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A hacker created the Facebook torrent that is accessible to any person who wants files from Facebook data. Ron Bowes wrote a web crawling code that scraped the Facebook directory for information about 171 million Facebook users. The file, about 2.8 GB, has been posted online as a torrent. Facebook said the Facebook torrent is no big deal -- it just contains information on users anyone can get from a Facebook search. But others say the Facebook torrent is another indictment of Facebook privacy policy, and users should be concerned.
Stealing info from 171 million Facebook users
171 million Facebook users have now posted online in the torrent their user IDs, names, and profile URLs. Skull Security head, Bowes, was reported by the Daily Tech to have posted this torrent on Pirate Bay. As of the morning of July 28, the Facebook torrent had about 13,000 active downloads on Pirate Bay. Info Facebook users didn't hide with privacy setting is shown here. The torrent doesn't contain, luckily, those who have privacy settings set to friends only.
Facebook and privacy
The Facebook torrent comes at a bad time when Facebook is already suffering the losses from their change on privacy settings to allow commercial use. The details that Facebook users "agreed to make public" are the things gathered up by researches to make this privacy change, reports BBC News quoting Facebook. However, Tech Crunch said with the advent of the Facebook torrent hack, now would be a good time for the default Facebook privacy settings to change to "Friends Only." Letting "Everyone" see your Facebook information consists of a hacker who can grab your personal data, package it and sell it to the highest bidder.
Can't ever delete Facebook torrent
The Facebook torrent info is available to anybody who uses the search engines Google, Bing or Facebooksearch. Future reminds us the Facebook torrent will last forever since it is just a quick shot of one time on Facebook. Going forward when users delete their accounts or restrict their Facebook privacy settings, that personal information remains accessible to the world on the Facebook torrent.
Friends of users hurt by Facebook torrent
In addition to the personal data for one fifth of all Facebook users, the Facebook torrent contains the programs Bowes used to mine the data. Tech Crunch said in a post describing his hack, Bowes wrote that so far, he's only indexed searchable users, but he wants to go after their friends next. Until Facebook switches to friends only by default, which is unlikely, users opt out-
Go to Account and Privacy Settings and Applications, Games, and Websites (link near the bottom, in a box) and Public Search and (Uncheck box).
Further reading~More on this topic~Additional reading~Find more information on this subject
Daily Tech
dailytech.com/Info on 100M Facebook Users Harvested and Posted in Torrent Legally/article19198.htm
Tech Crunch
techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/hacker-proves-facebooks-public-data-is-public/
Future of the Internet
futureoftheinternet.org/facebooks-ocean-of-names-becomes-a-torrent |
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