Facebook Image Privacy

["Larry Seltzer" <larry () larryseltzer com>]

I recently blogged about something interesting in Facebook privacy
(http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2010/01/is_facebook_privacy_a_sham
.php - hat tip to F-Secure): If you upload an image and set the
permissions to "Only Me" it gives you a publically-accessible URL
through which anyone can access the image.

 

A Facebook employee entered a comment that said that only the user who
posted the image gets that URL from them, so therefore it's private. The
URL
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4722564&l=c56ff5065a&id=675398046
for example) isn't especially obvious, although the last "&id=675398046"
is my user id, which is public in Facebook.

 

The URL may not be obvious, but it's on a publically-accessible site so
it's at least a little cheesy to call it private. 

 

What do you think?

 

Larry Seltzer
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine

larry_seltzer () ziffdavis com 

http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/
<http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/> 

 

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