Technology Blog

An Internet security consultant has collected and published the personal details of 100 million Facebook users. Ron Bowes used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings. The list contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. Bowes said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information. The file spread rapidly throughout the Internet. The list was being distributed on Pirate Bay and was downloaded by over 1,000 users. One user that goes by the name of lusifer69 said the list was "awesome and a little terrifying."Facebook said in a statement to BBC News that the information in the list was already freely available online. "People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want," the statement read."In this case, information that people have agreed to make p