The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online, reports The Times of India.
The BBC has just reported that Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users' privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every "searchable" Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook retorted by saying the information was already public.
"People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want," the website said.
"No private data is available or has been compromised," Facebook said.
The list has already been downloaded by over 1,000 people on Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing website. But internet watchdog Privacy International said Facebook had been given ample warning that something like this would happen. "Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it," Simon Davies, an official of Privacy International, said.
"It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence,” he said.
The Times of India readers are already bashing the story questioning its news worthiness.
"wats d news here?" Replied Amit Gaur but others are saying info on Facebook is already public. "
when you are putting something on internet there is no assurance of data privacy," writes Vineet.
Interesting stats about Facebook
The site reached 500 million users by June this year and it continues counting new thousands of users each day.
Insidefacebook.com reports that South Africa has approximately 2.5 million users with a monthly growth rate of 1.5 percent which rates the lowest amongst other African countries in terms of monthly growth rate. Overall, SA boasts in the African region with with its total. Morocco has 1.4 million, Tunisia 1.2 million, Nigeria 1.6 million, Kenya 580 thousands and Ghana has 375 thousand users. Africa has about 10 million users on Facebook out of a population of 375 million.
Compared with other countries in the world, South Africa occupies number 28 spot with number one spot going the Unites States of America with a total of 115 million. The UK comes second with a total of 25 million users.
The good and the bad
Facebook has become addictive with a research I read a while back stating that people wake up in the middle of the night to update their status. Some go straight to Facebook in the morning before they could do anything else.
In my observation, some post their status about almost everything from being stopped by metro cops on the road to paying respects to their loves ones who have passed away. Facebook is so popular such that there is no stopping it and while it may have great benefits such as saving on aitime coz instead of sending an sms, you can inbox your buddy on Facebook with a cost of less than 10 cents, it seems the downward slope of it may just catch up with the good side. For the past month or so, I have been receiving messages in my inbox definitely from makgosha inviting me to chat with them on their yahoochat and when I flag them, they disguise in another name. Who knows where that file with people's personal information will lend at!