Another Facebook fiasco – here we go again

 

From vnunet.com 16/07/08:

Facebook has accidentally revealed personal information about its members.

The social networking site divulged the dates of birth of many of its 80 million active users, even those who had requested that the information remained confidential.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained that the information was exposed during a public beta test of Facebook's new design.

"I was shocked to see people's full date of birth revealed, even though I knew they had their privacy set up correctly to supposedly hide the information." he said.

I’m not even the slightest bit shocked at this news; in fact, I’m surprised it wasn’t something more serious. With the social networking/web 2.0 wave that has swept the world in the last year and a half, people have thrown all sorts of personal information up on social networking sites without much regard to the consequences.

My gripe here is the principle and not the specific circumstances: revealing someone’s date of birth is hardly the end of the world but let’s not forget, it wasn’t meant to happen. What other personal information that people have entrusted with social networking sites might leak out to all and sundry? This is just the tip of the iceberg, people. It really is.

And BTW, what’s the deal with the new design: it doesn’t look that much different to me. Worst of all, from what I read, it’s going to mean even more Facebook oriented apps and widgets coming down the pike. You mean there weren’t enough already?! Oh great!