A “security” consultant wrote a script that collected profile listings in Facebooks’ public profile directory according to the article “The Facebook Data Torrent Debacle: Q&A“ appearing on Yahoo News yesterday. Of course, this is all public information that is available to anybody who looks. The difference in my opinion is a “security” consultant compiling such a list and then making it available online. 171 million Facebook profiles! As of the date of the article, about 10,000 people have downloaded the entire file.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to think what a person with nefarious intentions might do with your e-mail address, phone number, and your home town. A little more research on your “public” profile would make it easy for a criminal to know when you’re out of town so they can have uninterrupted access to your home. Or perhaps someone notices where your kids go to school and that they will be home alone on Tuesdays because that’s what is publicly available.
Funny thing is, it’s not just this “security” consultant providing this type of consolidated information to whoever wants it, including criminals. In my hometown, the local newspaper has been collecting the names, titles, work information, and salaries of public employees and publishing them online. Sure, the story is about government spending but why invade people’s personal lives to do it? Certainly the point could be made without attaching individual names. Yellow journalism and a violation of individual privacy is all I can think of.
The bottom line is there is too much personal information available to anybody looking. It is undoubtedly a self-inflicted problem that is exacerbated by so-called “security” consultants and news outlets that make the criminal’s job easier by consolidating and making this information available for download. They should know better.
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