A lot of press over the past 24 hours regarding a file that has been made available for download via torrent sites. The file contains the publicly viewable profile information of approximately 100 million Facebook users. Firstly let me say that I am not a huge Facebook (the company) fan, nor for that matter am I what you would call an avid user, but I do have a Facebook account and it does suit a particular purpose for me... mostly serving up feeds of this blog. I do think however that a great deal of hype is surrounding this story unnecessarily and it's probably got more to do with the number of users and the sensationalism that a number like that can generate when being tossed around.
A "security consultant," Ron Bowes, used a piece of code to scrape Facebook profiles, collecting publicly available data and published the file on the internet. His motive was apparently to highlight privacy issues according to the BBC. While Facebook has been the target of much criticism over their privacy policies in the past, this type of attention is probably doing more for Ron Bowes, and his motives should be called to question. The information that you've made public via Facebook is what helps others using the service to connect with you, and if you are truly concerned perhaps you might like to reconsider joining such networks in the first place, or at least tweak your profiles to reflect your concerns. Ignorance is an excuse and not a defense, read the terms of service, limit what you share to what you are comfortable with, and pay attention to the notifications from the service providers. Just my thoughts....
