Behind Your Business

Adorning the walls of Facebook's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters are multiple prints of Rene Magritte's iconic painting The Son of Man. The image of a man's face partly obscured by a green apple is considered a critique of people's attempts to conceal their true selves. It's also an apt metaphor for the millions who spend time on the Web trying to keep their own identities hidden, say executives at Facebook, the world's largest social network. "Part of what Facebook is trying to do is help people take the apple away," says Facebook Vice-President of Product Chris Cox.

There's good reason to push people to be up front about who they are on the Web, where million of users enshrouded in anonymity engage in everything from bullying to spamming, identity theft to financial fraud. To help users establish their identities online, Web sites such as Amazon.com and eBay's PayPal require customers to enter personal information on a site-by-site basis. Yet there's a dearth of widely accepted identity standards -- the online equivalents of a driver's license or Social Security Number. "There isn't anything built into the architecture of the Web that lets you verify who you are," says Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum.

Facebook wants to change this by becoming a kind of digital calling card, what Cox calls an "identity medium" for transactions between the individuals and businesses inhabiting the Web. An early step was the creation of Facebook Connect, a program that lets users log into their profile and interact with Facebook friends on various sites across the Web. In a little more than a year since it was established, almost 60 million, or one-sixth of Facebook's 350 million subscribers, have used Facebook Connect to expand their personal profiles beyond the walls of Facebook.com.

Facebook Just Curbed Privacy...