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the blogosphere is talking about facebook’s source code being leaked and though most people (including myself) can’t make sense of the leaked code, it does beg an important question: what does this mean for the safety and privacy of our personal information on facebook?

here’s a comment left by brandee barker of facebook on techcrunch,

Hi Nic-

I wanted to clarify a few things in your story. Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.

Thanks to you and the TC readers for helping us out on this one.

Brandee Barker
Facebook

while this might be true, it certainly seems like an attempt by facebook to minimize the negative press from the incident. and in spite of how isolated and innocuous the issue may be, the question still remains about the potential for worse breaches in the future and what facebook is doing (and steps the site’s millions of users should take) to prevent sensitive data from being compromised.

the reason why i started using facebook some 4 years ago was because of its exclusivity and privacy settings (when compared to myspace, etc.). i have to admit that now that facebook doesn’t really distinguish itself in that regard anymore, and with the rise clutter on the site (due to the facebook open platform and the applications built on it), i find myself visiting the site less and less.