still-confusing

Fresh Facebook fears as details of 100m users leaked to public

Facebook, the world’s predominant social network, has suffered a new blow concerning its security and privacy policies, as a downloadable file - detailing over 100 million Facebook users’ profiles, names and unique Ids - has appeared online. Made available for download on the famed but legally embroiled Pirate Bay filesharing site, privacy advocates said the leak proves that Facebook’s settings were still confusing and compromised user information. In fact, that was the stated intention of Ron Bowles, the online security consultant who lassoed the information using a simple piece of code and released the information: to highlight the privacy issues of the 500 million-strong social network. “It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn’t have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there’s an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence,” said Simon Davies of Privacy International. “Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,” he said. “There are going to be a lot of angry and concerned people right now who [will] be wondering who has their data and what they should do.” Facebook officials defended their privacy settings, and said the information contained in the leaked file contains only that which was already available online. “People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,” a spokesman said. “In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google , Bing, other search engines , as well as on Facebook. “No private data is available or has been compromised.” The incident recalls similar controversy earlier this year, when Facebook received a slew of negative press concerning privacy settings, prompting a simplification within the website’s structure.

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Fresh Facebook fears as details of 100m users leaked to public