Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post To Walls 63
angry tapir writes "A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload system and used it to post thousands of unwanted Wall messages last week. Facebook confirmed the bug Friday, after notifying affected users of the issue. Most of the messages promised 'Free iPhones,' a common spam message on Facebook these days. Facebook says that the spammer hit thousands of profiles before the company removed the spammy photos and notified affected users. No accounts were compromised as a result of the bug."
Facebook is cancer (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.
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I think you'll find the people hacking facebook are very innovative and creative 15 year-olds.
Facebook is the new AOL.
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I think you'll find the people hacking facebook are very innovative and creative. TV is the main mind killer.
Actually, fear is the main mind killer. Such as fear of TV killing your mind....
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The correct amount of Ls has been used.
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Actually, Zorgath Brain-Melter of Argyle III is the true main mind killer. He has over 18 billion confirmed kills. Fyr Lobotimizer (you mis-spelled his first name) of Satiria VII was relegated to secondary killer after the Mice-and-Figs debacle of '05. The more you know... :-)
...the more likely you are to be targeted by Zorgath.
general TV/computer issue, really (Score:2)
I have a computing habit about equal to that of some couch potatoes, and that's one thing I do point out: at least the computer is/can be active instead of passive, at least more often than the TV is active-thinking
For instance, I tend to like strategy games.
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As I said in my biopic "Dune", fear is the mind-killer.
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Nah, Geocities had a few quite useful sites by people interested in sharing information but with little care for web site maintenance per se.
Facebook, OTOH, has never offered any useful information to anyone.
This vulnerability is about as shocking as hearing that some bathroom/toilet stalls don't have graffiti-proof paint on them. And as disappointing in terms of humour loss from an otherwise drab experience when someone does something about it.
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Yes, because most of the people on Facebook would be off composing symphonies or expanding human knowledge if they just spent less time posting on peoples' walls.
I'm getting ridiculously tired of this hyperbolic Slashdot crap toward anything some random whackjob who can't even be bothered to post under an account has to say. You don't like Facebook? Good for you. It doesn't make you smarter, it doesn't make your penis bigger, and it sure doesn't make you or your time more valuable than people who do.
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You should be modded insightful, rather than that tripe posted by A/C. Nicely put.
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Agreed, I don't have nearly as much time to play WOW anymore!
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Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.
10 hours ago via Facebook for iPhone. Comment Dislike
You and 5 other people like this.
CmdrTaco [fsdn.com] changed his profile picture.
11 hours ago via Facebook mobile. Comment Like
2i^7 people like this.
CowboyNeal The surgery went well I see. Glad you're back to work.
About an hour ago. Like
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Facebook is cancer on the internet that is eating away creativity and innovation.
You sound just like those other "theme" preachers.
* Video games are responsible for an entire generation of fat and violent children.
* Pirates are killing the music industry.
* etc.
And you get modded insightful for this. Yay Slashdot.
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Re:Free iPads, in my case (Score:2)
I got email from my friend that I had free iPad spam on my Facebook. Arrrgh. Went and deleted it, dropped notes to the couple of friends who had commented that my account had probably been hacked, changed my password (which had been too short, back when I wasn't expecting Facebook to have any real information in it.) I tried to play with the pictures, but if I understand FB's tools correctly (I don't use them much), I didn't have permissions to change the iPad picture they'd put on my Wall Album into a
it's funny I was at a bbq yesterday (Score:1, Insightful)
And we talked about Friendster (Remember Them?), MySpace (Remember Them), and Facebook. I say they should have sold that site last year. Now with many people being aware of location awarness etc..., my buddies have decided to delete their accounts. I admit I dabbled in it for a week, it was a complete waste of time. Call me old fashioned I still like using the phone and be in person when I talk to my friends.
And I keep saying it over and over again, If I made my thoughts public or let everyone know who
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Did Putin add you as friend on facebook ?
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Did Putin add you as friend on facebook ?
I heard it was Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton who 'friended' him. I think he dodged a bullet by deleting his account!
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Hey old timer, the interesting thing about new communication methods is that they aren't usually meant to kill existing ones -- just like telephone didn't kill in-real-life meetings.
By the way, I'm wondering why you didn't call me instead of posting here?
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I still like using the phone and be in person when I talk to my friends.
So do I, but there's no denying it gets a wee bit expensive to sustain when my family are spread across the planet. Hey, how about that...a social networking site that facilitates me communicating with people who are important to me that are thousands of miles away. Neat thing, this Internet...
Oh, nuts... (Score:5, Funny)
And to think that I thought that all of those wall postings were because of a sudden surge in my popularity...
Well, at least I'm going to get a free iPhone out of it, or so I've heard.
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Well, at least I'm going to get a free iPhone out of it, or so I've heard.
And that will make you popular!
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I have lots of relatives who use facebook. They are mainly middle aged and most of them are women. They use it to keep an eye on what their peers are up to. Who is having a baby, who is going on holiday. That sort of thing. Facebook has found a use for the internet for these people. I am not sure you can make money off them though.
Re:facebook is the new aol (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, what could one possibly market to middle-age women interested in motherhood and holidays? And who could possibly want contact or aggregate information about this atypically independent and hard-to-sell-to demographic?
Now I understand how Debian could afford to take that prime time TV ad slot to announce the Backports service becoming official while big pharma struggled to afford the 10 second "follow-on milk" piece to target the at most half a dozen women who might be convinced that evolution is a failure and breast is not best.
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facebook and aol were both good for some people (Score:2)
Back in the 90s we got my mother-in-law a computer and an AOL account. It was around the time she retired, she wasn't very active physically and didn't get out much except to get groceries. Once she figured out that the celebrity gossip news was coming from the outside world, not inside the box (guess we should have left the modem sound on :-), and that she could talk to other people, she started to be much more social, which she'd missed since she no longer ran into people in real life, and made some g
"No accounts were compromised" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well atleast.. (Score:1)
Why do people post Explicite details in info? (Score:5, Interesting)
With the non-stop assault on facebook by every hacker on the planet I have to ask one simple question.
Why do people put every single tidbit of info possible into the info section of their profile?
It's going to get grabbed at some point. No matter how careful you are. Either Facebook is going to change the privacy controls again, opening up another flood gate or a hack is going to allow total access to data.
I regrettably accept the fact that social networking is here to stay. No matter how satanic some of you think it is, it is now a fixture in our lives. But as in the real world I at least use some degree of caution while I use it. Do I have perfect protection. Of course not. No one does. You can get mugged in a police station these days. So no protection is perfect. But good lord some people are just begging to get electronically raped.
For example real time geo updates to your current location + putting in your address into the info tab and having no privacy settings.
This parent post is just a simple example of a breach.
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I recently asked a friend of mine (who is a facebook addict) why she was posting all this personal information and updates her status with every little thing that enters her mind. Her answer was along the lines of "I dunno...why not?" I fear the only way for people to wake up and finally take internet security (or at least facebook se
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Stupidity and / or naivety. It simple does not occur to some people that exposing their personal details on the internet equivalent of a Times Square billboard is a terrible thing to do.
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You mean your birthdate and your mother's name? (Score:2)
Facebook is set to show your birthday by default, and show who your friends are. My mom's never going to be on Facebook, so nobody's going to get her maiden name that way, and my birthday's set to "January 1, Random Year", so it's not showing the quasi-passwords to half the information in the world, but arrgh.
What's worse is Ancestry.com, where if you're using it to share genealogy research, it typically *is* going to show your birthday and mother's maiden name... On the other hand, they're not trying to
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You dp realize that if your birth was registered in the USA the contents of your birth certificate are almost certainly public information, right?
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The problem is, like your SSN, some companies ASSume that anyone who can tell them your birthdate must be you.
Public info vs. Convenient Public Info (Score:2)
Yes, the information's out there - but it's not in a conveniently accessible indexed format that anybody can get to without problems. (Of course, if you want official copies, it's become worse since the Patriot Act - try getting a driver's license reissued if you don't have an official copy of your birth certificate, and try getting an official copy of your birth certificate if you can't show your driver's license...)
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Simple answer.
Twitter and You tube haven't had massive data losses to the levels that facebook is known for and they have not adjusted "privacy" settings specifically to expose details like facebook has.
Almost weekly but at worst monthly facebook has a public loss of information whether self induced or via defect and thus exploit.
typo squatter (Score:4, Interesting)
The other day I accidentally went to facebok.com. It was pretty obviously a typo squat, but what was more alarming was that the fake survey they provided had some correct information filled out (age, sex, etc..) Try it with and without cookies and it seems that that info is stored either locally or via the advertiser information sharing.
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Facebook does not share information with advertisers. Facebook's ad system acts as a broker: an advertiser submits an ad, a demographic they wish to see the ad (e.g., gender, age, geographic locale), and a bid. Facebook pairs those ads with users that match the criteria.
I work for Facebook, as an engineer in search.
Conscience (Score:2)
How do spammers sleep at night? Do they realize how big of a douche they look like?
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Probably too busy rolling around in piles of cash to care. Same with investment bankers and auto execs.