Facebook leaks birthdays
As I have maintained to people never put out too much information about yourself. In fact putting some false content to pad your profile on there is not unwise. Facebook has been known to keep a lot of information. I mean after all it is very hard to actually remove yourself from it. And all it takes is a bug or leak to reveal such information as birthdays even if you have it set in your profile to being hidden from public. A date of birth associated with a name can all be needed to access someone’s personal details and potentially steal their identity. For example, just the other day, my bank left an automated message to phone back. That’s hightly suspicious in its own right. But after verifying the number on google and the subsequent forum relating to it, it was legitimate. When phoning up, all they required to access my credit card account was the correct date of birth… hmm
Here’s the article, I read in the local rag…
“Facebook has come under fire for a ’shocking’ security breach putting millions of users at risk of ID fraud. The social networking site accidentally exposed member’s dates of birth - including those of people who wanted the information kept secret.
For a committed identity thief, a correct date of birth ‘can be a golden nugger’, warned Sophos IT consultant Graham Cluely. He said: ‘I was shocked to see people’s full date of birth revealed, even though I knew they had their privacy set up correctly to supposedly hide the information. It’s essential that users of social networks have confidence that their privacy will be protected.’
California-based Facebook has now fixed the problem, which came to light during an overhaul of the sire.
But Mr Cluley advised Facebook’s 80 million active members to use a made-up birth date ‘in case this kind of blunder happens again’. Facebook was forced to apologise last March when a glitch allowed user’ private photos to be revealed to everyone - including shots of Paris Hilton she wanted only friends to see.
Meanwhile, another study showed a 278 per cent rise in the number of malicious bugs plaguing the web in the first six months of this year.”
Wait a sec, Paris Hilton knows how to use facebook???
So all-in-all, I’m favour of having a second birth date, just like the Queen