Moglen: Facebook Is a Man-In-The-Middle Attack

jfruh writes "In an email exchange with privacy blogger Dan Tynan, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen referred to Facebook as a 'man in the middle attack' — that is, a service that intercepts communication between two parties and uses it for its own nefarious purposes. He said, 'The point is that by sharing with our actual friends through a web intermediary who can store and mine everything, we harm people by destroying their privacy for them. It's not the sharing that's bad, it's the technological design of giving it all to someone in the middle. That is at once outstandingly stupid and overwhelmingly dangerous.' Tynan is a critic of Facebook, but he thinks Moglen is overstating the case."

Comments

Utterly stupid

[Pharmboy]

Utterly and completely stupid way to compare. You share things on Facebook that you don't care that other people know. As a matter of fact, the only reason someone posts the stupid "I can haz cheezeburger?" cat picture is so they can TELL EVERYONE THAT THEY LOVE CATS. There was no expectation of privacy in the statement, so no privacy is lost.

If you use Facebook for anything that even approaches the requirement of "privacy", then you are a complete idiot.

Nothing to see here, move along....