Facebook introduces two new features, but doesn’t properly alert users to possible privacy risks

Facebook has been criticised by IT and privacy experts for introducing two new features, without properly informing its users about the potential privacy risks.

One new feature of Facebook, recently noticed by a computer science PhD professor at U.C. Berkley and reported by TechCrunch, now shows a full listing of users who have viewed photos in Facebook Groups, including the date and time they viewed the photo.

A second new feature raising privacy concerns is the introduction of email to Facebook’s messaging system.

According to ZDNet, all Facebook users now have a @Facebook email address, now listed as the default contact address for all Facebook users, allowing spammers to gather a list of Facebook usernames, append “@Facebook.com” to the end, and spam Facebook users.

Emails sent to Facebook users from people who aren’t “Facebook friends” end up in an email folder called “Other”. The problem is that this “Other” email address includes both legitimate emails sent to the @Facebook.com address as well as spam emails sent from scammers and hackers.

While Facebook has urged users to send suspicious emails to phish@fb.com, IT experts have criticised the social network for not adequately telling users about the new features and their potential risks.