Sleepy UK town faces party stampede after Facebook snafu

by Steven Mostyn - Sep 21 2010, 07:32

The very real fear of security violation and possible ID theft should provide enough of a deterrent when it comes to posting potentially sensitive personal details to social networking sites.

However, one naive and overly trusting teenager in the United Kingdom might have inadvertently created the birthday party from hell after being less than picky with who she shares such information with.

Specifically, the sleepy town of Harpenden in Hertfordshire is facing a stampede of revellers after 14-year-old Rebecca Javeleau used Facebook to publicly advertise her upcoming birthday bash on October 7 – to which she promptly received more than 21,000 RSVPs from complete strangers.

According to officials from Hertfordshire Police, the event has subsequently been cancelled but patrols will still be deployed on the day in question in case large sways of hopeful partygoers turn up anyway.

“We are aware of this and have been assured that the event is no longer taking place,” commented Sergeant Lewis Ducket. “I would urge people who may be planning to come to Harpenden for the party to make other plans.” 

Although the original party invitation has been pulled from Facebook, new pre-party and post-party events carrying the girl’s Harpenden address have since appeared on the site, gathering up several thousand fresh RSVPs in the process.

The original party invitation was supposedly only meant for 15 of young Rebecca’s closest friends. Due to her lack of awareness regarding Facebook privacy, Harpenden now faces the possibility of being temporarily overrun as its population doubles in the course of just one night.

“When someone creates an event on Facebook it clearly says ‘anyone can view and rsvp (public event),’” commented a Facebook spokesman. “If you leave this unchecked then it is a public event so anyone can view the content and respond.”

“If users do see content on Facebook that they feel is inappropriate or unsuitable, we have clear reporting links on every page, including event pages, for users to flag it,” he added. “We also provide people with the tools to manage their own content so with events for example, there are clear tools to allow you to control who can see and respond to the event.”

In February of this year, a similar Facebook error by a teenage girl in Merseyside led to more than 50 people gatecrashing her party and inflicting around 15,000 GBP’s worth of damage to her parents’ home.

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