Face Book Haters Unite!

Users’ personal information cannot now be made private, security consultant says.

The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private.

However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised.

The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay.

Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by several thousand people.

This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled.

Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy settings so their names did not appear in Facebook’s search system can now be found if they were friends with anyone whose name was searchable.

‘Scary privacy issue’
On his website, www.skullsecurity.org, Bowes said the results of his code were “spectacular,” giving him 171 million names of which were 100 million unique.

“As I thought more about it and talked to other people, I realized that this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook,” he wrote.

“Facebook helpfully informs you that “[a]nyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings” — but that doesn’t help much anymore considering I already have them all (and you will too, when you download the torrent). Suckers!”

“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,” Bowes added. “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! Oops ”

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One of the nation’s oldest and highest scholastic honors organizations is looking into a Tampa-area high school student’s claim that he was booted from the local chapter because of comments he posted on a Facebook page.

The National Honor Society told FoxNews.com Thursday that it was checking into allegations made by Alex Fuentes, who says he posted comments about Wesley Chapel High simply because he was concerned about his school’s academic standing.

“I was frustrated that I was going to graduate from a D school,” Fuentes told the Tampa Tribune, frustrated by his school’s low scores on standardized tests. “It wasn’t anything malicious. It was just a joke taken the wrong way.”

Three months ago, the 18-year-old senior started a Facebook group called “Wesley Chapel High = Fail,” which became a popular venue for students past and present to criticize the school. It now operates under a different name, “Pros and Cons of Wesley Chapel High.”

Numerous students dropped out of the group and hid their complaints when teachers discovered it in December, but it still hosts some 278 members. One graduate wrote that she “skipped senior year like 2-3 times a week and still had a 4.0″ grade-point average. “EASIEST SCHOOL EVER!”

In the USA at least three NFL franchises have reportedly taken to spying on potential employees, using an evil form of online entrapment known as the ”ghost profile”.

It works like this: club is considering paying large amounts of money to promising player in the annual draft; club impersonates young female fan with large assets on Facebook and MySpace, befriending player; club gains access to player’s profile and pictures and searches for any sign of future headaches in the form of drug, sex or crime scandals.

They are called ghosts, a source told Yahoo! Sports, because “once the draft is over, they disappear”. Justin Smith, creator of Insidefacebook (a pro facebook marketing advice blog), says the practice is also being used in white-collar industries such as investment banking, where good character and a sense of judgment are seen as being paramount (if not a sense of privacy or ethics).

In a cnn.com forum, someone calling themselves ”Nice Guy” even confessed to using a similar ruse to check on a prospective nanny.

”I was very relieved to see pictures of a new year’s party that seemed very tame,” he wrote. ”Her friends seemed ‘normal’, along with her boyfriend. I learned a lot about her and was much more comfortable allowing her to watch my kids. What a great tool.”

What a great tool indeed.

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Chelsy Davy announced the end of her relationship with Prince Harry by changing her status on Facebook to: “Relationship: Not in One”, Britain’s News of the World says

The couple met in 2004 and their break-up marks the end of a five-year relationship.

The Prince is believed to have sought advice from his father, Prince Charles, and his uncle, Earl Spencer, in recent weeks. He has also discussed his relationship difficulties with his brother, Prince William.

Ms Davy, a party-loving blonde, had initially seemed an unlikely princess, particularly as her father, a safari operator in Zimbabwe, apparently had links with the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe.

However, in recent months she started attending royal functions, and there had been speculation the couple might even marry.

In November she attended Prince Charles’s 60th birthday party for family and friends at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home.

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Edward Richardson, 41, of Mayfield Road, Biddulph, was found guilty of stabbing Sarah Richardson to death.

He killed the 26-year-old hairdresser at her parents’ home in Brown Lees, Staffordshire, on 12 May, 2008, Stafford Crown Court heard.

Richardson tried to kill himself after the attack and was sentenced to life with a minimum of 17 years in prison.

Fiona Cortese, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his messages.

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More than two dozen British schoolgirls have been suspended for using the Facebook website to engage in a hate campaign against their teacher.

Facebook was at the centre of a massive ID fraud scare yesterday after it accidentally published confidential information about its users.

In a huge breach of privacy, the social networking site disclosed the dates of birth of many of its 80 million active users – even if they had asked for the information to be kept secret.

Although the details have now been removed, there are concerns that internet fraudsters could use the information to commit identity theft.

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Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns.

The Information Commissioner’s Office found more than half of those asked made most of their information public.

Some 71% of 2,000 14 to 21-year-olds said they would not want colleges or employers to do a web search on them before they had removed some material.

The commission said the young needed to be aware of their electronic footprint.

Vetting tool

The ICO also said young people could be putting themselves at risk of identity fraud because of the material they post on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

The cost to a person’s future can be very high if something undesirable is found David Smith Information Commissioner’s Office

The data regulator’s survey found that two thirds of those questioned accepted as friends on such websites people they did not even know.

Some 60% posted their date of birth, a quarter put their job title and almost one in 10 gave their home address.

ICO deputy commissioner David Smith said: “Many young people are posting content online without thinking about the electronic footprint they leave behind.

“The cost to a person’s future can be very high if something undesirable is found by the increasing number of education institutions and employers using the internet as a tool to vet potential students or employees.”

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