Data off of Facebook is now accessible to anybody with the Facebook torrent which was created by a hacker with a lot of free time. Ron Bowes wrote a web crawling code that scraped the Facebook directory for details about 171 million Facebook users. Bowes put the 2.8 GB file online as a torrent. Facebook says this is the same information found with any kind of Facebook search making it unimportant. Many feel like this is just an additional example of how easy it is to hack Facebook with all of the privacy issues they’ve been having recently. Source for this article – Facebook torrent hack makes free download of personal user data by Personal Money Store.
171 million Facebook users exposed
The Facebook torrent contains names, profile URLs and unique user IDs for 171 million Facebook members. 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. The data that Bowes scraped and packaged contains details Facebook users have either chosen to share or neglected to protect. Any person who worked out their privacy settings to say only friends could see their information aren’t in this torrent that Bowes created.
Facebook and privacy
Facebook privacy setting were changed most recently for commercial use which is why people are more concerned with this Facebook torrent. In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said personal information individuals have “agreed to make public” was collected by a researcher, and that no one’s privacy has been compromised. 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 info involves a hacker who can grab your personal data, package it and sell it to the highest bidder.
Nothing can change what’s happened with Facebook torrent
Facebook said the personal info mined and distributed within the Facebook torrent could be found by any person on Google, Bing or Facebooksearch. But Future of the Internet makes the point the Facebook torrent is a snapshot of Facebook’s directory that lasts forever. If you’re in it, you’ll never have that information deleted, even if you try to delete you account completely or change your privacy settings to something else.
Facebook torrent and what it targets
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 explains that Bowes wants more than just searchable users and intends to get the rest. 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).
Additional reading
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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