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Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris"

Posted by samzenpus on from the ad-nauseum-roundhouse dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."

7 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Chuck Norris... by thewils · · Score: 4, Insightful

    doesn't need a password.

    --
    Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
    1. Re:Chuck Norris... by electricbern · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That joke is so clever you get modded insightful for calling it clever. It had to be about Chuck Norris.

      --
      alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls /dev > il && tail daemon.log'
    2. Re:Chuck Norris... by skelterjohn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The joke is so clever that you get modded insightful for talking about how someone got modded insightful for calling it clever.

      Hopefully we'll see some recursion here...

  2. Reason #2378238 not to be on Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like you need another reason?

  3. SHOCKER by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database

    Considering nearly everything you ever do on Facebook is made public to either your friends or everybody - thats not shocking at all. The entire system is basically built around informing everybody of everything you do. You can't even perform an action without some app or another prompting you "Do you want to post this on your profile? YES/NO".

    And for those of you wondering, it's obvious what the new password is;

    The only man to have ever beaten Chuck Norris? Bruce Lee.

  4. TFA accuracy? by carvell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Rumpus: When you say “click on somebody’s profile,” you mean you save our viewing history?

    Employee: That’s right. How do you think we know who your best friends are? But that’s public knowledge; we’ve explicitly stated that we record that. If you look in your type-ahead search, and you press “A,” or just one letter, a list of your best friends shows up. It’s no longer organized alphabetically, but by the person you interact with most, your “best friends,” or at least those whom we have concluded you are best friends with.

    This is rubbish, isn't it?

    I've just typed "a" into the search box and it comes up with an alphabetical list of contacts. The first one happens to be someone whos profile I don't think I've ever clicked on.

  5. Re:There's funny... by coastal984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's funny, and then there's irresponsible. Having "Chuck Norris" as a master password that grants access to any account is most definitely the latter. I would expect that from a couple of teenagers running their first web server, not one of the most popular websites on the Internet. But Facebook WAS a couple of teenagers running a web server (He was 19 when FB launched)... and it grew. Not that I don't disagree with it being irresponsible, I'm just saying...