Facebook Fires Employee Who Allegedly Used Data Access To Stalk Women (vice.com) 99
After a member of the information security community provided evidence to Facebook's chief information security officer, the company has terminated a security engineer who allegedly used their work position to stalk women online. From a report: On Monday, Motherboard reported that Facebook was investigating a claim that one of its employees used access to data granted by their job to stalk women online. Facebook has since terminated the employee, Facebook confirmed to Motherboard on Tuesday, coincidentally shortly after the social media giant announced its upcoming dating service. "We are investigating this as a matter of urgency. It's important that people's information is kept secure and private when they use Facebook," Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief information security officer, told Motherboard in a statement.
And they want to run a dating service?!?! (Score:1)
good luck with that!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
FB tracks you even if you don't sign up (Score:3)
Isn't Facebook one of those companies that need to be told "Delete means delete!"?
Dude, they are slurping information about you before you even sign up. Shadow profiles is what they call it. If the government did it they'd call it your dossier.
Re:And they want to run a dating service?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
This guy was just TESTING out the new dating functionality of Facebook, prior to its release!!
Re: (Score:3)
Why do you think this is a problem? Employees at every other dating service are doing it, FB is just making sure to get rid of the ones dumb enough to get caught now.
Re: (Score:2)
You sound lonely.
Not far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Should this evidence have been provided to authorities?
Just how far did this stalking go? Did he ever act on any of the information? Make unrequested contact or show up on doorsteps?
This sort of abuse of power *should* get him fired. Depending on his other actions, it should also get him arrested. If someone in the medical or financial fields use their access to someones private information (e.g. home address or phone number), then they'd get slapped with some "hacking" or "unlawful computer access" charges. What gives?
Re:Not far enough (Score:5, Funny)
Found the stalker.
Re:Not far enough (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny how certain you are about what the details must be. Facebook hasn't released details on what information the employee accessed, so you're either the stalker who was fired or you're making it all up because your knee-jerk reaction is to accuse the victim.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In case nobody articulates this to you today .. you're an asshole.
Sorry, using your admin access to get information about women so you can hit them up on Tinder is a nail your testicles to the wall about a foot above your belt kind of offence, and it escalates from there.
On behalf of those who ha
Re: (Score:2)
You claim your actions weren't in "real life," but they say that the logs show you really did it, using real servers, with real users. You didn't just pretend to stalk somebody online, but it was really just a video game. Nope; it was real servers, real people, real log files.
Re: (Score:2)
What he was doing was barely within the lines of "stalking". It was simply online "stalking". Sending them messages, hitting them up on Tinder, and such. Nothing in real life and all of it easily blocked if desired.
You mean all these emails I've been getting for 20+ years are figments of my imagination?
Re: (Score:3)
I'll speak from experience as the engineer discovering abuse, and as the manager compelled to handle complaints about such harassment. Depending on the exact behavior, it can violate not only state law but federal law. See US Criminal Code section 223 for examples of relevant federal law. There is a short summary at https://cyber.harvard.edu/vaw0... [harvard.edu] which is also useful.
Re: (Score:1)
SMEGMA- Social Media Enforcement Good Members Act
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just how far did this stalking go? Did he ever act on any of the information? Make unrequested contact or show up on doorsteps?
It's a sad world we live in when merely making contact with someone is considered an arrestable offence. Or, let's be frank, making contact with someone while being the wrong sex: no one would be calling for the arrest of a woman who did such a thing.
He should be - and has been - fired for abusing his position with Facebook. But arresting him for phoning someone or knocking on their door would be simply mad. What the heck kind of police state would do something like that?
Re: (Score:2)
It would most certainly would be a fireable offence.
Remember those forms you signed as admin to only use stuff for work related purposes?
I don't think stalking is covered.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a sad world we live in when merely making contact with someone is considered an arrestable offence. Or, let's be frank, making contact with someone while being the wrong sex: no one would be calling for the arrest of a woman who did such a thing.
He should be - and has been - fired for abus poting his position with Facebook. But arresting him for phoning someone or knocking on their door would be simply mad. What the heck kind of police state would do something like that?
Who said it was an arrestable offense? The person allegedly misused their access to personal data to tap potential dates/hookups. While that may not be an arrestable offense, it most certainly is a career limiting offense and the person should have been escorted to the door. As it appears they were.
It may not be an arrest-able offence, but it seems to me that texting that you are a "professional stalker" pretty much precludes you from being "spongeworthy"... If this degree of non-self-awareness is evident, you have to wonder about the mental fitness of this type of person.
Additionally, one might also conclude that Facebook might have some kind of a duty to warn future potential employers about the actions of this particular "security analyst"... Given all the contemporary issues Facebook is facing,
Re: (Score:2)
Has there been a police complaint? The police can't investigate unless someone tells them something illegal has been done.
Facebook 'Employee?' (Score:4, Funny)
Facebook Fires Employee Who Allegedly Used Data Access To Stalk Women
Cue Sheryl Sandberg doing walk of shame out to parking lot with box of her stuff.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Who watches? (Score:5, Funny)
It's watchmen all the way up
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who watches? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Alan Moore fans?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who watches the watchmen?
Serious answer, I've always thought it was good to have the watchmen, watch each other with each person watching two others randomly assigned but with no knowledge of which two are watching them. That way any conspiracy has to involve too many people to keep quiet as you'll need to get a lot of people in to get all the people who might be watchers.
Only one employee fired (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It goes much higher than facebook...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, if even the NSA can't stamp out LOVEINT, just imagine what's going on in private companies.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You had a keyboard? Luxury! I had to hand-crank my own 5V signal and pulse data directly into memory as ones and zeroes. And this without any lights in a cardboard shack in the rain.
Re: (Score:3)
+5V?! Luxury! I was stuck with ECL memory; it isn't enough just to keep your voltage between -3 and -4.6V, you also have to turn the crank at an exact speed to maintain the current.
Re: (Score:2)
I wanted to be a programmer, but they told me I was a systems analyst. I still thought I was a programmer, but I didn't argue because systems analyst paid more.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
Oh the irony (Score:1)
Two stories down: "Tech giants hit by NSA spying slam encryption backdoors. The tech coalition includes Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon and Yahoo's parent company Oath — all of which were hit by claims of complicity with US government's surveillance."
It's the usual tech company hypocrisy. They'll defend data tooth and nail against law enforcement, but internally it all appears to be readily available to any pervert.
Re: (Score:3)
PR Story (Score:1)
Ok, so you fired a person who was abusing his power of position at a company. Why is this a story? It's not. It's only floated out there by Facebook to "show" they are doing something. This will not be tolerated!! See?!? We care here at Facebook!!
..little preview of their dating app (Score:1)
FB is rumored to be working on a dating app and this guy was beta testing it.. This reminds me of everyone's first friend on Friendster - Tom from Myspace. I guess creepy developers are not getting laid enough at facebook, so they need another way of hooking up.
Facebook procedures? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook has a lot of live data. It's not going to be possible to keep every single employee away from it. Somebody's going to have to handle it, which means access. Simple auditing isn't going to be that difficult to get around. It gets to be a cat-and-mouse game.
What a company can do is establish a firm policy, limit the number of people with access, keep records, and keep alert. That isn't going to stop misuse. Heck, the NSA had its LOVEINT.
Re: (Score:2)
Do as I say, not as I do (Score:5, Insightful)
So, one guy from FB stalks someone -- fire him!
But when a company (advertisement) stalks me across the internet -- that's business!
Re: (Score:2)
In late capitalism, failure to monetize is the true crime.
Who knew FB did PR? (Score:2)
Who knew Facebook could do PR?
I'm impressed... You need to give the PR department a bonus for all those late nights in smoky rooms crafting all these slick press releases. Buy them pizza and coke too. They deserve it.
I'd say you could give them a day off with pay, but I'm afraid that might be too risky. You need somebody minding the press, ready to combat the PR blemishes, ready to react to head off the rumor mill before it can start....
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly the right reaction! (Score:2)
Of course, many of their security people and some others will be doing this, but this guy got _caught_! That means he is incompetent and that is the reason to fire him.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, corporations would certainly like to have the right to do this to their employees. As they cannot, they like to at least use language that implies the person was destroyed...
dude... (Score:2)
It's important that people's information is kept secure and private when they use Facebook," Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief information security officer, told Motherboard in a statement.
... you are SO working for the wrong company. (But of course this is PR, not a recitation of true principles.)
Whoa, wait...! (Score:3)
Wasn't FB built to stalk women..?
Was he ... (Score:3)
Data access is a bitch (Score:2)
I was a contractor for a health care company and was horrified at the sensitive data I had access to. There were no easy solutions. Spend days imperfectly sanitizing terabytes of data to troubleshoot a client issue, or jump right into the client site to resolve the issue today. I'm not ashamed to say I nearly had a mental breakdown, as in a similar scenario a colleague of mine did the wrong thing in calling out a workmate's antidepressant meds because data access is a bitch.
Re: (Score:2)