MySpace Private Pictures Leak

Martin writes "We all heard about the MySpace vulnerability that allowed everyone to access pictures that have been set to private at MySpace. That vulnerability got closed down pretty fast. Unfortunately though (for MySpace) someone did use an automated script to run over 44,000 profiles that downloaded all private pictures which resulted in a 17 Gigabyte zip file with more than 560,000 pictures. The zip file is now showing up on popular torrent sites across the net."

Comments

It's a diversion..

[GreggBz]

It's p2p diversion... It was the RIAA. Brittney Spears or Brittney next door? Curiosity and perversion are certainly more powerful than greed.

Solution:

[Normal Dan]

Ask 'Who cares?'
Then ask 'why?'
Then ask 'so?'
Then keep asking 'so?' until you realize it's not that big of a deal.
Problem solved.

Re:Solution:

[CaptainPatent]

Ask 'Who cares?' Um, Anybody concerned with internet privacy along with everybody who had a myspace account with pictures posted privately they did not intend the public to see.

Then ask 'why?' Because this has huge implications for online security.

Then ask 'so?' So, something like this that is potentially damaging should have had much better security measures against it.

Then keep asking 'so?' until you realize it's not that big of a deal. I'm asking... it's still a big deal

Problem solved. I think not.

Re:Solution:

[Bob9113]

something like this that is potentially damaging should have had much better security measures against it.

Ummm, if you store potentially damaging photos on a third-party web site that is not intended to be a secure repository, why would you expect high security?

Because this has huge implications for online security.

Really? I think it just shows that MySpace is not (nor is it intended to be) a high security repository.

Re:Solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is also directed to teens and pre-teens.
Do you really think they have the common sense to know that?

Re:Solution:

[sm62704]

Um, Anybody concerned with internet privacy along with everybody who had a myspace account with pictures posted privately they did not intend the public to see.

Rule #1 of the internet: If you don't want anyone to see something, don't fucking put it it on the internet! There is no such thing as "posted privately on the internet". If it's REALLY something you don't want seen don't even put it in a computer CONNECTED to the internet. In fact, don't even take the damned pictures!!!

Gees, if brains were dynamite some people wouldn't have enough to blow their noses. I wonder how many pics in that 17 gig file are goatse?

Re:Solution:

[Aphex Junkie]

They should, assuming that all the "Internet Safety" classes those hysterical moms created are actually doing their job. I often hear: "Do not give out personal information online.". How much more personal can you get than a photo (a nude photo especially)?

Re:Solution:

[Pendersempai]

Rule #1 of the internet: If you don't want anyone to see something, don't fucking put it it on the internet!

Really.

So you don't have an online interface for your credit card? You don't do online banking? You don't manage your IRA or 401K online? You don't write any emails that you wouldn't want published? You don't use SSH to access sensitive information? You don't send any instant messages that you wouldn't want published? You don't visit any websites that you wouldn't want the world to know about?

Oh, but that stuff's all different, you say. Sure, the information is all on a server, but the server will only send it to people who have the right password! Except, the MySpace photos weren't leaked by a mole; they were leaked because the server mistakenly sent it to anyone who asked for it.

This is a big deal, and your snide reply (essentially "don't use the internet") doesn't come close to offering a workable solution.

Re:Solution:

[Bob9113]

With underage kids able to post whatever photos they want without moderation, it needs to be [high security], though.

No, it does not. It is the job of the parents to provide moderation. It is not my job, my company's job (though I don't work for MySpace), nor my government's job to parent someone else's children. If we can have cars traveling down streets at high speed without child restraint systems to keep children from walking into traffic, we can damned well expect parents to keep their kids safe online.

Re:Solution:

[bcguitar33]

We need to take this further. What about children talking on the telephone? They could be talking to pedophiles, potentially making plans to meet up. The government has got to monitor all telephone calls made by people under 18. Then again, these children could be out in public meeting pedophiles, or worse, being abused. It's the government's responsibility to monitor these minors at all times, to make sure they're not being abused. It would certainly take a lot of man-power to keep know where all these children are at all times. We'd have to resort to some sort of model of distributed responsibility. How about, we have 1-2 adults focusing on every child, and become responsible for what the kid is up to? For the sake of convenience we could just have the people who birthed each child be the ones responsible for them, and if they're not available, we could assign other ones. Any takers? This could solve all our problems!

Re:Solution:

[torkus]

"The government's job is to protect the common good, which includes keeping children safe from predators"

Who defines common good? Who defines what level of 'protection' is appropriate or necessary? Sorry, but i disagree with you. It is the job of the *PARENTS* to keep children safe. No one else unless they agree to take the responsibility. i.e. you hire a babysitter, school, or other activities intended specifically for children. Even then, the ultimate responsibility still falls back on the parents. Check out the daycare. Babysitter isn't a pothead?

It's not myspace's fault if their site is mis-used by children. They make a reasonable effort to protect children on their site. There is NO guarantee of ANYTHING (read the 20 page TOS/disclaimer). Just like gun makers aren't responsible for gang shootings, myspace isn't responsible if someone uploads KP.

Maybe it's just me...

[Derek Loev]

I personally have better things to do than waste 17gb of space -- and a large amount of time -- looking through other people's pictures.

Trap!

[fictionpuss]

No way would I touch that torrent.. all it takes is one underage myspace kid to have posted one nipple.. cue child pornography charges/public outcry/p2p filtering mandated/end game. It's the wet-dream of the **AA crowd.

Re:Trap!

[L4m3rthanyou]

Actually, I think this is more of a threat to myspace itself. After all, they were hosting all of these pictures... when people discover how much kidporn is stored on myspace (I'm sure there's a significant amount of it), THEN there will be a public outcry, and no one is going to care about the people who downloaded the leaked photos. The backlash will be against myspace itself, by the "think of the children!" nutjobs.

Figures... and they just put further measures in place to attempt to "protect" children from themselves. Oh well, I have a hard time feeling sorry for myspace since (a) it's myspace and (b) it's owned by News Corp.

Re:Trap!

[orclevegam]

Actually, I think this is more of a threat to myspace itself. After all, they were hosting all of these pictures... when people discover how much kidporn is stored on myspace (I'm sure there's a significant amount of it), THEN there will be a public outcry, and no one is going to care about the people who downloaded the leaked photos. The backlash will be against myspace itself, by the "think of the children!" nutjobs.

Figures... and they just put further measures in place to attempt to "protect" children from themselves. Oh well, I have a hard time feeling sorry for myspace since (a) it's myspace and (b) it's owned by News Corp. This does bring up the interesting question though, of how one deals with kidporn that's being posted by the kids in the pictures. Obviously the nutjubs are going to go after whatever company is doing the hosting, but unless I'm missing something, if they're not aware of the content then all they have to do is make a good faith effort to delete anything they find, much like the case with copyright violations. Any legal experts on the laws concerned here no for sure what sort of issues this brings up?

Re:Trap!

[meringuoid]

This does bring up the interesting question though, of how one deals with kidporn that's being posted by the kids in the pictures.

You charge the perpetrator with child abuse and with making and distributing indecent images of a minor. And you try them as an adult just for the glorious irony.

Re:Trap!

[afidel]

Yeah anyone who reads fark on a regular basis knows that kids who make home movies often get charged as adults for laws meant to protect the childish innocence. It really is very ironic and very SNAFU.

Re:Trap!

[ShieldW0lf]

Ironic. It's little known that parents are explicitly allowed to have nude photos of their kids as long as they are obviously not being abused and the pictures are not distributed. It keeps all the parents with the pictures of babies in the bathtub from going to jail. Kinda stupid that your parent can have a picture of you naked but this girl gets charged with child porn charges for having pictures of HERSELF.

Just to play devils advocate: If we consider publishing nude photos of yourself to be pornography, why would we consider it not pornography when a young person does it?

You might make the argument that child pornography should be treated differently when the perpetrator is also the child in question, but trying to say it's not pornography is nonsense.

Re:Trap!

[dgatwood]

Of course, this whole is pretty silly since any possession conviction must, by definition, be willful possession with presumption of illegality. A UPS driver can't be charged with possession of kiddie porn for delivering a package that happens to contain it unless the driver has reason to suspect that something in the package is illegal. Is there reason to have a presumption of the existence of kiddie porn in this torrent? I would say that there is not, since MySpace has people who go through the private photos and look for that stuff and report it, IIRC. No guarantees, of course. Therefore, I would find it highly unlikely that somebody downloading this torrent would get prosecuted for kiddie porn possession. Invasion of privacy, perhaps, trafficking in stolen proerty, perhaps, copyright violation (all photos are copyrighted by their creator), perhaps, but not kiddie porn possession....

That said, IANAL, so do not take this as legal advice.

Re:Trap!

[cyphercell]

so all pictures of nude people are pornographic? I think there's a word for that world view, oh yeah, prude.

Re:Trap!

[Mr2001]

Just to play devils advocate: If we consider publishing nude photos of yourself to be pornography, why would we consider it not pornography when a young person does it? The issue isn't whether or not it's pornography, but whether it merits all the outrage that usually accompanies "child pornography".

"Child pornography" is generally considered bad because in order to make it, you have to have a minor in front of your camera who's posing erotically or having sex. Since the law presumes that minors are incapable of knowing whether or not they want to pose erotically or have sex, this means that producing these photos or videos involves an act that's equivalent to rape: putting a minor in that situation without her (legally recognized) consent.

In the case of a minor posting her own pictures, however, there's no third party who could be accused of putting the minor in that situation against her will. It isn't even conceivably similar to rape, because the "victim" is making all the decisions on her own - if that's analogous to rape, then so is underage masturbation, and every teenager in the world is a sex offender.

Private?

[Eberlin]

I understand the general idea of privacy...but to expect any sort of privacy by putting your pictures online onto a server out of your control isn't exactly the smartest thing to do. I say if you've voluntarily uploaded it on one of the social networks, it can't be THAT private.

I know, I know, the myspace demographic doesn't know any better.

Re:Private?

[Ajehals]

The myspace 'generation' *are* supposed to be the ones using and seeing 'value' in all the weird and wonderful crap out there geared toward them, they are the ones who are supposed to be massively connected with their mobile phones, email and social networking account. They are supposed to be benefiting from a massively connected world, identifying and receiving wonderful services and consuming all those wonderful products geared toward them. They are the generation that (apparently) cannot tell real life from role playing, are emotionally and mentally damaged from playing video games and browsing the web. In short they are the generation that everyone is referring to when they scream "think of the children".

We, (I refer to the /. crowd, although I may be being over simplistic) are the demographic that saw the internet evolve, have technical knowledge of how parts work and can separate out our real lives and what we want to keep private, from our on-line identities and what we wish to be public. Unfortunately we are also the generation who don't understand nor see the appeal or utility in of many of the new and wonderful social experiments going on on the web, we see the real dangers involved in using them in an inappropriate or irresponsible manner.

We know the danger is from information about us being harvested, being used by future employers, insurance companies, the government, other corporates etc.. They (the 'myspace' generation) are worried about paedophiles and stalkers, whilst simultaneously being drawn to having deep personal relationships and generally being interesting (by whose standards I don't know) and pushing their personal information to anyone who will give them a linden dollar, a discount voucher or a chance to win an iPod.

Or am I just getting old?

Can someone run porn detection on this and reseed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn-Detection Software

Looking through all the junk is going to take too long.

One of the first rules on the internet?

[Animaether]

"Um, Anybody concerned with internet privacy along with everybody who had a myspace account with pictures posted privately they did not intend the public to see."

I thought one of the first rules on the internet was that anything you put out there can fall into the wrong hands / become public?

I certainly wouldn't trust MySpace with personal affairs - if not because of technical glitches / hackers, then because of a disgruntled employee who decides offering the entire database up is so much more rewarding than going postal.

Though the whole idea of using MySpace - a site where everybody openly shares information about themselves.. that's the whole point, after all - for *anything* private at all sounds ridiculous to me in its very premise.

Just my 2cts.. I do feel sorry for those who are/will be affected, especially in the days to come as the juicier bits are filtered out and plastered all over the web and into youtube videos for truly everybody to see, as even though my opinion is that there's no reasonable expectation for true privacy on those sites, that doesn't mean they asked for some stupid hacker and a scriptkiddie to go running amok with it.

Gee Thanks

[TI-8477]

By covering this story, Slashdot has exponentially accelerated the spread of these images, and the number of seeders.

Re:4chan is gonna have a field day with this...

[spun]

I thought everyone on 4chan was an angsty teenager with a real reason to cry, being that no human woman will ever touch them.

Re:You know what to do...

[Cecil]

I would recommend the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children online tip form.

Yes, because teens on myspace who take nude pictures of themselves are clearly being exploited by... themselves.

The insane kneejerk hysteria surrounding the ever-growing umbrella of things that unfortunately technically qualify as "child pornography" is truly something to behold.

Re:Once again - two faces.

[Cid Highwind]

The two faced attitude of Slashdot rears it's ugly head again.

It's almost like there's more than one of us here, isn't it...

Re:I've looked. Yaaaaawn.

[inviolet]

So far out of 4500 images, I found exactly zero images that I think anyone would give a crap about. I'm not even sure why the vast majority of them are even bothered marking private; nobody would care about them at all.

It is done for the same reason women, including me, enjoy fretting about rape: they're flattering themselves.

One thing the internet's sheer size teaches you: you are just another nobody, who'd have to dig deep to find some trait that is simultaneously unique and valuable. On the one hand this is a Good Thing, because it blasts from Earth forever the notion that one might be a freak in some way. On the other hand, now we have to struggle to differentiate ourselves, even in our own minds.