Facebook Loophole Open To ID Theft

I’ve never been one to entirely believe in the safety of social networking apps.

Surfers beware.

From the Telegraph UK:

A loophole on social networking site Facebook could allow identity thieves to access the personal data of users, according to an investigation.

By simply downloading an application, users enable its creator to view sensitive information, even if they think they are protected by a privacy setting which claims to “hide” them.

Details such as the date of birth, address and contact numbers of the user, and that of all their friends, can be seen by the creators and could potentially be stolen.

In less than three hours computer programmers working for the BBC programme Click, developed an application for Facebook which they used to discover the details of four users and all their friends.

That’s not a positive outcome. I’d imagine that rogue apps are already at work. Especially if it was that easy for the BBC folks.

Article Link

Posted by Dave Lewis on May 1, 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.