Facebook breached my friend's privacy
blog I am angry at Facebook. I'm angry because Facebook breached my friend's privacy.
Just two months ago there was uproar over Facebook leaking users' Facebook chats to others.
A security hole had been found that allowed users to preview other users' profiles, and in doing so revealed recent Facebook chats those users had been having with others.
Facebook took its chat down while fixing the hole, which it confirmed had existed.
Two months later, a similar issue has occurred: I witnessed it for myself last night.
I logged into Facebook and saw a list of all the "top posts" my friends had made.
One of those posts was a message between two mutual friends of mine: friend X was posting on friend Y's Facebook wall with a message wishing them a happy birthday.
When I saw this, I too wanted to wish friend Y a happy birthday, and so I opened their Facebook profile in a new tab by clicking on their name in the message friend Y had sent to them.
In doing this, something very strange occurred. Once I was on the Facebook profile friend X had commented on, my name in the "account" drop down became friend X's.
The only reason I looked at the drop down box was that Facebook's chat application began alerting me to a number of chats I needed to attend to in the bottom right-hand corner which, when I clicked, showed me full transcripts of friend X's past conversations.
For the record, none of the people who friend X had been chatting to were my friends.
When I attempted to chat to the Facebook users (with verbal permission from friend X) Facebook said I did not have permission to do so.
So, if this was a problem in May, which Facebook said it fixed, why was it still a problem as of last night?
I contacted Australia's Facebook media agency to find out, but hadn't received a response at the time of writing.
I asked one of X and Y's mutual friends, let's call him friend Z, to replicate what I had done using the same post that had allowed me to see friend X's chats.
Friend Z, however, said they couldn't view X's chats, but rather another mutual friend's. What the? Fix your security problems Facebook.