Facebook

The Giant Security Hole That Facebook Doesn’t Care About

You probably assume hackers are using all sorts of devious viruses, obscure scripts, “exploits” (whatever that means, right?) and other complex means to break into accounts. But often the means of entry are stupid simple. Facebook has a huge one—and doesn’t care about fixing it. There’s a basic premise here that isn’t a Facebook problem,…

A Facebook Privacy Flaw Gave a Hacker Access to Every Single Account

You probably don’t know Nir Goldshlager, but up until recently, he sure could have known you. That’s because Nir discovered a major privacy flaw in Facebook’s OAuth, the system developers use to access all sorts of information every time you hit that innocent, little “allow” button. Nir gained access to virtually anyone’s entire Facebook account.…

Facebook’s Providing Free (Or Cheap) Data Around the World—For Facebook Apps

Facebook has announced that, over the coming months, it will be partnering with 18 network operators in 14 countries to provide users with free or discounted data for some of its mobile apps. Specifically, it’ll let users of Messenger for Android and iOS, and Facebook for Every Phone (the Java app for feature phones), save…

You can now call friends directly from Facebook’s iOS app. And habitual drunk Facebookers everywhere shudder in unison.

Having Strangers Draw Your Facebook Profile Pic Is Freaking Awesome

Here’s something we should all totally get behind: strangers drawing strangers Facebook profile pictures. Called Selfless Portraits, it’s an incredible art project that allows random people to draw other random people’s profile pic and collects them all in a gallery of side-by-side portraits. Some of them are wonderful. Others are hilarious. All of them are…

Facebook Hates Old People

Congrats, you turned 100. You lived through the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and hammer pants, but Facebook doesn’t give a crap. Apparently, it stops counting age at 99. What’s with this disgusting ageism, Facebook? A local news station in Detroit spotted a lady named Marguerite Johnson who is 104, but whose Facebook…

Police Informed a Mother About Her Son’s Death Over Facebook

On January 24th, Ricky Lamb was hit by a car and killed. His body sat in the morgue until Valentine’s Day, though, because the incompetent local police only contacted the family over Facebook. It took a month for Lamb’s mother to find the message. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the ordeal of Anna Lamb-Creasey, who had…

Bloomberg and Reuters claim that the recent attacks targeting Facebook, Apple and Twitter originate from Eastern Europe. https://gizmodo.com/report-this-is-the-site-hacking-all-those-companies-u-5985445

Report: This Is the Site Hacking All Those Companies (Updated)

This might be a clue about the hacking going on the past week or so. According the All Things D, a site called iPhonedevSdk (do not visit this site; it’s malicious), is responsible for the hacks of Facebook and Apple. The site reportedly used a Java vulnerability, using code built into the HTML of the…

Police Raided a Guy’s House Because He Posted a Picture of a Toy Mortar on Facebook

The British police officers that raided Ian Driscoll’s Tewkesbury home found the mortar they were looking for. They just didn’t expect it to be plastic. Or a model. “The Action Man looked a bit like me, so I decided to put it as my Facebook picture,” Driscoll, who makes models for a living, explained to…

Mark Zuckerberg and Nas Hung Out (!!!???)

In a social scene that looks like someone spun a roulette wheel, The Zuck, Nas, and mega-rich Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz were all in a room for some reason. And it was all Instagrammed. Somehow, the nerd-on-celebrity-gangbang scene—snapped to Instagram by Rap Genius co-founder, Yale Stereotype, and Vyvanse-abuser Mahbod Moghadam—isn’t as painful as you’d…

Facebook Got Hacked Last Month and Is Just Telling You Now (Update: Facebook Comment)

Facebook just announced that it was hacked last month in a short statement on its website. Apparently, an unknown number employees visited a compromised developer site and were infected with malware. Facebook’s being very cagey about all this, but we’ve been able to scrounge up some details. According to the statement, the company reacted swiftly…

Uhh, Bang With Friends Is a Sexiness Score for Your Facebook?

Even if it oozes the desperation of sex-starved C++ nerds, the theory behind Bang With Friends is genius. A service that helps people who know each other hook up—if and only if both parties are interested in getting jiggy. It’s funny! And as Mark Wilson at CoDesign points out, the service has lured in a…

Facebook Wins Legal Battle Which Means Europeans Have to Use Real Names Online

Facebook’s crusade against pseudonyms and nicknames has just won out. After a German court ruled Facebook couldn’t force people to use their real, full names, a successful appeal from Facebook in another German court rules it can. The result? You’re stuck using your real name on Facebook. The court ruled that, as Facebook’s EU headquarters…

Facebook Now Lets You Pay To Promote Your Friends’ Posts

You can already pay to promote your own Facebook posts, and now you can cough up the cash to promote the content your friends are posting, too. You don’t even need your friend’s permission, so go forth and dig up all their embarrassing old photos from college. You’ll see a promote button alongside the like,…

When Facebook and Google staff are doing the Harlem Shake, you know it’s time for that meme to die.

13 Lazy Christians Giving Up Facebook for Lent

Lent begins today, commemorating the story of Jesus and some friends trapped in the desert, starving, hot, miserable, and tempted by Satan. A reminder of piety. It’s also a depressing reminder of how cripplingly addicted we are to Facebook. The idea behind Lent, if I’ve read this Wikipedia entry correctly, is giving up a vice…

Facebook Is Being Sued By a Dead Man

Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer is suing Facebook over its ‘Like’ button. Companies get sued all the time! Why do we care? Well, aside from having an A+ name, van Der Meer is actually… dead. He passed away in 2004, just as Facebook was beginning to take over the world. Why is…

Facebook Is Working on a Ticket Buying Feature (Updated)

Buy tickets for the Rihanna tour on Facebook? Maybe soon. Facebook is reportedly testing a feature that would let you do just that. Said feature has been spotted in the Netherlands and Israel, meaning Facebook is testing in select markets before going wide. Clicking a “buy tickets” button on an event page, though, takes you…

Charles Darwin Is Helping Facebook Reinvent the Emoticon

Emoticons have wholly integrated into modern language. Tweens communicate in nothing but nonsensical strings of emojis, and artists use them to create entire tales. But even with widespread use, emoticons’ emotions have remained relatively 1-dimensional since their inception. As BuzzFeed learned, Facebook has enlisted Matt Jones, a current Pixar story illustrator and former Wallace and…