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Facebook Respond to Privacy Hoax Statuses

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If you use Facebook, you’ve probably seen a few of your friends imploring you to copy and paste their status so you don’t have to pay a subscription service to keep your posts and messages private.

There have been two statuses circulating on our feeds – and they’ve actually been around for a couple of years.

One of these statuses claims to be a legally binding statement that protects your photos from copyright infringement, this status goes back to 2012.

It says: “As of September 28th , 2015 at 10:50p.m, I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, or posts, both past and future. By this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents.”

The other status is regarding a supposed £5.99 subscription fee for Facebook to keep your account free and keep  your photos, statuses, videos etc private.

It says Now it’s official! It has been published in the media. Facebook has just released the entry price: £5.99 ($9.10) to keep the subscription of your status to be set to “private.”

“If you paste this message on your page, it will be offered free (I said paste not share) if not tomorrow, all your posts can become public. Even the messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. After all, it does not cost anything for a simple copy and paste.

It is not surprising to see that many people have fell for these hoaxes but Facebook officials have reassured their users that this is not the case and that “Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.” – Facebook

They have also re-affirmed that they do not intend on charging their users to keep their personal content private “There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.”- Facebook

However, anything posted while you are a member of Facebook does indeed belong to Facebook. It is stated clearly in their terms and conditions that “For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License).”  By being a member of Facebook you agree to these terms so they own everything you post unless you de-activate and delete your account.
Unfortunately, no status you post will affect Facebook’s stance on the matter.
So what is your opinion, are you happy for Facebook to own your content? Let us know in the comment section below.