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Facebook Founder Accused of Hacking Into Rivals' Email
An anonymous reader notes a long piece up at BusinessInsider.com accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of hacking into the email accounts of rivals and journalists. The CEO of the world's most successful social networking website was accused of at least two breaches of privacy. In a two-year investigation detailing the founding of Facebook, Nicholas Carlson, a senior editor at Silicon Alley Insider, uncovered what he claimed was evidence of the hackings in 2004. "New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints [in a court case ongong since 2007] against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook's servers to break into Facebook members' private email accounts and read their emails — at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company's systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful. ... Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period. Much of this information has never before been made public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company." The single-page view doesn't have its own URL; click on "View as one page" near the bottom.
This is a serious allegation. With all of the information Facebook aggregates, they potentially could unlock many people's emails and various other accounts with the family and personal information. Lots of people use simple things like their pets or parents birthdays as those reminder question answers, and Facebook could easily hold all the correct information to gain access to those accounts. If this case is proven true, I can see some new laws on how companies with this kind of information have to structure and protect it. Hopefully people will wake up and stop putting their personal information where Facebook and others can see...
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Actually, Facebook directly asks you for your email password so it can "Automatically connect you to others" through your ISP information (phonebook, etc.). They get quite clever with it, even using the ISP's logo, making it seem like it is an official service of the ISP.
This goes a bit beyond, "stupid." This is a confidence scam.
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Toro
When you look at Facebook's dismal history of privacy policies and changes, it's really not that surprising. A person with flawed ethical standards tends to do unethical things.
Kinda puts his comments that "No one has any reasonable expectation of privacy anymore" into a whole new light, doesn't it?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
A friend once made the observation that no big-time, fast-track success story in the world of IT ever makes it without doing something that gets them into serious hot water at least once. Once they do that, they offer a bunch of mea culpas, make a few donations here and there, then make bank. (The slow-track success stories don't usually fit that theory.)
This is a bit different, seeing as he's already made bank, and it's a skeleton coming out of the closet, but I still think he'll get off easy.
Remember, it's not how much justice you can get, it's how much you can afford.
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And I had a thing, "Anyone who asks for your password is lying. Don't give it to them. And if they say they really need it, don't do business with them."
Of course, it was 1989. But the neckbeard taught me right.
Web 2.0 has proven itself nothing more than a private takeover of the public infrastructure of the net. FB wants to displace everything from email to irc. If people want to commit their information to sharks who want to mnetize their personal information, they get what they deserve.
The heads of Google take their job seriously. Zuckerberg is just a douchebag who was at the right place at the right time.