Posted on 06/22/2013 7:02:24 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Friday Facebook announced the fix of a bug it said inadvertently exposed the private information of over six million users when Facebook's previously unknown shadow profiles accidentally merged with user accounts in data history record requests.
According to Reuters, the data leak spanned a year beginning in 2012. facebook shadow profiles
The personal information leaked by the bug is information that had not been given to Facebook by the users - it is data Facebook has been compiling on its users behind closed doors, without their consent.
A growing number of Facebook users are furious and demand to know who saw private information they had expressly not given to Facebook.Facebook was accidentally combining user's shadow profiles with their Facebook profiles and spitting the merged information out in one big clump to people they 'had some connection to' who downloaded an archive of their account with Facebook's Download Your Information (DYI) tool.
According to the admissions in its blog, posted late Friday afternoon, Facebook appears to be obtaining users' offsite email address and phone numbers and attempting to match them to other accounts. It appears that the invisible collected information is then being stored in each user's 'shadow profile' that is somehow attached to accounts.
I was raised that dignified people never bring undue attention themselves and they don't go around telling everyone the family business.
Of course in the small town I grew up in most everyone did know everyone's business.
If you did not want something known, you never spoke of it on the telephone because everyone in town had their phones tapped.
Our phone was tapped by Big Sis who lived down the street and was one of the five other families that we had to share a party line with.
When you heard the click you knew one of the other five families was listening in.
The story goes that one day she got caught up in the conservation that she broke into the conversation between two ladies who were talking about something which she was particularly interested in.
I have never joined a social network because my family cemetery is full of those who would tell me that being on Facebook would be a very undignified thing to do.
Same with FR, actually more likely here.
We've had to be aware of that since day one.
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