Posted by theharmonyguy in Facebook | 3 comments

Facebook Places Brings Simple Location Sharing to the Masses

Yesterday, Facebook announced a much-anticipated feature that allows users to easily post their current location on the site. The new setup, known as Facebook Places, works much like other location-based services, such as Foursquare or Gowalla, by letting users “check in” at nearby places. Geolocation providers, such as a mobile phone’s GPS, pinpoint the user, and Localeze provides the initial database of places. Eventually, users will be able to add their own locations to the Facebook map. Inside Facebook has a run-down of the overall functionality.

Facebook also allows your friends to check you in at locations, and these check-ins are indistinguishable from ones you made for yourself. In typical opt-out fashion, you can disable these check-ins via your privacy settings, and you’ll be asked about allowing them the first time a friend checks you in somewhere.

Even if you stop friends from checking you in to places, however, they can still tag you with their check-ins, similar to how friends can tag you in photos or status updates. Such tags will appear on your wall, as tagged status updates do now. You’ll be able to remove tags after the fact, but it doesn’t seem that you’ll be able to prevent friends from tagging you altogether.

Posted by theharmonyguy in General | 2 comments

Security Through Obscurity and Privacy in Practice

Yesterday, security researcher Ron Bowes published a 2.8GB database of information collected from public Facebook pages. These pages list all users whose privacy settings enable a public search listing for their profile. Bowes wrote a program to scan through the listings and save the first name, last name, and profile URI of each user (though only if their last name began with a Latin character). The database includes this data for about 171 million profiles.

On the one hand, I wasn’t entirely surprised by this news – it was only a matter of time before someone started building up such a dataset. I’ve previously mentioned that developer Pete Warden had planned on releasing public profile information for 210 million Facebook users until the company’s legal team stepped in. But nothing technical prevented someone else from attempting the task and posting data without notice. I imagine Facebook may not be too happy with Bowes’ data, but I’m not going to delve into the legal issues surrounding page scraping.

However, the event did remind me of a related issue I’ve pondered over the last few months: the notion of “security through obscurity” as it relates to privacy issues.

Posted by theharmonyguy in Facebook | 6 comments

Spam via Facebook Events Highlights Ongoing Challenges

Earlier today, I received an invitation to a Facebook event from “Giovanna” – someone I’d never heard of and certainly never added as a friend. The invite came as a bit of a surprise, since my profile was fairly locked down. While anyone could search for it, all profile information was set to “Friends Only,” and sending messages or making friend requests was limited to “Friends of Friends.” None of my friends seem to know Giovanna, and her profile is probably fake anyway.

The event title proclaimed “iPhone Testers Needed!” and might be enticing to users who want an iPhone. While the event page included more information on the supposed testing program, the invite was followed by a message from the event creator. Once you’re on the guest list for a Facebook event, the event administrators can send out Facebook messages you’ll receive, regardless of privacy settings. This particular message (which also arrived in my e-mail inbox due to notifications settings) included a link to the iPhone opportunity, which unsurprisingly was a typical “offer” page that required me to submit personal information and try out some service before I could get my fancy new phone.

Posted by theharmonyguy in General | 26 comments

Secure Your WordPress By Learning From My Mistakes

Several weeks ago, I managed to create a small ruckus on Twitter by issuing a warning about a possible WordPress vulnerability. I was rather embarrassed to eventually discover that the actual problem related to a backdoor still on my server from a previous hack. This was not my first lesson in WordPress security, but it was certainly a memorable one.

I first created this blog in 2007 after finding basic CSRF issues in the first publicly available OpenSocial application. At the time, I admittedly knew very little about application security (not that I know much now!), but I was interested in many aspects of building online social networking systems, and that led me to research security issues more and more. Over time, this blog grew and several other projects hosted on the same server fell by the wayside. As my understanding of security also grew, I found some of my sites hacked a few times, and I undertook a number of steps to secure this WordPress installation.

Posted by theharmonyguy in Facebook | 7 comments

Facebook Backtracks on Privacy Controls and Public Information

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference today announcing significant changes to the site’s privacy settings. The latest updates come after weeks of debate and criticism over Facebook’s handling of user information. Though it may take several days or weeks to roll out the new controls, an official privacy guide provides a summary of how they work. Full details are still rolling in, but certain aspects are already clear.

First, the new interface for making many changes appears to be much more streamlined. This should be a welcome change to those confused by the previous litany of options. The primary privacy page displays a table with columns for “Everyone,” “Friends of Friends,” and “Friends Only,” with rows for several categories of content. This table not only establishes settings for certain bits of profile information; it also lets users set defaults for new content shared.