Facebook Denies Selling Off User Info

British news site The Sunday Telegraph stirred up privacy advocates by reporting Facebook’s plan to sell user data to companies looking to do faster market research. Facebook tells WebProNews The Telegraph got it all wrong.

The article ran with the headline “Networking site cashes in on friends,” and a teaser below saying Facebook had found a way to profit from members’ private data. The article described the development of “one of the world’s largest market research databases,” which would launch this spring.

“[The new tool] will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight.”