Facebook faces scrutiny over privacy with new system
Social media network Facebook faces scrutiny over its protection of its users privacy as a software engineer has discovered problems with its new connection system.
The problem has arisen following Facebook’s implementation of the new plug in Graph API system, announced by co-founder Mark Zukerberg last week in his blog. The new system’s flaw allows strangers to see the public events being attended by people who they have not befriended or have any connection with.
Software engineer Ka-Ping Yee discovered the fault and has already demonstrated that it cannot be rectified with Yee displaying the public events that Zukerberg had planned to attend and displaying them on his blog.
“What can your event list say about you? Quite a bit,” said Yee. “It might reveal your home address, your friends' home addresses, the names and groups of people you associate with, your hobbies, or your political or religious activities, for example."
Yee continued to say that he could find a way to turn the system off and prevent access to the events list being accesses and attempted to explain how he had then altered his settings for protection.
Many online experts have already attacked the plans, saying that the introduction of the system gives away too much control to Facebook, giving little benefit back to the user.
Meanwhile, a survey of 450 Facebook users has found that they are becoming more aware of privacy, with 77 per cent saying that they use Facebook’s privacy tools to safeguard their private information and 35 percent admitting that they had posted something on the site they later regretted.
The survey, by internet security company F-Secure, also found that 73 percent of users were not ‘friends’ with their boss.