WebProNews

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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Andy Beal,

Your username has been changed by a Bebo administrator for security purposes. Sorry for the inconvenience.

New Username: AndyBeal_*******

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Please do not reply directly to this email.

If you have a question about the Bebo service:

1) Read our Help page by clicking - http://www.bebo.com/Help. This will probably answer your question about Bebo.

2) If you still have a question, then please contact us with your question by clicking - http://www.bebo.com/ContactUs

Bebo, Inc., 795 Folsom St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.

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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.