Home Hacking News Facebook has fired an employee for bragging about access to user data

Facebook has fired an employee for bragging about access to user data

by Harikrishna Mekala

Facebook has issued a statement on Thursday about firing an employee for gloating about his access to user data to girls on Tinder. The incident came up since congressional hearings where the CEO of the company testified.

A Twitter user named Jackie Stokes (@find_evil) has posted the Tinder conversation with screenshots. In the conversation, The Security Engineer said that he has been using privileged access to stalk people on the platform.

Although the screenshot is unverified, it appears that the employee writes about being a professional stalker in search of Hackers. The Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos said that the company quickly followed up the situation and fired the employees from the company. The access to sensitive data is logged by the company’s automated systems to prevent abuse said the CSO Stamos.

“Employees who abuse these controls will be fired — period.”

Some of the company’s internal employees said there is weak access control in place at Facebook even the contractors of the company were able to access the sensitive personal information of users. There are many cases in the company that aren’t reported to the company

One former Facebook worker said when they joined the company multiple people had been terminated for abusing access to user data, including for stalking exes.

Another former Facebook employee said that they know of three cases where people were fired because they mishandled data, one of which included stalking. Typically, these incidents are not publicly reported.

As with many other businesses, data access is distributed depending on an employee’s role in a company. One source familiar with Facebook employees’ data access told Motherboard that different teams have varying levels of access, and that they can request additional access if required.

Take your time to comment on this article.

You may also like