This week's overhaul of Facebook groups quickly led to an outcry over the way the service works, but the bigger lesson may be simply this: Be careful who you befriend.

The problems started on Thursday, the day after http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9189725/Facebook_offers_new_tools_changing_way_users_share_information">Facebook revamped groups, giving users a way to compartmentalize their Facebook lives and post certain items to pre-designated groups of people. That's when technology blogger Michael Arrington, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis all found themselves added to a group called NAMBLA. It wasn't immediately clear what this page was set up for, but NAMBLA is an acronym for the completely unsavory North American Man/Boy Love Association. (For South Park fans, it refers to the National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes).

Mahalo CEO Calacanis quickly fired off an email to Zuckerberg http://calacanis.com/2010/10/07/email-i-sent-to-zuckerberg-sheryl-over-force-join-groups-on-facebook/">Calacanis quickly fired off an email to Zuckerberg saying that he was troubled to have been added to the group without being given the opportunity to opt in.

That was followed by general confusion, with http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/07/businessinsider-facebook-groups-2010-10.DTL">some reporting that Facebook's new feature could be used to unilaterally add anyone to a group.

But that isn't the case. The groups feature now lets users automatically add existing friends to groups, but they can't do this with people they don't know.

How did Zuckerberg get added to NAMBLA then? That's all down to tech blogger Arrington. http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/07/conspiracies-privacy-spam-and-nambla-facebook-groups-are-fun/">"I typed in his name and hit enter,' Arrington wrote on TechCrunch. "He's my Facebook friend, I therefore have the right to add him."

Arrington added that "as soon as Zuckerberg unsubscribed I lost the ability to add him to any further groups at all, another protection against spamming and pranks."

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that group members can only add their friends to the group. "If you have a friend that is adding you to groups you do not want to belong to, or they are behaving in a way that bothers you, you can tell them to stop doing it, block them or remove them as a friend -- and they will no longer ever have the ability to add you to any group," she wrote in an e-mail. "If you don't trust someone to look out for you when making these types of decisions on the site, we'd suggest that you shouldn't be friends on Facebook."

Facebook Friends can also send messages and tag photos of other friends. Neither of these features has generated any type of outcry.

Arrington himself was added to the group by someone named Jon Fisher, one of Arrington's 4,824 Facebook friends. Fisher is also one of Calacanis's 4,740 friends.

Still, there is something disquieting about the way groups works, according to Chet Wisniewski, a senior security advisor with Sophos. He's concerned with the fact that people cannot opt out of the groups sign-up feature. "I'm uncomfortable with the idea that other people can determine what I display," he said. "The fact that it can't be opted out of, to me, seems a bit strange."

Facebook's http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1193">groups Help Center confirms that there's simply no way to prevent people from adding you to groups. And the critics say that rather than being added automatically, friends should be given the choice to opt into any groups.

In a sign that Calacanis and Wisniewski may be onto something, online affiliate marketers have begun speculating about how the feature could be misused to drive traffic to marketing Web sites -- a current favorite form of Facebook abuse. "If you were to make a group named AT&T and decided to make a few 'official' Facebook spokesperson accounts to add to the fun, you could essentially launch a campaign offering FREE WIRELESS SERVICE FOR EVERYONE DURING THE MONTH OF OCTOBER," http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/104137-new-facebook-groups-spam-exploit.html">wrote a poster named Jon to the Wickedfire.com Internet marketing forum.

This Jon also claimed to have set up a fake NAMBLA page.

"Seeing as how crowd manipulation and influence over the interwebz is sooooooo easy already, plus tack on this as a social parody of sorts, and poof, you have yourself a publicity nightmare on a scale that would be spreading far more rapidly than any BP oil spill ever could," he added.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20101008/tc_pcworld/facebooksnewgroupsfeatureworriessome

Can you imagine if a potential employer decided to check out your Facebook account (heard they do that these days), and found that you were part of the NMBLA group?

Nice. Hope they add more features like this so it's easier to stay far from Facebook. Really, every time I read something about Facebook it's about privacy issues. The other side is Facebook users telling how great and useful it is.

Well here's some news: I value my privacy more than so-called usefulness of Facebook. I had it pretty easy before Facebook, I still have, and I will have it easy in the future as well.

Anyway, just my two cents. You can use yours any way you like. Just don't try to take mine.

1. If people would lock down their pages, then only their friends would see this spoof.

2. Once you remove yourself from the group that friend can't add you to any other groups, so meh.

3. The joke will get old and/or the jokester will get blocked.

4. FB should have a privacy option that allows you to not allow friends to add you to these groups.

I agree. Facebook is so silly. The sad thing is that I read an article that actually said that having a Facebook account is seen as a plus by your employer,as it shows you're in touch with the latest technology. Don't know if it's true (or if it was some sort of promotion for Facebook), but I hope not.

man boy love is beautiful.

Man boy love? Like pedophiles?

I don't really care about privacy settings, most of mine are set to the lowest possible level, I have nothing to hide. Employers can look at it, if they want, there's nothing more on there than they wouldn't find out anyway, after I've started working with them.

So if someone adds you to that paedophile group I suppose you won't mind that your employer sees that... I mean they'll eventually see you raping a little boy during your lunch break anyway, right?

It would make sense.  Facebook has a population of over 500 million users (last time I checked, it grows rapidly every month) and thus has a larger population than both the United States and Europe.  It is the best tool for social networking today and we all know how important networking and efficiency are to companies.  The fact that there are so many people on it and that virtually any mobile device will synch up with facebook or will be able to acess facebook makes it, combined with smart/cell phones, the most important piece of technology you need for employment in the business world.

My Fb is set to standard privacy settings because I really don't have anything to hide.  The worst pictures I'm tagged in involve me next to a 40oz and one where I'm drinking a bottle of wine (although they might notice that I'm a contributing member of NORML).  As long as you don't lead a reckless and idiotic lifestyle you won't have to worry about employers discriminating against you because of information they found on FB.  This whole group adding thing will probably be sorted out and forgotten of.

No, man boys, men with the mind of boys, mentally retarded people. It's beautiful when they fall in love.