thepiratebay.org

Screen capture of Facebook directory download

• Share
• Print
• Font:
• +
• -

He said he discovered the top first name in the list was Michael, followed by John, David, Chris and Mike. The top surnames were Smith, Johnson, Jones, Williams and Brown.

A privacy expert expressed concern at the implications of Bowes' actions. Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, told the BBC that some Facebook users "did not understand the privacy settings
and this is the result."

"Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it," he told the BBC. "It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this
magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted
with negligence."

'A little terrifying'
Some users of Pirate Bay shared his concerns.

"This is awesome and a little terrifying," lusifer69 wrote on the site. And another, Porkster, said: "I don't think this is a hack, but a collection from public domain info that people have shared. The
importance of the info is structuring it and allowing someone to search
or compute the data."

However, jak322 said: "I've got to say, who cares. All the info here is already in the public domain, is not sensitive and as a developer I already have access to what could be deemed personal and private data
through the Facebook API."

In a statement emailed to msnbc.com, Facebook agreed, saying the information on the list was already available online.

"People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want," it said.

"Our responsibility is to respect their wishes. In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher. This information already exists in Google, Bing,
other search engines, as well as on Facebook," the statement added.

"No private data is available or has been compromised. Similar to a phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook. If someone does not
want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people
not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any
information with applications.".