Facebook revealed dates of birth of users, even if they are 'hidden' says Sophos

[crazy456eyes]

crazy. I have a fake date of birth and fake dead email address

[Tokyorosebiz]

Please check out My Place by Tokyo Rose an amusing rock music video warning of the dangers of too much social networking. Although it is amusing it does carry a very dark message of what may happen.

[22cheray]

WHY DA HELL DID U PLACE UR BIRTHDAY THERE IF U DID WANT ANYONE TO SEE IT

[24theallison]

omg if you dont want people to know anything about you then dont join facebook, twitter, myspace etc. you putting you info on the internet where hackers can get you personal info. there is not use of complaining about.

[ryanlee604]

i use FB but i dont add ppl i dont know. never use the auto log in and don't let anyone use ur account. u dont want to be blamed for something that u did not do

[blackfrancis55]

even with security settings, it is never a good idea to enter your real birthdate or other info anywhere on the net. just enter something wrong or ridiculous. make yourself a member of the pixies for example.

[iscrewy]

i always just put something close ost my birth date XD just put in 1980

[TerryOlinger]

Facebook has no integrity. It is loaded iwth tricks. Be careful. Or just don't join. Or attempt to deactivate your account. Good luck on this one. They don't like this....

[BancroftsICTdept]

As an ICT Director in a school I'm also concerned by the fact that FaceBook will release a list of your friends to anyone even if you have set your friends list to be available only to your friends.

There are contradicting security settings in different areas and the lowest security setting overides the other (unless they have fixed this in the last month.)

I emailed my concerns and got a response that they would contact the individual user and explain how to set the settings!

[adrastea99]

Well they actually have a help area which explains how to set the settings

Even so its pretty easy for even the stupidest children to figure it out

Basically, if the child can not figure out how to set these settings, or the child actually uses their full personal information on the internet, it is the parents duty to limit that child's use of the internet

And it is your responsibility as the IT of your school to inform the children and the parents of the dangers of using your info on the web

[BancroftsICTdept]

If you read the post you will see that my point is that you set your profile security settings to say only my friends can see my friends list but the search settings override that setting and give the list out to anyone. Contradictory security settings are confussing and make systems insecure.

Social networking sites (FaceBook is not alone in this)should provide systems that follow best practice when they know that peoples personal data is involved.

[adrastea99]

"search settings override that setting and give the list out to anyone"

You learn something every day. Anyway, facebook is so buggy aoyone with a greasemonkey script can crack into your profile.

Facebook and myspace are full of holes which makes it easier for sexual predators with a little internet savvy to find basically anyone on there.

My info is only in the hands of my university, my bank, the govt of Canada, the govt of USA, the govt of France, and the govt of Peru

[adrastea99]

None of my info is on the web.

AND A FEW CRAPCKERS STILL FOUND ME???

Nothing is sacred anymore my friend, try to explain that to the parents and kids. I swear to god, my 13yo cousin put ALL of her personal info on facebook, i freaked out when i found out but she made me swear not to tell her parents.

Recipe for disaster, no?

[skatequeen01]

lol yeah but you can always delete your facebook account and make a new one with less or no private info, or you can just make up shit lol

[jperson2007]

That's it I'm changing my birth date! lol

[iav12]

omg nooooo.. no my birth date!! ...

[kreggspam]

Thanks for informing us about this. It teaches us to be careful about sensitive data.

And a big thank you for showing this video AFTER this problem was fixed.

[csmillie]

This has already been fixed, it was a bug in the beta of the New Profile design...

[SophosLabs]

Hi Csmillie. Yes, we told Facebook about the problem on Monday 14 July, and it was fixed by the 15th. We intentionally kept quiet about the breach until after it was fixed, as we didn't want to publicise a flaw that identity thieves could use to their advantage.

[gaylordsunite]

boooo