How widespread on Facebook is the issue of private messages being publicly viewable on timelines?
I've read about reported problems French Facebook users were having with their private messages unexpectedly showing up on their timelines. My private messages are private for a reason, I don't want everyone to see them. Is this problem limited to France, or is it a wider problem?
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I haven't seen it happen on my account yet, but you never know. It's a good reminder that private things should probably simply not be posted to Facebook or other social media networks. Users in other countries should definitely be on the lookout for this, and should take steps to remove private stuff as much as possible. Facebook really cannot be trusted.
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I did a little looking around after seeing your question. Having been a Facebook user back in college, there are some old things that probably wouldn't do me any favors to revisit. It seems that this issue is not certain. As you noted, it was reported in a few French newspapers, but Facebook claims that it is basically a rare glitch that brings up your old wall posts from before Timeline and people are mistakenly thinking they are old private messages. The user response is basically, "My name might be Tucker, but it isn't Sucker," and that Facebook is BSing. While I'm rarely surprised at the stupid things people do, I would think even dim bulbs can tell the difference between an old wall post and a private message.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/cloud-computing/21054/facebook-privacy-fe...