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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“A leaked instant messenger (IM) transcript from 2003 in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg mocks users who joined his then fledgling social networking site is adding to the sense of outrage over the social networking site’s cavalier attitude towards privacy.

Zuck: Dumb f–ks.”

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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!”

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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Now it is selling off friends and fans on Facebook, in batches of 1000 to 10,000 for prices from $197 to $1297 – or roughly between $0.12 and $0.20.

Maybe you can have a virtual party with your virtual friends…

Though, keep checking the Suicide Machine website, as they are fighting hard for your right to delete YOUR personal information from venus fly traps like Facebook.

“This is the end. My only friend, the end.”

You are more than your virtual identity
«Virtual life» is an – often – abused term used to describe the whole of one person online activities. But as media communications let our second/online/offline identities overflowing into real life – and vice-versa – the distinctions between the real and the virtual are becoming, more and more confused. Which is virtual? And where’s the real? Beyond all those questions only a fact remains: that our privacy, our profiles, our identities, our relationships, they are all – fake and/or real – entirely exploited for a sole purpose: to be sold as a product. But are those lives really worth to be experienced?

Pass away. Leave your ID behind.

With this great free tool, you can delete your online identity, naturally Facebook is fighting hard against such services, use it while you can.

Salum Kombo, 18, was knifed repeatedly and staggered 400m before collapsing in a pool of blood.

He was said to have been attacked by his 15-year-old friend who held a grudge because he had shown “disrespect” in the posting on the social networking site.

A girl pal said: “Salum was killed just because he posted a stupid comment on another lad’s wall on Facebook.

The boy had initially written something on his wall to which Salum responded. It just escalated from there.”

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They include drinking, his girlfriend Priscilla Chan, his sister’s wedding last year and much more.

If the “founder” of Facebook is not safe, is there a chance many others will have their most private moments shared with the world under the new Open Facebook system?