One of the most annoying features of Facebook is unwanted tagging. A lot of people take advantage of this by tagging others to promote a product, event, or website without asking for permission. I personally find this rude, unprofessional, and just plain annoying. A company has been spamming me for the past few months now and I’ve asked them several times to stop tagging me in their posts. I’ve worked with them before so I really didn’t want to block them or write about them but I’ve reached my boiling point already. After asking them to stop two times tonight, they continued to tag me in their event e-posters each time I would untag myself.
They’ve actually mastered the art of Facebook Tag Spamming. Here’s a screenshot of one album that’s filled with multiple copies of their e-poster tagging the maximum number of people per photo.
Guess how many people in total were tagged in this album?
A whopping 3,976. Most, if not all, were probably unsolicited.
As one of the people who commented in the photo album said, this kind of activity is actually against the Facebook Terms of Service. Here are two instances where this act violates the terms:
Safety
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.
And… (check number 9)
Protecting Other People’s Rights
1. We respect other people’s rights, and expect you to do the same.
2. You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.
3. We can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.
4. We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. To learn more, visit our How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement page.
5. If we remove your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal. If you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate.
6. You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.
7. If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.
8. You will not post anyone’s identification documents or sensitive financial information on Facebook.
9. You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.
If you’re the victim of something like this, what do you do? There are two things. First is you can block them. Just go to their page and click “Block this User”. This will effectively cut him off from your network and he won’t be able to tag you anymore. Next you can report them to Facebook so that their account can be investigated. Like so:
These guys do an excellent job of running events. However I just really couldn’t stand this anymore. Hopefully you guys stop Facebook Tag Spamming already because it just puts your company in a very bad light.
Ugh, yeah, it’s annoying. I get this all the time, that’s why I rarely friend companies. Most PR firms I work with don’t do this sort of thing and I’d like to keep it that way. Unfortunately, sometimes, it’s your real friends that do it…
Disrespectful and annoying.
Whenever I receive those kinds of tags from PR Firms and small-time businesses, then I either block them or report them.
I already have too many notifications on Facebook and I don’t want to see notifications that are just spam.
hayy. If this happens from a new FB friend, I immediately unfriend. So far my good friends don’t do this so I have had no reason to unfriend yet but if it did, I would give a warning first/
ya me to i do agree with you totally up top lady!!
The number is now 3,993. Apparently, your warning has been ignored. That’s sad. Risking the company’s reputation to invite people who most probably won’t go there anyway.
how bout those companies who do tag spam contests, tag as many friends to our image blah blah blah
so annoying
should get their facebook page deleted
They call it marketing where in fact it’s not. Actually there are a lot of ways doing it decently in FB. Sir Carlo, I saw you yerterday in money summit by Sir Randell. Sayang, was not able to chat to you. hahah!
This company has been facebook, email and fax spamming me for months now! I’ve already told them to stop contacting me, but they still keep on sending me their invites. Worse, they send fax twice a day three times a week on top of their never ending emails and facebook promotions. Kainis!