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Zuckerberg takes hit from Facebook security flaws
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Zuckerberg takes hit from Facebook security flaws

Site founder's private photos posted online

  • Mark Zuckerberg
    jdlasica/FlickrMark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg's private photos — of him at home with girlfriend Priscilla Chan, meeting Obama ... holding a live chicken by the legs — have leaked onto the internet following the discovery of yet another security Facebook flaw.

Fourteen images of Zuckerberg were shared with image site Imgur, under the headline "It's time to fix those security flaws facebook..."

PCMag.com reported that:

Zuckerberg's private images were apparently shared in an effort to demonstrate the effect could have on Facebook users, many of whom have complained about Facebook's privacy policies. Zuckerberg, an advocate for sharing content across his network and others, has also made his some of his Google+ content private — although Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have taken the same tack.

The glitch comes a week after the Federal Trade Commission accused Facebook of engaging in "unfair and deceptive" practices and ordered the social network that requires it to respect the privacy wishes of its users and agree to government audits of its privacy practices.

The commission's order stemmed from December 2009, when Facebook, "without warning its users or seeking consent, made public information that users had deemed to be private on their Facebook pages," The New York Times reported.

The latest breach appears to have first been posted about on a body building forum, "along with step-by-step instructions on how to obtain access to the private photos of any Facebook user," according to The Sydney Morning Herald:

Facebook claimed that only a limited number of users were affected for a limited time, according to ZDNet, with specifying who — or if Zuckerberg was one of them.

Upon discovering the security flaw, Facebook said it "immediately disabled the system" and would only "return functionality" once it had confirmed a fix, the SMH reported.

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

NYPD in trouble over Facebook page

The NYPD now has more to worry about than just the Occupy movement.

According to The New York Times, the NYPD has come under fire recently after it was revealed that several officers were linked with a certain Facebook group.

The group is mired with racist comments about the West Indian parade in Brooklyn.

"The comments in the online group... were at times so offensive," reported the Times, "that some participants warned others to beware how their words might be taken in a public setting open to Internal Affairs 'rats.'"

The Atlantic Wire reported that the group, called "No More West Indian Day Detail," had posts with comments including:

  • "I say have the parade one more year, and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out."
  • "Welcome to the Liberal NYC... where if the cops sneeze too loud they get investigated for excessive force but the ‘civilians’ can run around like savages and there are no repercussions."
  • "Why is everyone calling this a parade. It’s a scheduled riot."
  • "Bloodbath!!! The worst detail to work."

According to Slate, the group started in September and grew to 1,200 members. The page included comments from 150 people. Sixty percent of the Facebook accounts in the group matched the names of NYPD officers.

When a lawyer from the Brooklyn Defender Services came across the page, he made a digital copy, and handed it over to the Times. The department said that the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau would be looking into the issue. 

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