Advice if you want to forge for Facebook : Do n’t shake the boat . A studentlost his internshipwith Facebook after provoke the companionship into update its location sharing mise en scene for Messenger .
Harvard student Aran Khanna had an internship lined up at Facebook , but Khanna was n’t going to sit around with his thumb up his butt until that hap . Instead , he get ready for his time at Facebook by creating a Chrome extension to showcase how the company pile up positioning data point using Messenger ’s Android app .
The default circumstance mean anyone using Messenger for Android was sharing their detailed emplacement data with anyone who they were in a message thread with , even if they were n’t Facebook friends .
Khanna shout the filename extension “ Marauder ’s Map ” and it did precisely what he hoped : Itdrew attentionto Facebook ’s extensive location tracking . A lot of care . People were freaked out by how closely Messengercould track your movementsif you left its default location sharing options on . Khanna wrote a Medium post describing his cause for create the app :
I decided to write this extension , because we are constantly being distinguish how we are losing privacy with the increasing digitisation of our lives , however the aftermath never seem palpable
Within a day , Facebook ask Khanna not to lecture to the press . He comply . Within two days , Facebook require Khanna to inactivate the telephone extension . He complied . Within three days , Khanna had lost his coveted internship . Nine 24-hour interval later , Facebookreleased an updatefor Messenger ’s location sharing , so even though Khanna got cheat , his jettisoned summer fizgig resulted in an actual privacy advance from Facebook .
Boston.comtalked to Khanna , who said he was ab initio tell apart that he lost the internship for scraping Facebook ’s site data . But when he point out that he ’d only used publicly uncommitted data , the party came up with another excuse , blaming the Medium post he wroteto explain why he inactivate his extension :
Khanna then received an email from Facebook ’s header of global human resources and recruiting , who told him that his Medium position did n’t meet thehigh ethical standardsexpected of interne . Khanna was tell that the proceeds was n’t the Messenger app itself , but rather the direction his blog described how Facebook collected and shared user data .
I asked Facebook about the Khanna situation . The party does n’t see its original Messenger preferences as a security measure fault at all .
“ This is revisionist account that conveniently omits a few important points . First , we began developing improvements to location sharing calendar month ago , based on input from people who use Messenger , ” a Facebook spokesperson say .
“ Second , this mapping instrument quarrel Facebook data in a way that violated our term , and those full term exist to protect people ’s privacy and safety . Despite being asked repeatedly to remove the code , the creator of this tool leave it up . This is wrong and it ’s discrepant with how we think about serve our community . ”
So in Facebook World , there was no problem to set about with , and Khanna is the scoundrel for creating a instrument that pointed out how much datum the company collect on you … Even though it updated its policy anyways . Riiiight .
It ’s just more evidence that Mark Zuckerberg ’s rim service to hackers and people who “ move tight and break things ” is just that — back talk military service .
[ Boston.comviaHarvard Journal of Technology Science ]
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