Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

OpenBook Searches Your Facebook Status Updates

by Amar Toor on May 17, 2010 at 12:40 PM

OpenBook's Search Window
If you're an open tweeter, you know that whatever you tweet is available for general, public consumption. Facebook, by contrast, is a less intrinsically public forum, meaning that even if you update a status on a completely public profile, you can usually rest assured that it won't pop up on some random person's news feed, or in some random person's keyword search. Not anymore, though, thanks to a new site that aims to remind us how open our information is... by exposing it.

Called OpenBook, the new site allows users to search through every single public status update on Facebook, effectively providing lonely Web voyeurs with newfound hours of creepy entertainment. By default, and for no apparent reason, the search engine automatically searches statuses for the term "playing hooky," but also suggests that users try searching for other terms like, "don't tell anyone," "HIV test," and "rectal exam." Fun for the whole family!

As TechCrunch Europe reports, the founders of OpenBook, Peter Burns and Will Moffat, justified their brainchild as a means to expose Facebook's disturbingly porous privacy settings. "This is a simple example of just how open Facebook has made your information," they wrote. "This data is wide open, and this is one of the least scary uses that anyone will make. If nothing changes, it's only to get worse." True to its ethos, the site includes instructions for how to delete your Facebook account, and information on how users can tighten up privacy settings.

Whether you want to lay the blame at Facebook's feet or on the shoulders of naive users who make their statuses public, the ultimate question is whether creating a search engine like this is really the best way to go about making a point. Perhaps the prospect of having "rectal exam" statuses available for the world's reading pleasure will force some people to reassess their privacy controls. If you're going to fight fire with fire, though, we'd think it best to let the flames burn for a few days, prove your point, and then destroy the site. [From: TechCrunchEurope, via: Download Squad]

Tags: facebook, openbook, privacy, PrivacyIssues, search, SearchEngines, SocialNetworking, Status, StatusUpdate, top, web

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular