In theory, all Facebook users have had their profile image and name exposed through a bug which enables malicious hackers to scrape the data. While such information is also available for sale through companies like Flowtown, this particular security glitch makes it much more easier to collect information as long as a company has access to a large database of email addresses.
When asked for comment on the issue, Facebook provided the following statement:
We have technical systems in place to prevent people’s names and photos from showing to unrelated users upon login, but a recently introduced bug temporarily prevented these from working as intended. We are already working on a fix and expect to remedy the situation shortly. Please note that our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) dictates who and how public information can be accessed, and we prohibit people from scraping our site.
Facebook has also had a number of previous issues where information was supposedly “leaked”. In this case, having access to 500 million user photos and names would require you to have a database of 500 million people. Fortunately there are very few companies that have such a large database of contact information. Also much of this information is already available via Facebook’s Graph API as long as you have a user’s ID.
Generating those IDs through basic brute force techniques would not be too complicated, although it would most definitely be time consuming. However tying that data to an email address becomes a much more powerful combination apparently. Are you concerned by these types of security bugs?
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min facebook har bliv sakta,,och jag ser helea tiden ett medelande på min sidan ,när jag vill dela bilder eller nåt annat att visar att varning fel sidan med gula marken som finns tecken på min sidan ,,jag fattar inte vad är detta…
Comment by rasha — August 11, 2010 @ 2:27 pm
having people take over myname and sending stupid e-mails or comments to myfriends. This has to be stopped.
Comment by maryellyn Romzek — August 12, 2010 @ 5:34 am
I Wish This Security Help Me To Sucure My Password And Other.
Comment by Luqman Al-Hakim — August 13, 2010 @ 3:14 am
I dropped face book…
Lets be honest about the fact that they allow any Federal, or State employee that asks, or any request by a media company, access to your info! What more do you expect from a FOX News contractor??? Its called domestic spying, and they have the software to figure out what your political beliefs are, and pass that on to the intelligence community, so they can fit you in the box they feel you belong in!
But the number one reason I dropped it, was when they started to add your name, and contact info, to Right Wing petitions, without notifying you that they were doing so?!
Screw Face Book, and GOOGLE!… the WalMart of the Tech world!
Comment by CousinVinny — August 21, 2010 @ 11:54 pm