Stupid privacy outrage

Cosimo · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:04

Tonyator said:
Oh noes! My publicly avaliable information! The HORROR!!!

I've seen it and passed it on.

JIM_BOB7813 · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:08

I wonder how long it took him to download all of that?

Someone else tried it and it wasn't very fast.

craptakular · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:09

Who cares, mins filled with mis-information anyway. In steam I was born in Alaska! True story bro!

jellybeard999 · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:16

2.79gb? How is the information stored???

Pawnless Endgame · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:17

Telescopi said:
Another example of bbc technology journalism, sensational and clueless.

So true. It reminds me of the time when BBC tech took a swipe at Google for wi-fi snooping. I would be more concerned at the people who didn't set up any kind of encryption/password on their wi-fi network.

Yrkoon · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:20

oh noes theres names on a list for the public to see... oh wait.....

Tonyator · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:24

jellybeard999 said:
2.79gb? How is the information stored???

The torrent is a few .bz2 but I guess txt, but that is 100 million sets of details even if they were only a few bytes each.

Edit: Yeah txt compressed as .bz2

Stringy · 28 Jul 2010 at 23:37

Daniel Emery - BBC Journalist

Russinating said:
lolwut.

Article by Daniel Emery, AKA ThraxUK. Owns an iPhone4. Likes surfing and football. Has two friends called Michelle and Caspian who live in Cambridge. Used to work at Dennis Publishing. Parents are divorced. Smokes. Has a ponytail.

ZOMGPUBLICINFO

I reckon with enough engineering we could probably make this the top google result for Daniel Emery, highlighting the nonsense journalism.

By that, I mean Daniel Emery the Journalist who also goes by the moniker of ThraxUK. I think he lives in Cambridge and writes nonsense articles for the BBC.

CaptainRAVE · 29 Jul 2010 at 01:01

Had to laugh at the "1000" people downloading the list. Oh noes, the world is going to end! Stupid media rubbish.

muon · 29 Jul 2010 at 01:19

The article title has been changed from

"Details of 100m Facebook users leaked"

to

"Details of 100m Facebook users collected and published"

Word usage within the article has also changed.

Tonyator · 29 Jul 2010 at 01:50

At least now everyone knows where to download it...

doodah · 29 Jul 2010 at 11:52

Metro or ES had "'FB data 'stolen' from users" (paraphrasing). Scandalous :rolleyes:

Dave M · 29 Jul 2010 at 11:54

I left a comment on that bbc article last night saying they should remove it as it embarrases the bbc.

They didn't post it

GravyMonster · 29 Jul 2010 at 11:56

The file has spread rapidly across the net.

Yet the image of the torrent on pirate bay shows less than 1000 people have actually downloaded it.

Kazz · 29 Jul 2010 at 11:56

Been the top 'news' story on Radio 1 all morning

.

Marky · 29 Jul 2010 at 12:00

Not exactly leaked though is it? - This is just data gathering of public data...

If people want to keep it private - change your settings...

ColdAsIce · 29 Jul 2010 at 12:02

Journalism like this makes the blood boil

Is there any comments on this on the bbc page?

Marky · 29 Jul 2010 at 12:05

ColdAsIce said:
Journalism like this makes the blood boil Is there any comments on this on the bbc page?

Probably stuff like...

"Posted by Mary...

I think this is an outrage and that Facebook should be banned everywhere."

"Posted by Bob...

Disgusting! Millions of users and they can't even protect them!"

"Posted by Ted...

Facebook should pay us compensation - we never had these problems back in my day!"

Abraham · 29 Jul 2010 at 12:08

Having grabbed the data from TPB there's nothing of note in there, most useful thing I've been able to do is find out that Michael/Mike is the most popular first name on facebook with David/Dave coming second. There is a list of all the URLs of public facebook accounts, but obviously should you actually go to them normal facebook privacy settings apply.

They're in the format: http://en-us.facebook.com/people/Abdirahman-Yusuf/1682526113 so vaguely link the name to Facebook UID, that's it

GravyMonster · 29 Jul 2010 at 12:08

Actually the comments are bang on the money and make more sense than the article.

I don't see that Facebook has done anything wrong. They make it abundantly clear that you, the subscriber, are responsible for managing your privacy settings. If you don't know how to cook, you stay out of the kitchen. In other words, if you don't understand how to manage your privacy settings, don't sign up to Facebook.

What happened is that someone wasted hours compiling already available material and then posted it on the 'scary' Pirate Bay website, as if they were disclosing secrets of national security. It's no more alarming than finding the yellow pages in a brothel. If you want to meet friends and share information with the world then stop whining when the person looking over your shoulder can see it all too.