Harvard student Aran Khanna was supposed to begin a summer internship with Facebook when he had the position abruptly taken away from him in May. Why? Because he created a Google Chrome browser extension that highlighted a major privacy flaw on the site. The student’s tool, Marauder’s Map, allowed users to see the geolocation of…

A New York hacker pleaded guilty this week to running a massive spam bot program that infected Facebook-connected PCs. The man, Eric Crocker, was charged along with nearly a dozen others for participating in a hacking forum called Darkode. Together, Crocker and others used a spam program called Facebook Spreader to infect PCs that were…

Two Harvard undergraduates published a study last week showing that Facebook’s privacy policies have gradually become much worse since the site’s founding in 2004. The students, Jennifer Shore and Jill Steinman, reviewed old copies of Facebook’s privacy policies from 2005 to 2015. They then ranked each of the site’s privacy policies from 0 to 4,…

A woman in Spain was ordered to pay an €800 fine after she took a picture of a police car illegally parked in a handicapped parking spot and posted it on Facebook. The fine, which seems outrageous to anyone familiar with the concept of freedom of speech, is the result of a controversial law passed…

A UK security researcher recently uncovered a big flaw in Facebook’s user protection that allowed him to find a user’s name, pictures locations and more simply by sending their cell phone number to Facebook’s API developer tool. Facebook responded to the criticism this week saying that they have strong security measures in place to protect…

A Harvard student named Aran Khanna lost an internship position with Facebook because he created a Google Chrome extension that pointed out a major privacy flaw in the site. The tool, called Marauder’s Map, used location data gathered through Messenger’s Android app. Though many users didn’t know it, Messenger shared detailed location information whenever a…

Whether you know it or not, many companies are likely tracking you across the web both on and off Facebook. How can they do that? Simple: when you download and use their apps on Facebook, you’re granting them many more rights and permissions than you might know. Even when you sign into a website using…

When Facebook lost its appeal last month to prevent the government from obtaining 381 New York users’ information, many privacy advocates were outraged. What would the future look like if Facebook had to comply with every federal request? How could the site protect its users against not only hackers, but from the government itself? However,…

A UK software developer discovered an enormous loophole in Facebook’s defenses that allowed him to obtain their names, profile pictures, locations and more just by guessing their mobile numbers. How did he uncover so much private information? Easy: Facebook Graph Search. You may not know it, but your default “who can find me?” search setting…

Facebook is going to begin displaying a banner to some European users explaining their privacy rights on the site, according to the Irish Independent. The new feature is aimed at new or unregistered users who may be unfamiliar with the site’s cookie policy for tracking the activity of its visitors across the web. “We’re providing…