Zuckerberg wants details kept private… his details
Don Day December 3rd, 2007
A magazine for Harvard alumni - 02138 - obtained a raft of private data for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg - including his social security number, parents’ address and the name of his girlfriend. The magazine posted it… all of it - in PDF form on its website as a companion to a piece the mag ran on the origins of the site within Harvard. So Facebook sued. Some of the documents are tied up as part of a lawsuit by rival (and much smaller) website ConnectU. “One reason the court ordered certain documents’ protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud,” lawyers told Kara Swisher’s BoomTown. And from 02138’s corner: “1) It was an oversight and as soon as 02138 was alerted they took it down. 2) The parents’ address is listed in the white pages and they are the only Zuckerbergs in Dobbs Ferry. 02138 nonetheless took it down as a courtesy. 3) This was not brought to 02138’s attention by Facebook.”
The ironic twist here is Facebook’s launch of Beacon. The service collects users activities on a variety of websites. For a time, those activities were posted on the News Feed… but Facebookers freaked out… so they made it an opt-in service. Computer Associates found that FB is even collecting the data when users are logged out of Facebook OR even if they’ve opted-out.
02138’s editor Richard Bradley blogged this about the documents: “We believe that we have a legal right to post them online and that you have a legal right to read them. Meantime, spread the word that a company which plans to collect and sell personal information about 50 million people doesn’t want one magazine to do the same about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.”
10 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | December 3rd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Just another note that none of the menu links at top or the “drop us a note” link seem to work.
2. Mike | December 4th, 2007 at 8:15 am
In the past few week, Lost Remote has been doing a lot more stories like this one that have nothing at all to do with the television industry. I admit that these are good posts that I happen to find interesting, but what’s the deal? Is Lost Remote trying to be LifeHacker or TechCrunch?
3. Anonymous | December 4th, 2007 at 9:07 am
This is the reason I left facebook over a year ago: I felt that my privacy was being violated. Yes, I went through withdrawal for about a week, but then I got over it.
4. Anonymous | December 4th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Correction, none of the “?page_id=” query string URLs work. The Jobs and Feed pages work.
5. discreet_chaos | December 4th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
@Anonymous 1 & 3: Whenever you’ve posted your “top menu doesn’t work” comments, I’ve always clicked them to satisfy my own curiousity and they’ve always worked. Even this time, when I first saw the comment and again, when you (or someone) posted a follow-up.
I don’t know what’s happening and I have no control beyond that of a reader, but just in case Cory or someone is concerned, I thought that I’d say that they’re working for me and I might suggest that you clear your cache, or perhaps comment with more information about your browser because the problem doesn’t appear to be widespread.
Just trying to help….
6. discreet_chaos | December 4th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Err… Obviously my reply was targeted toward Commenter(s) 1 & 4, but since it was the first and third “Anonymous”, I guess that I got confused.
7. Anonymous | December 5th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I’m on a different computer on a different network, and still, the ?page_id= links don’t work. They take me to a page that claims to be the linked URL but really is just the main page.
I’ve tried this on IE7 and IE6 so far.
8. discreet_chaos | December 5th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
@Anonymous: I mostly use IE7 and as I said, I’ve yet to see a problem. Of course, I’m a nobody, but maybe you could try a hard refresh after the link loads with an F5 and if that does the trick, go up under and make sure that it’s looking for a new version “Automatically”.
Tools/Internet Options/General/Browsing History/Settings
9. Anonymous | December 6th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Nope. So when you click “About” you get the about page?
10. Anonymous | December 6th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Firefox doesn’t work, either.
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