The most distressing content most of us have ever seen on Facebook falls within the realm of the overshare: your boss’s Vegas stag party pics, or your new boyfriend’s status change from single to “it’s complicated.” But there’s a trend toward much more distressing messages being delivered via the social network: foreclosure notices.

The phenomenon started in 2008, when an Australian court allowed — no, ordered — a lender who was attempting to foreclose on a home to serve notice on the defaulting borrowers via Facebook, as well as at their Canberra home and a backup physical address. Since then, attorneys in New Zealand, Canada, and, this spring, East Sussex, England, have all authorized mortgage lenders and their attorneys to serve borrowers with foreclosure notices via Facebook, when the borrowers could not otherwise be located.

Read more here Social Networking Gone Wild: Foreclosure via Facebook

(Via Time Moneyland.)