Girl Posts Public B-day Party Invite On Facebook, Gets 21,000 Confirmations
Facebook has over 500 million users
Most people are aware of the fact that the information passed on through Facebook and Twitter could be read and interpreted by tens, thousands or millions of people, depending on how appealing it is for users. This is why most people give it a lot of thought before releasing private info. Other people have yet to discovered this unwritten rule of social networking. A 14 year old girl from Hertfordshire, England learned this lesson after mistakenly posting her address and phone number on her Facebook account. She was trying to tell her friends about her upcoming birthday party. The result? A huge number of Facebook users from around the world, 21,000 to be more precise, RSVPd.
This happened because the teenager forgot to mark the Facebook event as private. Even though the social network was quick to take the page down, multiple users have already set up fan pages for the party stating that “HER PARTY WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY.” The page where the previous message was posted managed to gather up more than 1200 likes and a ton of wall posts from strangers who were asking for directions. Other groups are inviting people to a pre-party, after-party, clear-up party and even a “hang-over” party. The little girl’s photograph was also made available on multiple accounts.
The girl’s mother, Tracey Livesey, 40, canceled the October 7 event. Nonetheless, police were forced to set up patrols on the girl’s street to make sure that the high number of Facebook users won’t turn up and cause havoc in the area, the Telegraph reports. Even fake celebrity accounts baring the name of Justin Bieber, Professor Stephen Hawking, Stevie Wonder and more pressed the RSVP button, confirming their attendance to the teenager’s party.
Miss Livesey mentioned that Rebecca (the girl’s name) is cancelled and she’ll be lucky to get a card for her birthday after these shenanigans. “I said she could have 15 friends along to the party but my sister-in-law said that 8,000 people had said on Facebook that they were coming” she added.
Everyone's invited!
The girl may also have to change her mobile phone number because of the high number of calls she’ll most likely receive regarding the very special birthday party. As a result of her misunderstanding of basic Internet privacy rules, Rebecca has also lost Internet access. Her mother has announced that she has taken away the girl’s computer so that the same mistake won’t happen again. Hey, we all make mistakes. Fortunatelly for us, none of them have resulted in such big trouble.
This situation has obviously raised concerns regarding Facebook’s privacy settings which are now perceived as too complicated and out of reach for the less-technically-inclined users as well as younger users. Miss Livesey stated that the site should give clear indications that a certain event which was created will be displayed to all of the site’s users instead of just the people on that account’s friends’ list. Now the little girl and her mother will have to worry whether some of those Facebook users will show up despite the event being taken down. The town where they live has a population of 30,000, even more reason to worry about it being invaded by Facebook party animals.
Sergeant Lewis Ducket of Hertfordshire Police said: “We are aware of this and have been assured that the event is no longer taking place.” This is not the first time a girl decides to post such information on the social network with more than 500 million members. In February a family’s home was trashed after their teenage daughter posted a similar event on Facebook. More than 50 people showed up and caused chaos at the location. The damage was estimated at around £15,000.
The conclusion? Be sure to always check the privacy settings to the event invites you post on Facebook. Try to avoid revealing any important information such as phone number or your home address if possible.
