• Facebook experienced a breach that exposed the birthdays of its members.

Relevance to Business Activities:

• security - technical safeguards considerations in the context of online community and collaboration:
• a glitch in a test version of Facebook's website inadvertently:
• exposed the birthdays of Facebook's 80 million members.
• the bug was discovered by a technology consultant who was examining Facebook's new design, and:
• noticed the birth dates of some of his privacy-obsessed acquaintances popping up when they should have been hidden;
• does not think that this was a serious data breach, but that it should serve as a warning to people who put information on social networks.
• Facebook allows users to control who sees their private information, such as a birth date, but:
• the new privacy page essentially ignored the privacy setting to withhold the date of birth.
• in November, 2008 Facebook scrambled to fix its Beacon ad system after a researcher discovered that:
• the system was collecting data on users' online behavior, despite Facebook's assurances to the contrary.

• breach response  considerations:
• in a statement, Facebook said that for a brief period of time, a small number of users were able to access a private beta of Facebook's new site design meant only for developers, and:
• some users had their birthdays revealed due to the bug.
• the company could not say exactly:
• how long the data was exposed; or
• how many people viewed the beta website.
• the bug was patched within hours of the discovery of the breach.

Source Document:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148527/facebook_bug_leaks_members_birthday_data.html