Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Facebook User Data Leaked
Facebook unsecure, who would have guessed? With over 500 million registered users and a over 700 billion minutes a month spent on Facebook by its users, Facebook is the largest social networking site available.
Everyone seems to have a Facebook page these days and there are no shortage of apps to keep them busy when they log on. This is where the problem begins. Seems around 100,000 applications may have inadvertently been giving outside parties access to peoples accounts.
Symantec security firm advised outside parties, mainly advertisers had access to users' profiles, photos, chat and other personal information for several years. Facebook acknowledges the issue, but advises the problem has been fixed and states that there is no evidence that any private information was shared with any outside party.
Seems when you installed an app you unknowingly gave the app "access tokens" which is kind of like a "spare key" to your account. Luckily Symantec most app developers probably didn't realize they had this access and Facebook advised most access tokens expire in two hours, and would be useless to outside parties after that time.
To address the problem Facebook has been working with Symantec to adress these problems and make there users more secure. Facebook announced an update that will require all Facebook websites and applications to switch to a new, more secure system between now and October 1st. In the meantime Facebook advises users to change their password.
Maybe with this security leak being fixed, Facebook users will feel a little more secure, or maybe they will see how vulnerable they have been all along.
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