Facebook fixes embarrassing security flaw

Facebook has rushed to fix a security flaw that allowed users to eavesdrop on the live chats of their friends and see their pending friend requests.The exploit used the site’s privacy features – intended to protect a user – to expose the personal information.With just a few clicks users could spy on their friends’ personal chat messages and see who had requested to join their network.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10099178.stmAlso see:Facebook Glitch Brings New Privacy Worries
For many users of Facebook, the world’s largest social network, it was just the latest in a string of frustrations.On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations.Not long before, Facebook had introduced changes that essentially forced users to choose between making information about their interests available to anyone or removing it altogether.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/technology/internet/06facebook.htmlFacebook privacy takes another hit
Facebook’s ongoing promises of online privacy took another hit overnight, as a software glitch led the social networking giant to reveal users’ online chats.Facebook was forced to deactivate the chat function once it was informed that the problem existed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10643099Tech Talk Podcast: Facebook Privacy
This week’s New York Times Tech Talk podcast takes a look at Facebook’s new features for sharing information. They’ve set off concerns among privacy advocates and some elected officials. Bettina Edelstein speaks with Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group. He says it’s getting harder, and more complicated, to use Facebook’s privacy settings, and he objects to the site making personal data public by default.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/tech-talk-podcast-facebook-privacy/Facebook privacy snafu exposed user chats
Private chats between some Facebook users were briefly viewable by other users on Wednesday, an embarassing technical glitch for a company facing growing criticism over “sloppy” privacy protection.Techcrunch, a blog, first reported a bug related to a feature on the fast-growing social network site that allows a user to see how their profile will appear to other users.
http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-48262120100505Privacy bug causes Facebook to disable chat
Some Facebook users’ live chat messages and pending friend requests were briefly visible to their contacts this week, as the result of a bug in the massive social network’s “Preview My Profile” feature. Facebook confirmed the contents of a video posted to TechCrunch Europe on Wednesday that demonstrated the flaw, and has temporarily disabled its live chat software, but denied that it was a large-scale security problem.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20004213-36.htmlFacebook bug exposes private chats [IDG]
A bug allowed Facebook users to view their friends’ chat sessions on the site, prompting the social-networking company to disable its internal instant-messaging service. The bug also let people see their friends’ pending friend requests.To exploit the now-patched hole, people had to manipulate “in a specific way” the site’s feature that lets members preview how their profile looks to each of their friends, Facebook said Wednesday on its official corporate page on the site.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/195663/.html
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176341/Update_Facebook_bug_exposes_private_chatsFacebook Fixes Bug That Exposed Private Chats
Another day, another Facebook security snafu. The popular social network has patched a major security bug that allowed users to snoop on their friends’ private chats, and view their pending friend requests.The exploit caused Facebook to temporarily disable chat, which was back online as of 11 a.m. (US Pacific) on Wednesday.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/050510-facebook-fixes-bug-that-exposed.htmlSix Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections
“Connections.” It’s an innocent-sounding word. But it’s at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook’s recent changes.Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities — into “Connections.” This allows far more people than ever before to see this information, regardless of whether you want them to.Since then, our email inbox has been flooded with confused questions and reports about these changes. We’ve learned lots more about everyone’s concerns and experiences. Drawing from this, here are six things you need to know about Connections:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/things-you-need-know-about-facebookFacebook vs. LinkedIn: Which has the better privacy?
Privacy advocates’ criticism over recent moves by Facebook and Google Buzz begs the question: Is privacy possible in a social network? And, if so, which social-network service does it the best? To answer this question, this month I donned my privacy goggles and pored over the two social networks that my professional peers seem to use the most: Facebook and LinkedIn. I also asked all my Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections to tell me which they thought did privacy better. (I didn’t look at Buzz because I admittedly don’t know anyone using it.) What did I find out?
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/050510-facebook-vs-linkedin-which-has.html