With the boom of Facebook, many showbiz personalities are increasingly vexed as online reporters and contributors excessively exploit their personal information on their Facebook sites without their consent, thus intruding on their lives and even tainting their names.

Movie director Nguyen Quang Dung recently wrote a status line on his Facebook site, which is in fact a letter to online reporters, contributors and editors, regarding the copyright ownership of information on Facebook.

Dung requested that the celebrities’ permission be sought by online reporters, who should also stop making readers think that the celebrities involved wish to ‘polish’ their names by releasing their hot personal information.

The status line drew scores of comments and 500 likes less than 12 hours later.

A good number of artists are irked as their personal information published on Facebook becomes the reporters’ sources of information, and even makes up the major parts of the articles without their consent.

The artists’ jokes, implicit or resentful statements directed at some of their colleagues usually make hot headlines. Their personal photos are also ‘stolen’ and have irrelevant captions added.

Several artists remove the statements after that, but the scandals linger.

Following last year’s scandal involving local composer Phuong Uyen -- in which an audio tape recording her fixing the results of the Vietnamese version of The Voice went viral on YouTube -- online reporters rushed to speculate on the person who released that tape based on the information obtained from a celebrity’s Facebook page without a single thought about the feelings of those involved.

Other examples include the ‘oral fights’ between local singer My Le and composer Luu Thien Huong on the latter’s comments on the former’s performance in the latest Vietnamese version of “Just the two of us”.

Actor Hoa Hiep’s resentful statements targeted at the jury of the Vietnamese version of “Dancing with the Stars” also made hot stories on online newspapers.

Sometimes Facebook owners intentionally ‘trap’ the unwary information seekers.

One typical example is that after a reporter wrote on his Facebook that he was invited to singer Lam Truong’s wedding, online reporters scrambled to investigate who the bride was, only to find out it was a PR ploy for a wedding restaurant.

“With my personal information rampantly ‘stolen’ via Facebook, I feel like I’m easy prey. So I’ve stopped using Facebook, though I really want to share my information with my relatives, friends and fans,” shared a local singer, who used to be a teacher.