It came as a surprise to me and I would think it would be a surprise to many of us that Facebook defaults to allowing your photo to appear dynamically in ads that run on their site. That’s right, you might be appearing in an ad right now and you would not know it.  Who thought that would be a good idea and why did the person arguing the point with them not win?  I’ll tell you how to opt-out but I have to share a funny story first.

Facebook ad fail

A fellow named Peter was surprised to see the ad above when he was in his facebook account.  His surprise was due to the fact that the cheerful lady in the photo suggesting that hot singles were waiting is his wife!  The phote is being dynamically pulled from facebook’s user photos and inserted into the ad without her knowledge.  Peter has since heard from facebook and they apologized while explaining that the creator of the ad did this and not facebook.  However, if you don’t specifically opt-out it could be happening to you too.  Here’s what you do:

• Go to facebook/settings/privacy settings
• Select News Feed and Wall
• Click on the Facebook Ads tab
• In the drop-down menu next to “Appearance in Facebook Ads” select “Noone”.