​Is it OK to shame late-paying customers on Facebook?

It's probably an understatement to say the cable industry hasn't done a good job winning the hearts and minds of consumers. Now, it may be falling even lower.

A cable company in Canada this week started posting the names of delinquent customers to Facebook, including its own Facebook page as well as community pages on the social media service. The list included customers' names as well as their overdue payments, which went as high as $1,406.80, according to the CBC.

"We always got excuses from everybody," cable company employee Jennifer Simons told the news outlet. "Promissory notes and everything, and it never arrives. So we found the most effective way is to publicly post the names."

Societies have used the public pillory to humiliate people for centuries. But social media allows people, companies and governments to use shaming in ways that can spread far wider than ever before. Public statements on social media also can be difficult for people to remove, even after they've paid their bills or their debts to society.

"This is a huge deal," said Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Security. "You are dealing with this immense power. When someone searches for you, it shows up. How do we deal with that?"

He added, "The issue isn't whether people are deadbeats and should pay. The issue is whether the punishment fits the crime." For instance, a potential employer could search for one of those cable customers singled out by the cable company, and decide not to hire the candidate because of the posting. "Now you'll lose your career and your life because you didn't pay your cable bill," Schneier said.

Residents in the Canadian town where the cable company, Senga Services, operates clearly weren't happy about the technique, with an administrator of a bulletin board page telling the CBC that she thought it was "kind of illegal" to post names of people who have fallen behind in payments. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has asked Senga Services to remove the post, and as of Friday morning Facebook said the post wasn't available.

"The post contained the names and amounts owing of customers and appeared to be a privacy breach," a spokeswoman for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner wrote in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. While Canada allows organizations to disclose information without the consent of an individual if they are in pursuit of a debt, "organizations "must be cautious about the scope and content of any disclosure," she noted.

Debtors have long been the target of social shaming, with debt collectors sometimes using tactics such as contacting a person's employer or family members to tell them about the debt. Such strategies, however, are illegal in the United States, thanks to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

That doesn't mean public shaming isn't used to other ends. The criminal justice system often uses public shaming to motivate or punish people, such as a proposal to make people with DUIs drive with bright-yellow license plates. And Facebook users in Brazil who post racist comments are finding their remarks posted to billboards near their homes in a campaign called "Virtual racism, real consequences."

Cable companies, however, are already struggling on a number of levels with consumers, who report low levels of satisfaction with their cable providers, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. High prices and poor customer service are among the issues that bug customers when it comes to their pay TV providers.

Kevin Minicoche, a customer whose name was posted by Senga Services, told the CBC he called the company to talk about his concerns. "I said: 'I'm not embarrassed, but it would be nice if you had contacted me individually,'" he said. "They thought that was one of the options available to them, but there's got to be an issue of confidentiality."