Facebook is now rolling out support for NFTs and crypto wallets to match the same service provided on Instagram. While this feature is a good development toward the mass-adoption of blockchain, it does present privacy and safety concerns for blockchain-ignorant users who may mistakenly share high-value NFTs on social media.
Many Facebook and Instagram users are well-aware of Meta's user privacy issues and data collection problems. Facebook doesn't know what happens to user data after it has been collected, and collection and resale of user data to third parties is still a major component of its business model. Users are connected to family, friends, coworkers, and potentially connections of those connections, and many don't know how to hide their Facebook photos or posts from malicious users. Facebook has rightly earned the reputation of being an unsafe place to store personal information, and its desire to venture into Web3 at a time when Web3's privacy and safety concerns make mass-adoption dangerous could have serious consequences for some users who do not understand the basics of blockchain safety.
Facebook announced the rollout of its NFT sharing feature on Aug. 29, which will allow users to connect a crypto wallet using many popular Ethereum browser wallets, including the ubiquitous Metamask wallet. This feature will be similar to Instagram's NFT sharing feature that rolled out in May 2022, and will be found under the Profile settings drop-down menu. Facebook has expressed interest in building an NFT minting service and marketplace, so it makes sense to integrate NFTs and crypto wallets into Facebook after a successful implementation with Instagram. However, before NFT owners rush to share their collectibles with everyone they personally know, this feature comes with safety concerns that need to be understood.
Sharing NFTs With People Who Know You Can Be Dangerous
As CryptoSec has written about regarding the "Five Dollar Wrench Attack," privacy and discretion is important for crypto holders to avoid being robbed of their crypto. By allowing users to connect crypto wallets to their Facebook and Instagram accounts, not only will Meta be in a position to create a database of crypto wallets and users that could be sold to third parties or government agencies (which would be far more valuable than personal data), but users will be inadvertently exposing their wallets to the public by sharing NFTs they own. This is because NFTs are all unique, so it isn't difficult to figure out a user's wallet address by reverse-image searching the NFT's image file, finding its token ID number, looking up the collection's address, and using a block explorer like Etherscan to connect the dots. Once the user's address is known, so are its contents and entire transaction history.
This isn't to say that all wallet addresses should be kept completely anonymous at all times and NFTs should never be shared on social media, as users who purchase an NFT domain name for a crypto wallet can use it as an official blockchain address that can receive payments, sign transactions, and mint new NFTs with their name. This technique is especially useful for artists who want to use NFTs to protect their work against counterfeiting, as minting every NFT with a crypto wallet that (literally) has their name on it is a convenient way to prove the NFT was created by them. Public crypto wallets are perfectly safe to use on Facebook and Instagram as long as their owner stores their valuables in one or more anonymous wallets that have no connection to their public wallets.
Blockchain continues to make progress, and Meta is doing its part to drive some amount of it. However, with that adoption comes the responsibility of safety education for blockchain-ignorant users, as they may make the simple and understandable mistake of using a single address for all the NFTs and crypto tokens they own, consequently broadcasting their entire on-chain holdings to everyone. Hopefully nobody will be robbed for sharing a valuable NFT on Facebook or Instagram, and hopefully Meta isn't creating a crypto wallet database to sell, but both could happen eventually.