Due to the fact that Facebook has chosen to involve software that will allow the theft of my personal information, I state: at this date of  January 4,  2015, in response to the new guidelines of Facebook, pursuant to articles L.111, 112 and 113 of the code of intellectual property, I declare that my rights are attached to all my personal data drawings, paintings, photos, video, texts etc. published on my profile and my page. For commercial use of the foregoing my written consent is required at all times. 



Those who read this text can do a copy/paste on their Facebook wall. This will allow them to place themselves under the protection of copyright. By this statement, I tell Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, broadcast, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and or its content. The actions mentioned…

  If you've been on Facebook at all during the last 2 years, you've likely seen friends posting some variation of the text above to their walls.  Based surely on good intentions, these viral shares unfortunately don't do anything… except maybe make you look a little silly.  As unfortunate as it may seem, once you've signed up for a Facebook account and use it, you're bound by their terms and conditions (the relevant ones to this conversation can be found here), regardless of what you post to your wall.  As I mention in the spot though, sometimes Facebook does offer up for public comment their policy changes and in the past, users have successfully lobbied them to change their mind.  If you're interested in seeing this process, checkout the Facebook Site Governance page and make your voice heard.  The other alternative is to delete your account, though that's not exactly foolproof as can be seen in the Deactivation and Deletion sections of their Data Use Policy (very bottom).

    The better question, in my mind anyway, is what exactly are you posting to Facebook that you don't want stolen?  People love to talk about Facebook security (and granted I have on many occasions as well), but frankly, if you don't put it on Facebook, it isn't there to steal.  You are also far more likely to have something stolen by a friend or friend of a friend (as has been my experience), then you are Facebook themselves.  So how do we protect ourselves?  First and foremost, think before you post.  If you wouldn't want it on the walls of your child's school or your church, don't post it.  If pictures are your main concern, post lower resolution images that would be of no real use to wouldbe thieves, and watermark them.  The watermark is really more of an inconvenience, but including one could make someone have to crop the image in such a way that it is no longer a nice image.  Watermarks can be easy to remove by someone who knows what they're doing in Photoshop… but then… they're not the ones likely to be taking your images anyway.

Just my thoughts.

–Dan Thompson