linked to my IP, address, email addresses and who knows what.
This should clearly be an illegal act. It actually is an illegal act under dutch law.