Anonymous Facebook Whistleblower Reveals More Privacy Issues With Social Networking Site

Facebook has had somewhat of a shadowy reputation of late. For example, Facebook created a new terms of service agreement that debuted early last year that would essentially give Facebook perpetual ownership over member information (like photographs). Needless to say, many Facebook users were not happy and the company was quickly forced to redact the new policy. Most recently, an anonymous Facebook employee came forward to describe more privacy issues with the popular social networking site.

According to the unnamed whistleblower, everything a user does on the site is permanently stored and saved and completely accessible to Facebook staff members. However, that isn’t the biggest claim that the employee made: he also asserted that whenever a user does anything on the site–including uploading a photo, clicking on someone’s profile, updating your status, or changing your profile information–the information is recorded on Facebook’s servers. According to recent reports, Facebook argued that this practice is "widely known" and that "if you don’t want Facebook collecting information about you, don’t give it to them." Moreover, the most troubling claim in the recent interview is that Facebook employees have a single master password and are able to log into any user account. The whistleblower also claims that two employees were fired because of inappropriate use of the master password.

Nevertheless, Facebook’s PR team is dismissing the whistleblower’s claims, stating:

This piece contains the kind of inaccuracies and misrepresentations you would expect from something sourced ‘anonymously,’ and we’ll leave it at that.

While the new information might not stop you from utilitizing the Facebook website, it might make you a little more wary about sharing certain personal information on the internet.