Facebook says it was hacked

[jsr]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Facebook said on Friday that it been the target of a series of attacks by an unidentified hacker group, but it had found no evidence that user data was compromised.

"Last month, Facebook security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack," the company said in a blog post. "The attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised."

The social network, which says it has more than one billion active users worldwide, added: "Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well."

Facebook's announcement follows recent cyber attacks on other prominent websites. Twitter, the microblogging social network, said this month that it had been hacked, and that approximately 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/net-us-usa-social-facebook-idUSBRE91E16O20130215

[Brigid]

1. Tell me again . . .

Why I should join Facebook.

[Orrex]

3. How else am I supposed to cyber-stalk you?

[Brigid]

6. I thought you had me on ignore.

[Orrex]

7. The better to stalk you stealthily

Shhh!

[Skittles]

21. I WILL KICK IGNORING ORREX ASS

oh wait - it's a joke? I WILL KICK JOKING ORREX ASS; yes INDEED

[goclark]

9. I can't figure a reason to join either

My friend spends about 1 - 2 hours a day on his facebook page.
He includes all of his family members on his page and they tell each other when they are going to a party at John's house etc.

I think I have this right....
Last week one of his Facebook lady friends in another country - placed a note on his Facebook page, for all to see, that she was engaged to him.

His girlfriend went into his Facebook page and started calling the girl in another country a bunch of names.

When he got home all hell broke out.

That is way too much drama for me!

I like DU because our names and locations are not on display for all the world to see.

PS/ -- A friend of mine was dating a guy that I thought was married. He lived in another state.
I asked the friend listed above to check and see if he could go to the guy's FB page... YEP! The guy was listed as married.

Way too much Drama for me.

[Orrex]

2. Somebody hacked into all of my friends' FB accounts and posted thousands of cat pictures.

[longship]

10. Oh! The humanity!

[Hard Assets]

13. Is his name SCE?

Hi Bob!

[awoke_in_2003]

19. I blame SalmonChantedEvening...

just kidding, of course.

[MADem]

4. Hmmmm. China? They've been busy lately.

And there's a lot of wiggle room in the term "no evidence." Just saying.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. And it took FB two weeks or more to 'fess up and warn users? From the company that paid no taxes.

[Bossy Monkey]

8. And filled with right-wing talking points. So THAT'S why all the people I liked in high school...

seem to have turned into Republican douchebags. I knew it!

[awoke_in_2003]

20. Well to be honest...

a lot of people I went to high school with did turn into republican douchebags.

[Kolesar]

23. My born in the 60s classmates are also a bunch of douchebags

My peers who were born in the 50s remember the war, the draft, and the civil rights movement and are much more wise. Can't wait until the class reunion this summer -- ha ha

[Mojorabbit]

26. I really do think the age we are makes a huge difference

I was born in the 50's also and almost all my friends that were born then remember and are more astute about what is going on. The younger ones are much more comfortable with authoritarianism. Not all but a large number on either end. What has happened to this country has been slow and insidious. While there has been lots of progress there has also been a huge amount of slide into the opposite direction.

[Kolesar]

28. At least they don't think everybody wants to hear racist jokes

Decades ago in Ohio, the presumption was that n---r jokes were always welcome.

[littlemissmartypants]

11. I deactivated the time thief, aka faceblob. eom

[kestrel91316]

12. That might be why I have been getting so many fake emails purporting to

be from my various FB friends. Many of them don't even HAVE my email address, lol.

[llmart]

16. That same thing happened to me last week.

I got emails supposedly from a couple of my Facebook friends, some of which don't even know my email address, so I knew they were scams.

[patrice]

14. One of the richest right-wingers I have ever known personally had several dozen dummy

accounts on FB.

I notice this not long after my account was hacked a couple of times, once by a tag placed in a kind of threatening photo of someone I had never met and who looked for all the world, I am sorry to say, but it IS the truth, like a piece of "trailer trash", complete with the dirty bedroom behind him with the paneled walls. That hack happened not long after I corrected someone for using the n-word in reference to PO. Later, my YOUNG nephews' accounts were pirated and used to post porno. I caught a virus from a link in the chat from another account pirated from my friend file and my deceased brother-in-law's account was pirated to say things to me that I had said in conversation around a certain group of people I know. When I started investigating, I found the fellow I mention in the subject-line of this post and a friend of his both of whom had several dozen dummy accounts/no-profiles in each of their names.

FB also lies to you about who is playing the games that a certain company runs for them. I have checked this with my friends and found that the information about so-and-so playing such-and-such a game was false.

[99th_Monkey]

15. This is exactly WHY I NEVER use FB "apps"

The require user to "release all personal information to the entire Universe"
as a condition of use, which is patently manipulative and sneaky and as we
see here, compromises people's on-line security, what little there is left of
that.

[Phillip McCleod]

17. this ^^^^^

i gave facebook up for more than two years and only recently started using it again and that for family spread out and actual people i know irl only. during those two years i played with diaspora and found it educational and entertaining, but nobody i know uses it so the fun wore off.

i have also tinkered somewhat with the fb app programmer's api in the context of web development and it does have some interesting and worthy qualities that make it more secure. but it's complicated, it's new, and new complicated things break or have security holes. hell java isn't even new and v7.10 is holier than a pair of old socks.

[Skittles]

22. I have not only never joined Facebook

I refuse all offers to "friend" anyone; I find it all juvenile and silly.

[bemildred]

24. Facebook pretty much is a hack. nt

[Ron Obvious]

25. Add me to the list of Facebook haters

I have a completely empty Facebook account as a placeholder, but I just don't get the appeal either. I can't imagine having all my friends, family and casual acquaintances in a singe place. I have different relationships with different people and wouldn't want the same conversations with young nephews as with elderly maiden aunts, for example.

In addition, I'm an extremely private person and I utterly resent Facebook's increasing attempts to become the web. I don't want to Like commercial products and share all my likes and dislikes with everyone and I always hated Christmas newsletters. Employers have no business knowing my personal interests and hobbies and I don't want to be thought another Unibomber simply because I value my privacy.

Facebook can't die soon enough for me. It's like volunteering data for and maintaining your own Stasi file.

[jsr]

27. The government should give FB a commission for collecting all the personal info

Oh wait, they just got a multibillion-dollar tax break, with a $429 million tax refund coming up.

[customerserviceguy]

30. "...maintaining your own Stasi file."

Brilliant! I will have to use that in my future discussions of FB with people. I might have to change it from Stasi (who under the age of forty remembers them?) to Homeland Security file, or something like that.

[Ron Obvious]

31. FBI file maybe?

Gestapo File maybe? Does "FBI File" sound sinister enough to those too young to remember J. Edgar Hoover?

[customerserviceguy]

32. Yeah, that sounds good

Gestapo is probably relevant enough to people who have seen WWII movies.

[JudyM]

33. with you 100%. except for the "maiden" aunt reference. nt

[Ron Obvious]

35. No offence intended

No offence intended. The word conjures up her fragile gentility to me which belongs to a different era. Think Miss Marple.

[customerserviceguy]

29. Why wouldn't we expect this?

It's like bank vaults, they accumulate enough money, and it becomes feasible for some to think they can try to break into them.

I'm seriously flirting with the idea of totally destroying the tiny presence I have on FB. I managed to do only one useful thing with it, and that was connect with an exchange student who lived with me some half-dozen years earlier. Otherwise, I might check it once every three or four months, it just holds no interest for me.

[Mz Pip]

34. Now someone has access to 1 million cat pics

One rule I live by is to never post anything I would care about the whole world seeing.

I told my son that that was my guideline. He said "What about the time you posted that Dick Cheney could suck Osama bin Laden's dead dick?"

I said that I didn't care about the whole world reading that.