Many young people don't think twice about entering all sorts of information about their interests and various favorite things into social networking sites, but students at Butler University found out they should be. Brad Ward, the electronic communication guru at Butler University recently uncovered a viral marketing scheme where companies with college-geared products were creating Facebook class groups for university classes under aliases. “Think of the data collection,” Ward told Inside Higher Ed. “…the opportunities down the road to push affiliate links…The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.” Last Friday, school administrators and students fought back, scrutinizing class group administrators all across the country and  finally posting a Google docs spreadsheet with the creator’s real identity’s and corporate affiliations. One of the exposed companies, College Prowler, admitted wrong doing and pledged to rescind all administrative control over class groups.

More from Inside Higher Ed
More from Mashable from the marketer’s perspective
More from Brad Ward’s Blog, Squaredpeg