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Facebook flaw reveals some personal data from 6 million users
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MacNN Staff
Join Date: Jul 2012
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Facebook's "White Hat" hacker program has exposed a vulnerability in the social network's "Download Your Information" tool. According to the company's security blog, a flaw allowed users (but not developers or advertisers) to farm phone numbers and email addresses attached to friended-users Facebook accounts.
The bug has been exploitable since the end of 2012. Six million users' data was potentially exposed. Security researchers Packet Storm Security summarized the problem, noting that it did not matter what data the user entered for themselves, but the data leaked was harvested from the users' friends. While the flaw was active, the information available (which was collected, and still resides, on Facebook servers) was sent to users requesting their own contact information on users friended on Facebook.
Facebook believes the impact of the security lapse will be minimal. Announcing the flaw, Facebook claims that "although the practical impact of this bug is likely to be minimal since any email address or phone number that was shared was shared with people who already had some of that contact information anyway, or who had some connection to one another, it's still something we're upset and embarrassed by, and we'll work doubly hard to make sure nothing like this happens again."
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Last edited by NewsPoster; Jun 23, 2013 at 07:30 AM.
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Ham Sandwich
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How does Facebook manage to not get sued out of their boots umpteen times over for violating people's privacy?
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Dedicated MacNNer
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You could just make a template with this headline (with a blank for the number), and a blank for the paragraph giving details, and use it again and again. Heck, make the company name and description a blank, and you've got an even more useful one!
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
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facebook is not safe anymore...
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
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facebook is not safe anymore...
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Senior User
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Someone wake me when the SpaceBook fad is finally dead.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: 888500128, C3, 2nd soft.
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Originally Posted by And.reg 
How does Facebook manage to not get sued out of their boots umpteen times over for violating people's privacy?
They weren't *sued*, but were taken to court over violation of German privacy laws when they introduced automatic face-tagging for images. Which they then removed.
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