Via CNET -
Vancouver-based computer technician Byron Ng, who likes to prod social networks for holes and other errors, stumbled across a way to learn more about Facebook users than you're supposed to be able to--prompting Facebook to suspend the Top Friends application late on Wednesday.
Until Facebook suspended the Top Friends app, created by Slide, anyone could browse partial profiles of anyone else on Facebook who had added Top Friends to their page. CNET News.com confirmed that the security hole exposed the birthdays, gender, and relationship status of strangers, including Facebook executives, the wife of Google co-founder Larry Page, and one profile that seemed to belong to Paris Hilton that used her middle name "Whitney."
Basically, the app was not obeying the privacy settings specified by the user, enabling anyone with the know-how to bypass the security once they obtained someone's Facebook ID number.
"We expect third-party apps to follow the rules the users set," Ben Ling, director of platform product management at Facebook, said in a phone interview Wednesday. "With Top Friends, the privacy settings of the user were not being respected according to the privacy policy terms of use."
Less than six hours after CNET News.com contacted Facebook on Wednesday about the matter, the company decided to suspend the Top Friends app, meaning no one can use it, Ling said. The company is also conducting an ongoing investigation into the matter, he said.
Meanwhile, another third-party app that Ng disclosed a security hole in, Super Wall, was fixed. With Super Wall, which was created by RockYou, no personal data is revealed, but anyone could have viewed the Super Wall of any other user, even if they were not friends.
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