Facebook inserts ads into your Newsfeed. Here’s what it means
Facebook’s chief has account hacked
Yesterday the Facebook account of none other than Mark Zuckerberg got hacked. Nothing major happened. The hacker made a stupid post that was removed shortly thereafter.
“Let the hacking begin: if facebook needs money, instead of going to the backs, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011”
This message is not without meaning, however. The Securities and Exchange Commission puts a cap on how many private investors a company can have because that company must disclose all financial assets, debts and proceedings and hold an IPO so the it can be a publicly traded company. A recent deal between Facebook and Goldman Sachs will bring in hundreds of new investors in one new Goldman fund. This will mean that Facebook will be publicly traded on the NYSE or Nasdaq markets.
The comment didn’t last long but when it’s made on an account like Zuckerberg, it’ll get attention before being seen and deleted. This particular status got almost 500 comments which were dwarfed by the over 1,800 likes.
So what will Facebook do about security now? Is a username/password combination enough? What is an alternative. There has got to be another authentication method. Maybe something like banks use where it authorizes a particular machine.
People have complained about privacy and security on Facebook for a long time. Usually the buzz is about the release of your private information out to the world. This time it is about the world finding its way in. We choose to live in glass cases when we enter Facebook, for all the world to see. However, unauthorized entry needs to be addressed.
Hopefully, when even Facebook’s #1 isn’t safe, it’ll raise enough flags that they’ll get it fixed for the rest of us.
