Data off of Facebook is now accessible to anybody with the Facebook torrent which was created by a hacker with a lot of free time. 171 million Facebook users had their details stolen by a web sprawling code made by Ron Bowes. Bowes put the 2.8 GB file online as a torrent. Facebook made their remark on the issue saying all the info is what could be found with a search engine and doesn't matter all that much. But others say the Facebook torrent is another indictment of Facebook privacy policy, and users should be concerned.

Info taken from 171 million Facebook users

171 million Facebook users have now posted online within the torrent their user IDs, names, and profile URLs. Pirate Bay is where Bowes, who heads Skull Security, has decided to place this torrent for the world, reports the Daily Tech. 13,000 downloads were active July 28, early in the morning. The data that Bowes scraped and packaged contains information Facebook users have either chosen to share or neglected to protect. Facebook users who have locked their privacy settings to friends only aren't listed in the Facebook torrent.

Facebook difficulties with privacy

The Facebook torrent comes at a bad time when Facebook is already suffering the losses from their change on privacy settings to allow commercial use. The details that Facebook users "agreed to make public" are the things gathered up by researches to make this privacy change, reports BBC News quoting Facebook. Tech Crunch suggests that users choose soon to change their privacy settings to "friends only." You aren't going to be happy when people put all of your details into a package and let it loose for individuals who want it just because you set your settings to "everyone".

Personal data on Facebook torrent can never be deleted

The Facebook torrent information is available to anyone who uses the search engines Google, Bing or Facebooksearch. But Future of the Internet makes the point that the Facebook torrent is a snapshot of Facebook's directory that lasts forever. The info can never go away, even when users delete their accounts or change their privacy settings.

Friends of users hurt by Facebook torrent

Bowes decided to consist of within the torrent the programs used to get all the information to steal from one fifth of Facebook users. Tech Crunch said in a post describing his hack, Bowes wrote that so far, he's only indexed searchable users, but he wants to go after their friends next. Until Facebook switches to friends only by default, which is unlikely, users opt out-

    Go to Account and Privacy Settings and Applications, Games, and Websites (link near the bottom, in a box) and Public Search and (Uncheck box).

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Daily Tech

dailytech.com/Info on 100M Facebook Users Harvested and Posted in Torrent Legally/article19198.htm

Tech Crunch

techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/hacker-proves-facebooks-public-data-is-public/

Future of the Internet

futureoftheinternet.org/facebooks-ocean-of-names-becomes-a-torrent