If you’re a disgruntled ex-Facebooker or someone who “made threatening statements” against the company, there’s a chance its internal security force is tracking your location and activities, using Facebook’s apps and other tracking tools.
Given the scale of Facebook and the number of people the company has infuriated, this watchlist could be very big indeed — as CNBC points out, if the company tracks 0.1% of its users this way, it’s keeping tabs on 270,000 people.
At least one of the company’s blacklists, the weekly updated BOLO (“Be On the Lookout”) list, has “hundreds” of names on it. You can be added to BOLO for writing an update like “Fuck you, Mark,” “Fuck Facebook” or “I’m gonna go kick your ass.”
Facebook called the measures “industry-standard,” and insisted that “any suggestion our onsite physical security team has overstepped is absolutely false.”
The user checked in with security to register as a guest. His name popped up right away, alerting security. He was on the list. His issue had to do with messages he had sent to Zuckerberg, according to a person familiar with the circumstances.Soon, more security guards showed up in the entrance area where the guest had tried to register. No one grabbed the individual, but security guards stood at his sides and at each of the doors leading in and out of that entrance area.
Eventually, the employee showed up mad and demanded that his friend be removed from the BOLO list. After the employee met with Facebook’s global security intelligence and investigations team, the friend was removed from the list — a rare occurrence.
Facebook uses its apps to track users it thinks could threaten employees and offices [Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC]
(Image: Lauren Beukes; Anders Frick, CC-BY-SA)
