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

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!

[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!

[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.

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.

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?

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:

[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!