Facebook founder: I can have privacy, you can't
- TAGS:Beacon, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, privacy
- IT TOPICS:Internet, Networking, Security
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is no friend of people's privacy, as his controversial privacy-invading Beacon technology shows. But when it comes to his own personal privacy, he's sent attack-dog lawyers to try and force a Web site to pull unflattering information about him.
Zuckerberg has long been hounded by charges that the success of Facebook stems from sleazy business practices. He has been sued by several former fellow Harvard students who claim that Zuckerberg stole their ideas and code to found Facebook.
The magazine 02138 (it refers to Harvard's Zip code) has published a revealing, in-depth article about Zuckerberg and Facebook that delves into his past, and into the dispute over the alleged stolen code. The article includes documents from the lawsuit against him, and even includes his Harvard application. Zuckerberg's lawyers tried to force the site to pull the documents, because they had been ordered sealed. But the reporter doing the piece got the papers merely by showing up at First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, and asking for them.
A judge ruled against Zuckerberg's lawyers, and the article and documents remain online. I suggest you head over and read the piece. It doesn't paint a very pretty picture.
Zuckerberg, by the way, was forced to back down about Facebook's privacy-invading Beacon technology, but the technology is still a big privacy-invader. As Computerworld reports, that technology is even more dangerous to people's privacy than anyone imagined, even as it's been amended.
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