100M Facebook Profiles Now Available For Download

[Muffin Man]

100M Facebook Profiles Now Available For Download - PCWorld

One hundred million Facebook user profiles containing personal information such as e-mail addresses and phone numbers, are now available as a 2.8GB torrent download. Ron Bowes of Skull Security created the torrent using a Web crawler program, harvesting data from public profiles of users who have chosen not to change their privacy settings.

The file contains information for 1 in every 5 Facebook users, all those who are currently listed in the Facebook open access directory. Nothing is illegal about the torrent, because it simply uses data that is available to the public. Even those who have secured their own Facebook page may not be completely out of the clear. In a statement on his website Bowes said:

"...this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook...Once I have the name and URL of a user, I can view, by default, their picture, friends, information about them, and some other details. If the user has set their privacy higher, at the very least I can view their name and picture. So, if any searchable user has friends that are non-searchable, those friends just opted into being searched, like it or not! "

Privacy is a huge concern for many Facebook users, and has put the social networking site in the news over and over again. While Facebook does have quite a few privacy options in place, it often makes understanding and finding those options as an individual user fairly complex. The process of making your Facebook profile unsearchable requires going through numerous different menu pages, a process that might frustrate some users into just not doing it at all.

If you do remove yourself from the directory you will also make it difficult if not impossible for new people to find you on the site. Many Facebook users may choose to leave the setting unchanged, simply so they can be found by new people.

What about you? Have you made your profile unsearchable on Facebook, or are you comfortable with having your information included in the torrent file?

 

[yzmxer608]

What's the point of doing this? Why would someone want all of that information, or was it just for the point of "it's possible"?

 

[hikaricloud]

Basically, he did it to show how insecure your personal info is.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well your a retarded git if you put all your personal information on a public site like that anyways. My gf was being stupid one day and decided to get into an argument with me saying it was ok for her to put her phone number on there. She had since then wondered why she would get random calls by random guys. I then explained to her who these guys where, how stupid it was to have her number on Facebook. Then i proceeded to tell her if she didnt take it off asap i was going to take her off my plan.

Im not a paranoid person online but security is a thing for me still. Being a frequent at /b/ i know the kinda crap that can go down within a second. Im not going to take any risks.

 

[iFargle]

Apparently major corporations are downloading this torrent..

 

[Kharn]

The whole point of doing this was to gain information pure and simple, name list for logins to systems is a good starting point and you can extrapolate from there where it could end up.

 

[kmote]

The 100M profiles available in this torrent have always been available for download. The fact that they are now conveniently packaged is completely irrelevant.

"Privacy is a huge concern for many Facebook users"? How does that make any sense? If privacy was a huge concern for these people, why did they publish all their information on the Internet?

 

[patonb]

Because kmote, most people don't realize that what they posted was easily accessed, compiled and neatly listed. Theyre not use to the idea that what they write just sits there for all to see.

You could realistically now build a script to brute force attack a huge list of emails, and other common sites and get access to possibe banking and important stuff.

I've alsdo read that corprations and spammers are getting the list so as to use in email advert and scams.

 

[Harper]

Simple.... if you value your privacy or if you don't want other people to know about some thing personal, DO NOT POST IT ON THE INTERNET!!! Simple.