Are Your Pictures Safe On Facebook? – Try Asking Sonam Kapoor & Paris Hilton.. | WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India

Are Your Pictures Safe On Facebook? – Try Asking Sonam Kapoor & Paris Hilton..

By Rajiv Dingra • March 26, 2008

Facebook has been the revolution that we predicted it to be last year when we compared it to orkut and stated that it would be the next orkut. And has it done exactly that or what? Facebook is the 11 most popular site in India up from 29th last year. While orkut has fallen from number 2 to number 4 according to Alexa.

Now with fame come its pitfalls be it facebook or be a celebrity. Recently facebook was in the news with regards to Sonam Kapoor the newbie bollywood actress who made her debut with the much criticized Sawaariya. Sonam’s facebook pictures which were meant to be private got leaked. And even now are all over bollywood blogs across the web. The story goes that she called her brother harsh to get the pictures removed from her profile.

And its not only our Indian Celebrities even Paris Hilton is facing the same issue with facebook. As this article states a security breach on Facebook allowed a Vancouver computer technician to find photos of a partying Paris Hilton and ones of her younger brother in private online albums intended to be accessible only to their friends.

So what exactly allows people to see other persons? Well your friends who have access to your pictures also have access to a the picture URL which isn’t protected i.e. I dont need to be a member of facebook or your friend if I have the image url!!

That means any of your friends can distribute your images to the world if only they use the picture url rather than the web page url. An example is one of my college pic on facebook which you will be able to see even without logging in by clicking on this URL

Infact the same picture can be embedded anywhere on the web using the same link. So if you are a girl be very sure who you add as a friend on facebook because your pictures aren’t as safe as it seems..

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Categories: International
Tags: facebook, online security, Paris Hilton, photo access, photo security, sonam kaporor

About the Author

Rajiv Dingra

Rajiv is a prolific blogger who has over 1000 blog posts to his credit at WATBlog. The Founder & CEO of WATMedia our parent company and the Chief Blogger at WATBlog, he has been the driving force of the WAT Evolution. Rajiv does some excellent analysis of the digital media industry in India and often brings out deep insights with his inimitable style of interviewing. Just mail rajiv|at|watblog|dot|com and it will reach him..

2 Responses to “ Are Your Pictures Safe On Facebook? – Try Asking Sonam Kapoor & Paris Hilton.. ”

manuscrypts Mar 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am

and its not just that.. have a look at this-
http://blogs.onenw.org/jon/archives/2007/11/18/photos-on-facebook-some-intellectual-property-concerns/
Rajiv Dingra Mar 27th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

Thanks manu.. thats a very interesting post.