Your Facebook private details

dogmaryxx

All now available on Pirate Bay http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584

23n1th

My facebook page has my old nickname cos no one knows me as my real name, I used a fake DOB and the email address is no long active. Not only that but I have managed to lock myself out of my account by trying to login from a different country because I can't remember the DOB and the email address doesn't exist. So my account is safe!

doom

Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings.

From the link.





It's not really private details if the users choose not to hide it

Simon_B_2

So from me they would have got my name

amcluesent

It's a dream for stalkers to be able to search everything so easily...

I know something about opening windows and doors
I know how to move quietly to creep across creaky wooden floors
I know where to find precious things in all your cupboards and drawers...

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

Bit of scaremongering there with the title.

"In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.
"No private data is available or has been compromised," the statement added.

If it's taken details not covered with your privacy settings, it's got no more information than you'd get by looking at someone's profile.

P.S. Currently around 4000 people (and climbing) trying to download it from the torrent.

Lil306

Not worried one bit, as mentioned above. All my privacy settings are 100% locked down.

Only thing you will see about my profile is my name, and option to add me as friend unless you're a friend

marleyboy

Other than my name, there is nothing I would post on facebook that I would prefer to keep private, even my DOB is wrong on there, the last thing anyone would want is to give away their full name and date of birth to millions of complete strangers, thats all a fraudster really needs to know,

corbyboy

As expected this story is a whole load of nonsense.

You can't get anything private that you have chosen to hidden. For the vast majority of people on that list it's just first name, last name and URL.

googler

Once you've downloaded and extracted the data here, it would seem to allow you to find someone or something about someone with a simple 'Find' command within one (?) file..... how easy is it to do that on Facebook itself?

(I'm genuinely asking how easy it is - I don't use it myself. Someone please tell me)

googler

Having downloaded and browsed this 'private data', it seems to contain no more than a list of names, and the number of times they occur in facebook;


f.last-withcount (filename)

129369 jsmith (content of file)
79365 ssmith
77713 skhan
75561 msmith
74575 skumar
72467 csmith
71791 asmith
67786 jjohnson
66693 dsmith
66431 akhan
59779 ksmith
etc
etc

first.l-withcount

100225 johns
97676 johnm
97310 michaelm
93386 michaels
88978 davids
85481 michaelb
84824 davidm
82677 davidb
81500 johnb
77800 michaelc
76966 chrisb
76844 chrism
74386 johnc
etc

firstnames-withcount

977014 michael
963693 john
924816 david
819879 chris
640957 mike
602088 james
584438 mark
515686 jason
503658 robert
484403 jessica
476643 sarah
etc

lastnames-withcount

913465 smith
571819 johnson
512312 jones
503266 williams
471390 brown
386764 lee
360010 khan
355639 singh
343220 kumar
324972 miller
311576 davis
etc


That's the first few files, nothing earth-shattering here..... unless anyone is turned on by the knowledge that there's 913465 folk named 'smith' on facebook........ and 571819 johnsons .....