Data off of Facebook is now accessible to anyone with the Facebook torrent which was created by a hacker with a lot of free time. 171 million Facebook users had their details stolen by a web sprawling code made by Ron Bowes. This torrent file is about 2.8 GB and is available to everyone online. Facebook says this is the same info found with any kind of Facebook search making it unimportant. Numerous feel like this is just one more example of how easy it is to hack Facebook with all of the privacy issues they’ve been having lately. Article resource – 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. Daily Tech reports that Bowes, who heads a company called Skull Security, posted the Facebook torrent on Pirate Bay. It was the morning of July 28 when there were already 13,000 active downloads happening. The data that Bowes scraped and packaged contains information Facebook users have either chosen to share or neglected to protect. Facebook users who have locked their privacy settings to friends only aren’t listed within the Facebook torrent.
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. In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said personal info individuals have “agreed to make public” was collected by a researcher, and that no one’s privacy has been compromised. Tech Crunch suggests that users decide soon to change their privacy settings to “friends only.” You aren’t going to be happy when individuals put all of your info into a package and let it loose for those who want it just because you set your settings to “everyone”.
Nothing can change what’s happened with Facebook torrent
The Facebook torrent details is available to anyone who uses the search engines Google, Bing or Facebooksearch. The Facebook torrent contains a simple snapshot in one moment in time of Facebook that will last forever, reports Future. In case you are in it, you will never have that info deleted, even if you make an effort to delete you account entirely or change your privacy settings to something else.
Friends of users main focus of Facebook torrent
Bowes decided to contain within the torrent the programs used to get all the information to steal from one fifth of Facebook users. Bowes said he wants to try and get everybody on Facebook soon, reports Tech Crunch. 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).
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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