This is a Mamamia community service announcement. Well, it’s something we think you should know about, anyway.

A new, private Facebook group has sprung up called the ‘Brocial Network’ and its members are trawling female profile pages for their ‘sexy’ photos. Bikinis, underwear, drunk at parties, you name it.

The sobering thing is, they’re taking these pictures not just from women they don’t know (who have low privacy settings) but from THEIR OWN FACEBOOK FRIENDS.

It’s like a bartering system. Men get accepted to the group but their ongoing membership hinges on their commitment to post at least one photo from their own female friends’ profiles within a week of admittance.

Here’s what The Age had to say about it:

While the idea is a digital twist on what some men have been doing manually for years, it doesn’t make the concept any more palatable. And now seems as good a time as any to remind everyone to turn their Facebook privacy settings up as high as they can go.

That will keep the strangers out; but the best way to avoid ending up on the ‘Brocial Network’ is to remove any content you’d be concerned about if it were posted on the wall of a men’s only club.

The creator of the site – known as ‘King Bro’ to his subjects – is selling wristbands that say ‘I’m a Bro’ for $5 a pop and has repeatedly run foul of Facebook’s decency filters with some of the photos.

And that’s the gist of it. The group has either been taken down or remains on private settings since the media attention this morning – but who knows where all those ‘Bros’, and those photos, have ended up?

What are your thoughts? Have you ever had horrendous photos of you tagged by friends on Facebook? Or have you uploaded photos yourself you wouldn’t like turning up elsewhere?

And who’s in the wrong if your public photos are posted elsewhere?