Facebook rescinds internship from student who exposed app privacy flaws: Harvard student Aran Khanna

[Pretiacruento]

[b]Facebook rescinds internship from student who exposed app privacy flaws[/b]
Source: [url=http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/13/facebook-internship-harvard-student-messenger-app-privacy]The Guardian[/url]
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[quote][img]http://i.imgur.com/fiPpPkd.jpg[/img]
[i]Aran Khanna said he created the app as a public service to show consequences of unintentionally sharing data. Facebook fixed the Messenger app flaw shortly after the app was taken down.[/i]

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A Harvard University student says he lost his internship at Facebook after he launched a browser application from his dorm room that exploited privacy flaws on the company’s mobile messenger.

Aran Khanna’s app – called Marauder’s Map in tribute to the Harry Potter books – showed that users of Facebook Messenger could pinpoint the exact locations of people they were talking to.

He told Boston.com he created the app to show the consequences of unintentionally sharing data and thought he was doing a public service.

“I didn’t write the program to be malicious,” he said.

Khanna launched the app from his dorm room in May and said 85,000 people downloaded it.

Days later, Facebook asked Khanna to disable it. A week after that, Facebook released a Messenger app update addressing the flaw.[/quote]
Well... I am Jack's lack of surprise.

[theevilldeadII]

- sNip -

[Bradyns]

Honestly, it was quite reckless to release an app that exploited the flaw, even if the intention was to raise awareness of the flaw in question.

[3picFail]

Exploiting anything at a place you work tends to get you fired, he went about addressing the problem in the wrong way.

[garbage ellie]

he should have just reported it instead of writing an app for it...

[BuffaloBill]

Stupid. Just stupid. At best he should've used it privately to show FB how it works, but not put it online.

[Hunter-AP]

I feel like this issue was addressed months ago when articles came out detailing that the Messenger app had the ability to track all users, record audio and video without any notification to the user (except rooted Android users who simply removed the app's permission to do so).

[Pretiacruento]

[QUOTE=huntingrifle;48455224]I feel like this issue was addressed months ago when articles came out detailing that the Messenger app had the ability to track all users, record audio and video without any notification to the user (except rooted Android users who simply removed the app's permission to do so).[/QUOTE]

Yea, I thought the same thing too... I did a double-take on the article date