U.S.A.
Everyone Else
Health
Science
Business
Technology
Sports
Video Games
Entertainment
Future
Humour
NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > MARK ZUCKERBERG HACKING INTO EVERYONE’S EMAILS
MARK ZUCKERBERG HACKING INTO EVERYONE’S EMAILS
March 18 2010
Palo Alto, CA – Web and business observers have for the last few years marvelled at the rise of Facebook. The company began its life of course as a small university network and has quickly evolved into a billion dollar business that, if pundits are
correct, could change the internet and the way we communicate with each other forever. Like many big companies the hype surrounding the company is likely much larger than the ultimate reality. Such hype has surrounded other companies, such as MySpace and Yahoo, and their fates may presage the future of Facebook.
Regardless of the end results, the rise of the business and the related success of its founders has been, while not unique, remarkable. Of course the person who has most benefited from the rise is Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and ostensible founder of the company. His profile as the golden boy of Facebook and web business in general has been unchallenged in recent years, though not free of controversy. Chief amongst those issues has been an ongoing lawsuit by former partners which claim, amongst other things, that Zuckerberg stole the core ideas for Facebook. Being big of course means being in firing line, something Zukerberg and Facebook have grown used to however new allegations may bring the greatest criticism and greatest crisis the company has yet seen. At issue is privacy and the allegations that Zuckerberg has been hacking into email accounts of every one of the site’s 400 million users.
“Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson. Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com,” wrote the Business Insider regarding similar hacking incidents early in the life of the site. “If the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them.”
Of course such early espionage, though very much illegal, are not unknown in the history of business and might even be forgiven considering that Zuckerberg himself was a nineteen-year fledgling CEO, but it his continued behaviour that has many concerned.
“Facebook above all else is an information service. Yes, they provide the ability to 
connect with old friends and family members and share pictures and the like, but ultimately they are collecting that information and using it to sell you products. This is what companies do, they seek new and better ways to make money,” said Scrape TV Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “In the web age, information is the commodity and companies like Facebook, or Google, or even you ISP are collecting that information, your information in order to make a profit. Because of that access, it’s not altogether surprising that privacy violations occur though companies have taken great steps to mitigate such abuses, or at least we thought they had.”
Facebook employees have been terminated in the past for illicitly accessing personal profiles of users, though Zuckerberg is unlikely to face such action.
“It’s really not so incredible that someone with this level of access would be able to exploit his position, what is amazing however is that he has so much time to do this. You would think that the CEO of a major company would have limited free time but apparently that isn’t the case at Facebook. Accessing a few hundred email addresses is one thing, but from what I’ve heard he’s well over two hundred million, quite a feat really,” continued Kevins. “But I guess that’s the kind of personality that creates this kind of company, obsessive, brilliant, and dedicated. Ultimately, those are the qualities that led to Facebook happening so it’s not surprising that they bled outwards, it’s the nature of the beast and I expect that this kind of behaviour will continue as Facebook’s reach continues to grow.”
According to insiders, Zuckerberg hopes to hit 300 million by June of this year.
Martin Philton, Technology Correspondent
NEWS > TECHNOLOGY > MARK ZUCKERBERG HACKING INTO EVERYONE’S EMAILS
LINK IT! http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Technology/pages-2/Mark-Zuckerberg-hacking-into-everyones-emails-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html |
TWEET IT! http://bit.ly/btwx1v |
BOOKMARK IT!  
|
|---|
Scrape Store
