Small Fish, Big Pond

Sorry not hacked. According to Facebook’s official response, it’s not a hack, not a problem, and what you see happening doesn’t really exist.

What am I talking about? 300+ Facebook groups have been hijacked (unlike hacked this description is 100% accurate no matter what Facebook says). But the people hijacking them aren’t doing it maliciously, only to raise awareness for how easily social data can be manipulated. In the hijackers own words:

Our main goal is to draw attention to questions concerning online privacy awareness.

We have seen too many examples where friends and relatives of ours have suffered from their lack of in-depth knowledge concerning their online presence. After some research we discovered this is a wide spread problem. People have even lost their jobs over Facebook content. So we wanted to do something about this.

Our method of choice only serves the purpose to prove our point and put emphasis on how easy it is to lose track of a part of your online presence. If we wouldn’t have communicated this way, our message would probably have fallen into oblivion the moment it got out.

I have to say, I am 100% behind these guys. They share the same viewpoint on social networking that I do, it’s great to keep in touch with friends but people’s social lives are now dictated and controlled by their Facebook interaction. Just this weekend my friend was relating a tale of how his falling out with one friend has now started having repercussions with others because the one friend “removed him from their friend list”!

What a sad state of affairs, I may not be able to quantify my number of friends through Facebook associations but I don’t have to worry about online drama affecting my offline relationships either (or vice versa). People say I’m either paranoid or anti social; paranoid maybe, but I don’t consider interaction through the internet to be on par with social interaction face to face.

Back to the point at hand, Facebook has responded to the hijackings thusly:

There has been no hacking and there is no confidential information at risk. The groups in question have been abandoned by their previous owners, which means any group member has the option to make themselves an administrator in order to continue communication to the group. Group administrators have no access to confidential information and group members can leave a group at any time. For small groups, administrators can simply edit a group name or info, moderate discussion, and message group members. The names of large groups cannot be changed nor can anyone message all members. In the rare instances when we find that a group has been changed inappropriately, we will disable the group, which is the action we plan for these groups.

So apparently this hijacking group isn’t helping Facebook to do anything about improving their system. The group claims that they’re not going to do anything malicious with the groups, only point out their vulnerability. But this is a problem they should take more seriously, groups that can be renamed to anything can cause huge issues. With the drama that came of being “de-friended” imagine the drama that would come if your friends (or potential employers) visited your site to see that the groups you belong to are “NAMBLA” “BNP” “Al-Qaida” “KKK” and “George Michael Fanclub”.

And to the FBI agents who just visited because of all the flags in that last line, please read the whole article.

ViaLoose Wire Blog.