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October 4, 2007

Man Uses Facebook Address Book Tool, Goes to Jail

So when was I complaining about the way social networking services ask for your address book so they can spam invite all your friends to come hang out with you? Oh. Right. Yesterday.

So that makes the story of this poor schmoe winding up in jail for three days thanks to exactly that kind of “feature” timely:

Man jailed over Facebook message:

A husband banned from contacting his estranged wife was jailed after he inadvertently sent her a message on the social networking site Facebook.

Dylan Osborn, 37, had been ordered by magistrates not to contact his wife Claire Tarbox, after he harassed her with phonecalls and text messages.

But when he joined Facebook to look at a friend’s wedding photos, the site sent an automatic “friend request” to everyone on his email list - including his ex-partner.

Oops.

He said: “I certainly hadn’t intended to contact my wife… I didn’t even know she had a Facebook account. To be honest, I don’t think the judge understood how it works either.

“People on Facebook should be careful - this could easily happen to someone else.”

And probably will. Repeatedly.

Posted by mhall at 11:46 PM | Add Comment