It was only a matter of time but it's still wrong. Stuff like this is going to have to become a criminal offense before it gets tackled properly but then it will simply be off-shored to somewhere the local authorities (assuming there are any) won’t bother going after them.
Napster cofounder's Jerk.com accused of acting like ... err ... jerks
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on a site they say lifted user information to create smear profiles on a for-profit reputation site. The FTC said that the operators of Jerk.com (which appears to have since been taken down) harvested data from millions of Facebook users to create profiles without …
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 09:38 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Nice security from Facebook there! Oh sure, anyone from a remote location can download 77 million records from our database - including private data. Can't see anything going wrong with that...
Still at least one person can't clear their 'jerk' status however much they pay. Mr John Fanning is the Jerk CEO who's just been hauled before the WTC beak. I like that sentence becasue it's correct in both its meanings. Although his company should really be called Fuckwit to be a more accurate description...
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 14:30 GMT User McUser
Buried the Lead
Jerk.com used fraudulent developer profiles to access user profile data from the Facebook API [...] lifting data from the Facebook profiles of some 75 million people, including children and users who had marked their photos and information as private.
The real story here is that any random "developer" can apparently access all of your Facebook data, even if it is marked as private and you have no relation with said "developer."
Or has this always been the case and I'm just late to the party?
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Buried the Lead
Has always been the case. The facebook API allows for pretty much everything to be retrieved, it is only hidden client side, ie there is the equivalent of a flag in the data marked 'private' which if set, the client is supposed to not display this data. No obligation to do so of course..
Have your profile as private and friends only? Try logging in with facebook somewhere else, you will most likely find your friends names and profiles, which were not supposed to be visible, have been slurped.
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Wednesday 9th April 2014 15:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Jerk LLC claimed that in 2012 it netted a mere $3,000 in revenues and convinced just 22 people to subscribe to its paid options."
Last time I checked, stuff doesn't stop being bad just because your execution sucked so much you couldn't make any money. Given how easy it is to make a buck if you throw your morals out the window, it doesn't say much for Mr. Fanning that he managed to screw up the former even after doing the latter.