I sure hope your response is authentic. You might not use that information now, but you may potentially at a later date, i.e., warn a user to use their real name and if not you're account is suspended until doing so. Facebook's in the information business and now that you're a publicly traded company, the higher ups want to look good on the balance sheet and search is your organizations next step. This seems like a slippery slope to me.
The real name policy is kind-of irrelevant. Data brokers can see what FB account is logged in and link with your real name via credit card transaction codes and e-commerce tracking cookies.
Facebook will delete/suspend accounts that they don't believe are connected to a real identity, so you could lose your purchases if you don't use your real name.
When Facebook was young I had my account suspended because I used a fake name. I reached out to support and had a conversation with a real person about my supposed name, "Joe Blow." I guess at some point they stopped doing that.
Creating an account with a fake name doesn't help. Facebook will ascertain your real name through a combination of:
- knowing who you communicate with
- tracking your online behaviour (on and off site)
- collecting your name and contact information off your friends devices and accounts
Even if you provided a fake name, you still agreed to the TOS, so they can proceed as if you're still bound by the legal implications.
No, the policy of at least Facebook is you use the real, legal names as determined by the state. If you are locked out of your Facebook account, they ask you to send a copy of a government issued ID to prove who you are.
The idea that you are "curating" might be something they'd like you to think.
I don't think that's true. They don't have time to police billions of facebook accounts for 'normal' behavior. I'll friend a few random people. In the super unlikely worst case I'm out $300 but probably so is FB. It's in their interests to collect data and sell it under the fake name I gave. Only if I explicitly state to them the name is fake do they lose out. They don't ask and I won't tell and the advertisers will purchase shit. Win, win, win.
Then use it for exactly that. The point is if i use facebook for having a profile cause my employer wants me too then i can afford to (mostly) ignore facebooks policies on privacy or real name policies, because i want my real name to begin with and don't give them every crappy detail about my life...
or explain to your employer why you don't use facebook and see how he reacts!
I read once about some security expert who had to deny connections to hackers as part of his job and then instead of doing that explained to his employer that he is part of the hacker community and is speaking at hacker conferences etc and what he considers to be a hacker etc and it turned out to not be such a big deal as he thought in the beginning....
So I left facebook 6 months ago (permadelete) and it was the best thing I did.
Unfortunatly I need a FB account to join a few groups that I am members of IRL as well as requiring a FB business account to run FB ads - you have to do it from a personal account and you are only allowed one.
I am fine with posting all my real info except I don't want to use my real surname - because if you google my full name it comes up with all the companies I own, with full financial info available to the public (I live in the UK and companies house is transparent) I have had issues with people doing this in the past and deciding they don't like me, they stuck in a 9-5 and me earning $xxx per day working 3 hours a day... etc. I would rather just avoid any conversation that involves money.
Say my name is James Bentley (it's not) should I just sign up as James B, or James Bent, (not a stretch if you are googling someone though) or James Bughey or something completely unrelated?
I wouldn't count on a fake name being any kind of problem for facebook assuming they're actively using the profile.
Not providing them any data at all won't spare you, but if you're using the account they can easily analyze photos and comments (including those on other people's profiles), use facial recognition, use friend/activity patterns, match IP addresses/browsers (including any instances where the same IP address/browser was used to sign into non-facebook services found in records purchased by facebook from data brokers), and if he ever uses his phone or chrome to look at facebook there's a handy unique ID sent to facebook as well which can be matched with countless other recorded activities.
Facebook devotes a huge amount of time and money to collecting data and using it to associate people to a real identity to the extent that even people who never signed up for an account at all have hidden profiles created for them by facebook which contain the intimate details of their life including what they buy at the grocery store.
As far as I can tell, a container won't protect your identity but it will limit the amount of information they have on your browsing history (unless your ISP decides to sell them that information or they obtain some of it from a 3rd party data broker)
I don't use Facebook as people usually use but I have some accounts for API tinkering and some groups I follow. None of them use anything near my real name, residency, photos or other real personal data. It's a bit odd to explain to people from some groups I meet in person why I don't use my real name on FB, but they usually understand. There is no way for them to find this out, since my aliases sounds naturally and the fake data also seems real.
This strategy also applies for any other social-web services.
Facebook doesn't actually enforce the real name policy unless you are deliberately impersonating someone. I created something like 6 alt accounts, none of them were flagged.
You probably don't use your real name for the FB account, do you? (Ruling out the "she saw your name on your moneycard and googled you on Facebook" hypothesis)
A few years ago Facebook banned a fake account that I created for deploying a Facebook app for the company that I worked at. With the account banned we couldn't get access to the app to support the tens of thousands of users it had. Luckily Facebook did end up reinstating the account after we appealed for a couple weeks, though they did force me to change it to my real name.
Using a false name on facebook is against their ToS, is it not? There was a story within the last week about how violating ToS is arguably a felony in the US.
So, if I apply for this, Facebook will know my real name and address. I have not used it for years. But I think it is worth the $5 USD I will get to keep that information out of Facebook's hand.
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