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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.
Lawyers throughout the US just had orgasms....
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If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
And what if all those other sites have a admin that can't be trusted? It's really not about facebook this issue. It's about broken trust and you can't really protect yourself against it. At least not if you want to use their services.
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.
If at all possible, they'll use the word "boffin" in there somewhere, too.
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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He isn't exactly known to believe in privacy in the first place, after all:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy
The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".
Facebook also had a thing "give us your gmail or hotmail password and we'll log in and retrieve your contact email addresses and offer you to add them as friends if they have a Facebook account already" - presumably they stored those passwords as well.
using the same password for their email account as they do with their social networking sites then people should expect to be compromised.
I suggest you use 4 types of passwords, one for accounts that wouldnt effect u much, one for email, one for social sites and IM, and one for bank accounts; with none of the passwords having anything to do with each other, e.g redball, orangeball,greenball... or whiteball, soccer, redflag ... as this limits the guess work.
Supposedly they did,
"Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend:
Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them."
this "hack" was probably just stupid curiosity which will probably get him arrested, and once that happens he will loose a lot of control of the company.
I have no idea whether this stuff it true or provable, but if the article is accurate this wasn't curiosity. This was some seriously immoral/dishonest stuff.
I stole this Sig
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.
This doesn't surprise me, only confirms what I've thought about Zuckerberg.
1) I believe he stole Facebook from the ConnectU founders. I believe the assertions that he was hired as a developer and dragged his feet while forming his own company which eventually became Facebook.
2) I believe he has no scruples when it comes to Facebook users' data. He has publicly stated that he knows what's best for "his" users and this arrogance shines through every time the UI is abruptly changed.
3) I believe he will do whatever he pleases with users' information. I don't think that privacy laws provide guidance to him but instead are constraints that he will bypass given any opportunity.
I'm pleased to see that he is being publicly exposed - I doubt anything will come of it - but am glad for him to be seen as he truly is, an arrogant and unscrupulous bad person. This latest revelation may finally send him where he belongs . . .
banking.
Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them.
This is why I always have an "OH &*#$#^!" moment whenever I accidentally enter the wrong password into the wrong form. It's a mad rush to change the password to whatever service/server the password really belongs to. Thankfully, it's usually different usernames...
Good thing you are not a lawyer, it's from the date it was committed.
The point of such statutes is because after a long time has passed, the defense is less able to form a coherent defense since a lot of the evidence is gone.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The heads of Google take their job seriously. Zuckerberg is just a douchebag who was at the right place at the right time.