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171 Million Facebook profiles available for download. One could be yours
July 29th, 2010 - Posted by Kent
Security enthusiast Ron Bowes has harvested 171 million Facebook profiles, compiled the data, and made it available for download via bit torrent. Any Facebook news makes a big splash. I heard it on the BBC last night. My first thought was that it was a Facebook security hack, then I realized that all he did was use the service. In a very real sense, Bowes hasn't done anything you or I could do. He looked up publicly viewable Facebook profiles. Only he used a script to do it, so he was able to look up the data on a larger scale. And yes, he put it together in a file.
Bowes intention is the same as those behind sites such as openbook or Please Rob Me, to show how much personal data we expose, and how easy social networking sites make it. Bowes wants you to worry because he believes it's for your own good. And we agree.
We've blogged many times about the dangers of putting too much personal data out there. The data that Bowes assembled includes anything that users have made public—or put another way: failed to make private. Birthday, high school, hometown, names of parents, children and spouses, email addresses, phone numbers, vacation plans, and shameful Farmville addictions may all be harvested. Enough of the right data, used just the right way, can be used for identity theft.
Want to know how much of your data may have been vulnerable?
- Log in to Facebook, choose "Privacy Settings" under the account tab in the upper right corner.
- Click "view settings" under Basic Directory Information
- Select "Preview my profile." You'll see the data other people can see, if they're logged into Facebook (there's an additional preview for how you'll appear to those outside of Facebook under Choose Your Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > Public Search)
Was your data captured? Possibly. PC World estimates that 1/3 of Facebook profiles were scooped up. To find out how to lock down your Facebook privacy settings, check out our guide to Facebook privacy settings. To help monitor your personal information and protect your identity online, consider investing in identity theft protection.
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