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When you're a news journalist, it's hard to know when reporting on a story just makes it worse. KitGuru has already heard from 3 different marketing companies who learned that a database of over 100 million people's details has been made publicly available, by reading the story on the BBC. With a wonderful aroma of pure irony, KitGuru investigates how problems get compounded by reporting on them.
People who use computers should not really expect privacy. We've all been victims. Whether it was a huge hack from the other side of the planet or simply forgetting to log our from Facebook at lunchtime and returning to your desk to find that you've joined every same-sex-dating group on the web. Using a computer and believing you are not at risk is like getting in a car and being certain that you won't have an accident.
Facebook is fantastic. It has revolutionised the way we communicate, share parts of our lives and maintain/re-establish contact with friends throughout our lives. That connection is made possible because we share personal data.
That data is then, effectively, in the public domain.
One smart programmer later and the entire list of available information has been downloaded into a simple 2.78GB database that can be downloaded from the torrent streams in less than 1 day.
How do we know this? Because the BBC reported on it. It gave us the fact that the data was out there, the size of the file and that the torrents were currently sharing the information.
KitGuru says: Is this a wise thing to report on ? Is it not just raising the interest of people who perhaps wouldn't know where to get this personal information in the first place? Discuss in our forums.
The BBC are well known for cock ups like this 🙂 that said, thanks for letting me know as I missed it on the BBC website and will now go and get the torrent myself 🙂
My wife is freaking out about this, god knows who will get their hands on this information. Facebook should be sued for this privacy breach
Super misleading article. For one thing, all the data in that torrent is already available in the public domain; it’s essentially a big list of names or whatever people have on their public profiles, nothing more. Nothing from people’s public profiles. It’s the same as searching their name on Facebook or Google, since Google indexes Facebook.
For another, saying that a problem arises because it’s reported by a news agency is foolish. If the BBC hadn’t reported it, it would have spread throughout the internet somehow. Nothing stays secret anymore because of that, and ignorance of the problem doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.
@Nick: Putting a story on major media definitely increases the propogation of the data being discussed (as anyone who downloaded the BNP’s member’s list will testify).
When you say it’s misleading and focus on the fact that the data is already in the public domain, maybe you missed this line, “People who use computers should not really expect privacy” 🙂