Yesterday a reader sent me this note she had received from a friend and wanted to know if it was true:

FACEBOOK has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission. If you don't want your photos to be used Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the Log out link. Select Privacy. Then select NEWSFEEDS and WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACEBOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes. (REPOST to let your friends know!)

I should have known by all the capitalizations and the note to repost this to all your friends that this wasn't a one-off question. And, sure enough, throughout the day I saw the same message showing up in my friends' status lines—identical capitalization and all.

So the question is: Is it true?

The short answer is No. The long answer is more complicated, so this post will explain exactly what all this means.

First of all, there are two types of ads being confused here. One is the ads that Facebook sells itself (called, not surprisingly, Facebook Ads). The other ones are by third parties who are inserting ads into various applications that appear on Facebook (for example, quizzes). Below is a description of the two types, along with what they are and are not allowed to do with your photos.

Facebook Ads

Facebook sells ads that appear on the right-hand column of your various Facebook pages. Here are a couple of examples currently showing up on my pages:

You can tell these are Facebook Ads because they have the thumbs up and thumbs down icons above or below them. They work similarly to Google AdWords ads—based on the content on your page, a relevant ad will show up.

Facebook will sometimes display your profile picture with these ads, if you have taken an action that is connected in some way to that ad. For example, if you become a fan of a TV show's Page and an ad for that show appears on your friend's page, your picture may be displayed with a note that you are a fan. Or if you purchase a product, that action (with your photo) might show up in a related ad.

These are the important things to know about this situation:

• Your picture will only appear if you have taken some direct action that relates to the content of the ad
• It will only use your profile picture, so you don't need to worry about party photos showing up where you don't want them
• The only people who will see your picture in those ads are your direct friends
• You can opt out of this "feature" by going to Settings > Privacy Settings > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads and selecting "No One" from the dropdown box. Then click Save Changes.

Now, having said that, I do think it's wrong of Facebook to make this an opt-out setting vs. an opt-in one. In my opinion, you should always get someone's explicit permission before using their likeness to endorse something. (There are even some suggestions out there that this is actually illegal.)

However, you should also know that Facebook implemented this program about a year and a half ago. I made a brief mention of it in my earlier post, Privacy Controls in Facebook Part 2 and then pointed to a Wired blog post from January 2008 that provided more more information about it. (Note that they were referred to as Social Ads then.) So, if you haven't noticed it or been bothered by it since then, you probably don't need to be too worried about its impact on you. But you should definitely change that setting if you don't want to participate.

Third-Party Ads

These are ads that show up in the various applications you've installed on Facebook, e.g. games, quizzes, photo sharing, book lists, etc. They could be anywhere on the page, including banner ads at the top. You can tell these are not Facebook Ads because they don't have the thumbs up and thumbs down icons associated with them (and they're generally not in that right-hand column where Facebook Ads appear).

While most of these ads are perfectly legitimate, the current issue arose when some of the companies distributing these ads started including people's profile pics with them—a direct violation of Facebook's terms of service. Facebook has since removed these ads and have even banned a couple of ad networks from working with Facebook applications because of their actions. Facebook posted a blog entry about this yesterday.

So the original note that said Facebook has authorized third-party advertisers to use people's photos is false—it was done without Facebook's knowledge or permission. And changing the settings for your Facebook Ads will have absolutely no impact on these ads, because they aren't checking those settings before using the photos anyway. If you see your photo or a friend's photo being used in one of these ads, you should click the Report link at the bottom-left of the page and a box will pop up where you can alert both Facebook and the developer of the app of the violation.

I hope this helps explain what is a very confusing situation. If you have further questions, please send them along, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Posted in Facebook, How To, Privacy/Security, Social Media