Privacy disaster narrowly diverted: Teens escape major cyberbullying threat (for now)

In case you haven't heard, the online privacy universe underwent a seismic shift last week — and in a way that could have rocked your teen's world in a major way.

We're talking about something that went way above and beyond the usual concerns about teens disclosing their real names or giving out the family phone number to online friends.

Changes Facebook made to the way information was forwarded from external partner websites to all your child's Facebook "friends" could have left your teen vulnerable to online bullying — or worse.

But then 50,000 Facebook users, outraged at this unprecedented privacy breach, forced the company to rethink its new rules. Last Friday, Facebook announced that no private purchases made at partner websites would be displayed publicly on Faceboon "without users proactively consenting." 

Here is an example of a privacey disaster that could have become everyday occurrences, had Facebook decided to stick with its original opt-in rules — rules that made it difficult to (and very onerous) for the user to prevent information about his shopping habits from being broadcast to his Facebook friends.

Example: The poster child for what?

Your teenage son is shopping at an online poster shop. He spots a poster that would make a great gift for one of his cousins: George: The Timeless Art of Seduction, featuring the character George Costanza from Seinfeld posed, in his underwear, on the casting couch. While your son is making his purchase using his PayPal account, a tiny box pops up, advising him that information about his purchase will be shared with all his friends on Facebook, unless he objects. He's so busy focusing on getting the transaction details correct that he doesn't even notice the box and inadvertently clicks it. By the time he prints out his receipt, all his friends know he's just purchased a poster featuring a half-dressed George Costanza.

Just think what a bully (cyber or real world) could have done with information like that. Isn't it tough enough being a teenager these days without big companies providing bullies with yet more ammunition to use against their victims?

Let's home the next time the corporate dealmakers sit down to dream up ways to give more value to online marketing partners, they stop to consider the consequences of outing the intimate details of someone's online life to all their friends and frenemies. In an ideal world, the tender hearts of teenagers would take precedence over the fickle hearts of marketers. Emotional collateral rarely makes it onto the spreadsheets that get passed around when executives start talking co-branding.

But for the sake of those teenagers who have to live with the real-world fall-out of privacy decisions made by nameless and faceless executives, it should.

I hope they're listening.