patrick.net

In a story that shows just how much detail Facebook has on the lives of its users, a new report says that Facebook fired 52 employees who were involved in obtaining location data of women they were romantically interested in.

Male programmers were able to view women’s whereabouts, personal messages, deleted photographs, and more because of their access to user data through Facebook’s internal systems.

This story follows an engineer who was on vacation with a woman in Europe. After a fight, the woman left the room they were sharing. The Facebook developer then used the location information he had access to locate her down at a hotel nearby.

In another case, following their date, a woman stopped replying to a Facebook engineer’s messages. He then surreptitiously spied on her using the position. He had exposure to years of private Facebook messages with contacts, events attended, photos shared, and postings she had remarked about or clicked on. He could also track her real-time location because she has Facebook installed.