New Facebook discussion blog FBHive has announced their arrival to the blogosphere with a post describing a serious vulnerability within the worlds largest social network, Facebook.
The site claims to have found a hack which exposes the entire “basic information” section within anyones Facebook profile. This section includes location, gender, relationship status, relatioships, political views, religions views, birthday and hometown. Clearly enough for sly marketers and identity thieves to play with.
TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters contacted the blog to challenge them to exposing his basic profile information:
“I asked them to tell me some things about me that they could only find on my Facebook account, which is protected from public viewing and should only be accessible to my networks and friends. Almost immediately, they replied with my birth date, the name of my hometown, the name of my fiancé and my political views. That’s scary (and more proof is available if you click the link below).”
Rightfuly, the site doesn’t explain exactly where/how the leak is hacked, but does refer to a Register article that gives details of how Facebook Search can expose many of these details.
FBHive says they have contacted Facebook via a number of channels but have received no response.
Scary.
Not even surprised about this leak on facebook. Few couple of guys I know contact them for some flaws and they ignore them…
Frankly, either contact facebook and chase them up about the leak…or remove all your basic information from your Facebook profile
So what should we do now? Eraser our profiles? Delete sensitive info? What do you recommend?
Every time I think it’s safe to back into the Facebook another shark appears to frighten me away.
I suppose it’s a case of be careful with what you write. Anywhere. Everywhere. Privacy is an illusion.
Just checking to see if my pic shows up if I use my Twitter name.
Ooo… the suspense is killing me
Too bad that Facebook dosen’t care :(
It seems to me that if Facebook wanted to make improvements, the first step should be to get the arrogance off the top shelf and find a replacement for Mister Z.
The thing is theres ways to protect your Facebook profiles. There’s a plug-in called uProtect.it which basically lets you protect any message or post. This allows you to choose exactly who can view your protected messages( you check off names from your friends list or you can choose “anyone”). I think this plug-in is the future of social networking security for sure.