Facebook should take more responsibility and inform users more clearly if their status updates are public, says the creator of a website that showcases Facebook users who openly hate their boss and boast about drugs.

We Know What You're Doing

Callum Haywood is an 18-year-old computer programmer from Nottingham who has created WeKnowWhatYourDoing.com, a website that shows the first name and Facebook profile picture of users who posts status updates about hating their boss, being hungover, taking drugs and their phone number.

In an interview with IBTimes UK, Haywood said: "Facebook should take responsibility and notify people that their statuses are public, and they can be seen by anyone. The implementation of the feature assumes the user knows that their post can be seen by anyone, when in reality, people do not realise, which is what my website shows."

Launched earlier this week, the website received 320,000 unique visitors and close to half a million page views in just two days, proving that the openness of public Facebook statuses is a popular subject.

Haywood is able to generate teh content from Facebook by using a tool he developed which queries the Facebook Graph API and outputs the result.

The teenager is basically trwaling through all public Facebook posts looking for specific terms, such "hate my boss", "hungover", "cannabis" and even phone numbers which incredibly, people post publically on their Facebook profile.

Theses are then filtered further into the four categories displayed on the side: Who wants to get fired?, Who's hungover?, Who's taking drugs? and Who's got a new phone number?

Openness not a problem

Haywood, who made his first website at the age of 13, told us the potential openness of Facebook isn't a problem in itself, but its users should be made more aware of how public the social network can be.

"The problem begins when people do not realise that what they post is public, which is what the site aims to show. Most of the posts featured [on the site] are not the sort of thing you would necessarily want the world to know.

"I believe Facebook do have a responsibility to inform users whose default privacy policy for new posts is set to 'Public', they need to be made aware that what they share can be seen by the whole of Facebook, and the rest of the internet too via Facebook's Graph API, which happily gives this information to any site that asks for it."

The teenager reassured us that he is not keeping data generated by WeKnowWhatYourDoing.com, and does not yet have any long-term plans for the site, but adds that it will be kept online "for as long as necessary".

Haywood added: "No data is being collected, information from Facebook is stored in the website caches for a maximum of one hour, then it is discarded and fresh information is retrieved."

On the site, Haywood says he came up with the idea after watching Tom Scott's talk 'I Know What You Did Five Minutes Ago', which demonstrates important points that consider the future of social networking and its impact on a connected society.

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