When Facebook announced last week that it would begin tailoring advertisements to users’ preferences, all sorts of reactions surfaced.

The Internet social networking site, which has over 50 million active users, decided to allow companies to create personalized ads for account holders with their friends’ profile pictures attached. The use of personal information within profiles as well as the use of one person to advertise to another person in what many have called “word-of-mouth to the extreme” has questioned the legitimacy and privacy of the website.

Cornell University professor Ken Birman, computer science, a member of the Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology, believes that Facebook’s announcement is one step in an already slippery slope towards a society without privacy. He says that the dissemination of personal information for economic benefit has led to a sense of public nakedness without people knowing.