Will security become Facebooks Achilles heel?
Editor’s note: Aaron Greenspan claims ownership of the idea for Facebook. It’s hard to go anywhere–to work, to the store, to the movies, really anywhere–without hearing about Facebook. Its popularity is nearly unprecedented, making it a success to be envied in the eyes of many businesspeople, and in particular, software developers. Yet one area that Facebook has arguably not been successful in is that of protecting its users’ privacy. Although the issue has been raised time and again by users of the site, first with the introduction of the news feed and again with the introduction of its Beacon ad targeting technology, the company seems to be perpetually fumbling the ball. One starts to wonder: what’s so difficult about keeping information private? It’s not that it was meant to be; the concept of Web-based social networking was never preordained as a privacy nightmare waiting to happen. Nothing is written into the precepts of graph theory dictating that civil liberties must be violat
