Facebook shells out $8k bug bounty after quiz web app used by 120m people spews profiles

Facebook has forked out an $8,000 reward after a security researcher flagged up a third-party web app that potentially exposed up to 120 million people's personal information from their Facebook profiles. This is quite possibly the first cash payment under the social network giant's new data abuse bug bounty program. The …

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an easy option for individuals to avoid this type of problem..

Don't use Facebook.

I don't and I don't believe my life is any poorer for it, quite the opposite actually.

Quite a few people I work with use it and I sometimes ask them why.

I've yet to have an answer that would convince me to sign up.

Okay, no answer would convince me to sign up, but I've yet to have an answer that can't be countered by using email or a phone or any other non-FB method to stay in touch.

Real friends matter and they'll contact you or you'll contact them without Facebook if there's something worth sharing.

They never call me to tell me their baby has just made an interesting noise or that their evening meal was really great.

[Mayday]

“More explicit websites could have abused this flaw to blackmail their visitors, threatening to leak your sneaky search history to your friends.”

You mean people dont Pr0nhub in a new private window session with tracking blockers etc on?

[W.S.Gosset]

Nominative Determinism

The contiguity in one news item of "NameTest" and "Ime Archibong" is absolute genius on the part of the universe. Well done, universe, well done!

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Nominative Determinism

Lord Bong now stands threatened by the Archibong.

[Mage]

Compensation?

If it was £100 to £100 per person, you'd see more secure sites and less spam. Fines for data breaches and cold calling are barely a blip, negligible. Adverts are worse. Usually a virtual slap and told not to run an ad that probably ceased months ago.

It needs to be top management, boards and shareholders that are fined, not the companies as that is simply penalising customers. Esp. bad when it's a Council, school, health etc.

[davenewman]

Handreds of useful apps are held in a queue

At the moment, many apps used by thousands of people around the world have their access to Facebook's API suspended while Facebook manually verifies them one by one.

For example, NationBuilder.com can no longer link a campaign group's event to the even they put on their Facebook page. It used to be possible to promote the event on both places and come up with a consolidated RSVP list for people to check on the door. NationBuilder is used by hundreds of thousands of campainging groups, charities and political parties around the world to manage their volunteers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Handreds of useful apps are held in a queue

"many apps used by thousands of people around the world have their access to Facebook's API suspended"

You say that like it's a bad thing.