A woman has filed suit, the first of its kind, to get a debt collector to stop harassing her, her friends, and her family through Facebook and other social networking sites.

Thanks to the social networking tools, debt collectors don’t even need to pay for skip tracing services to track down you and everyone you know. In this case, the collector started sending all her friends and family Facebook messages about her debt. Not exactly the thing you want to have show up on everyone’s walls! “OMG Debbie pay this stupid guy so he stops spamming me.” Then it’s got +7 likes, and 4 comments, one of them from your Dad and one from your ex-boyfriend…

“Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them. Now it’s not only family members, it’s all of your associates. It’s a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use,” consumer attorney Billy Howard told WTSP.

That’s why it’s important to not just accept the default privacy settings Facebook gives you. Take time to familiarize yourself with the options, listed under account settings, to limit who has access to various parts of your profile. Sometimes being quickly connectable to everyone in your life has its downsides.

Debt collectors utilize Facebook to embarrass those who owe [WTSP] (Thanks to Jacob!)

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