Bebo was once referred to as "the best social network" based on a variety of factors, one of which being its protection of members’ privacy. It is that protection, however, that has a lot of its users peeved. They are apparently changing users’ profile names at will whether they like it or not.

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim shares an email he got from the social network when they decided to change his:

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It is unclear exactly what threat Bebo is trying to protect its members from, but perhaps the suggestion of a name change upon login would have been a more appropriate action to take rather than Bebo taking it upon itself to take that liberty. Andy’s not the only one complaining. Twitterers have shared similar experiences:

I bet the list of complaints would be a thousand times larger if Twitter itself had done this. At least Bebo had the common courtesy to let its users know that it was altering their information.