“L’informatique doit respecter l’identité humaine, les droits de l’homme, la vie privée et les libertés” – this is the motto of CNIL , the institution who said there may be a confusion regarding this presumed BUG of Facebook…

What happened ? The Métro website published an article about the possibility of having  private messages (from previous years) on the Timeline. This may occur as updating the old Facebook with the new Facebook (Timeline). The old messages will be marked as “public”, since the new options didn’t existed. The supposition is acting this way, 5 years-old wall-to-wall messages will become public. The time Facebook gave to users to clean these messages (1 week) is not enough.

Of course, everybody rushed in a witch-hunt against Facebook, including 2 official members of Government and the investigation is open.

What we have 2 retain from this story :

1. The Government trusted 2 official websites (Metrofrance.com and leFigaro.fr)
2. Face to a Privacy problem, everybody reacted in terms of hours, including officials
3. Facebook didn’t deny a possible technical problem
4. A public institution came into this conflict and calmed down everybody

What remains ? – the fact you cannot rely 100% on Facebook, a network that since changed the new style, is loosing members and  falls in share prices. A nice company, offering nice actions, and people/users giving much-much-more attention that deserve it.

My advice for FB actions is the same as any public action you take on Internet or in your life : be careful ! And try to use it for entertainment …

later edit : CNIL conclusion