MySpace Private Profiles Aren’t That Private
Recently Ashyley of CyberNet News wrote about how someone else can view a MySpace profile’s picture even if the profile was set to private. Apparently, MySpace has fixed this issue.
But, a few weeks back I came across an interesting post at SlickMania about another site named MySpacePrivateProfile.com. As the name implies, all you need to do is paste the friend id from a MySpace profile and it lets you view private pictures from anyone! Says a lot about MySpace security, huh? The sad part is, you don’t even need a MySpace account or be logged in to view someone else’s private pictures!
I didn’t want to link to a site that couldn’t have been designed with good intentions and give them some link juice! It already has a Google PR 2 & Alexa ranking in the 120,000s. It is indicative of the traffic this site is attracting.
I did want to make sure my readers were aware of this security hole and the false sense of security the ‘private’ feature in MySpace might give you. If you have a MySpace account and have pictures that you think are private, think again.
A good rule of thumb would be to just not to trust any site with pictures or videos that you wouldn’t want someone else to see, however private that website proclaims those to be.
With a lot of people coming here to find out how to unblock a blocked website and searching for information on myspace, bebo, etc., I figured it might be worthwhile to share this information here.
Even if you don’t use this, spread the word to anyone you know who uses MySpace.
Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!
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Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Noone should upload pictures anywhere that they truly intend to keep private. When you upload your stuff to someone else’s servers, you are transferring ownership to them typically (its in the TOS).
To me, though, it is just common sense. Unfortunately, kids these days often don’t seem to have that. Hopefully they heed your warning!
Kyle Eslick’s last blog post..Expand Your Blog’s Reach By Increasing User Interaction
January 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Absolutely Kyle! It definitely is common sense but people get the false sense of security with words like ‘private profile’ which is dangerous.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Thanks for keeping us updated on this one K. While I’m not a social networking user myself, this makes a nice change from all the reports of Facebook security leaks
January 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Troy.. that’s true. I guess any of these popular social networking tools is going to face it’s own share of security leaks when people share so much of their personal information online. MySpace is still booming inspite of better alternatives and I know a few people personally who still use it.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Thanks for the news!
Kyle James’s last blog post..Social Survey: Facebook
January 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
You are welcome, Kyle. I am enjoying reading your Social Survey series and off to read the Facebook part.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I guess nothing is secure nowadays. Even i orkut , you can see anyone’s private photos by using scripts.
Madhur Kapoor’s last blog post..The Digs’em wordpress theme by Garry Conn
January 29th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Madhur, you are right. None is an exception!
February 1st, 2008 at 3:47 am
K,
Great information and advice for those who use MySpace! (Apparently it turns out it isn’t really their space at all!)
Thanks for sounding the alarm!
Jeanne
February 1st, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Jeanne, you are absolutely welcome! This kind of information unfortunately doesn’t trickle down to the regular users of MySpace. So I guess every bit of effort helps even if I reached just a couple.
K’s last blog post..ShanKri-la Gets a Makeover
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
K,
Definitely! (By the way, I stumbled this.)
Jeanne
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Jeanne, really appreciate it!
February 18th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Just FYI, this trick won’t work if there profile is set to “private” only the profiles that are public. All this trick is doing is pulling down accessible information
February 19th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Joe. thanks for bringing that up and sharing it with us.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I am a member of facebook and orkut. While orkut has a similar locked feature (which makes pictures accessible only to friends), it hasn’t been broken yet.
Thousands of orkut scraps circulate with a link to a script that would supposedly unlock pictures. Unfortunately, the script is just a javascript that replicates this scrap (kind of like writing on the wall in facebook) onto everyone in your friends list, and not unlocking anything
The script thus keeps spreading from scrapbook to scrapbook, since everyone wants to see locked stuff. You might want to check if the myspace unlock is something similar that does not really unlock, but keeps spreading by a malicious script running from it. Google pagerank is easy as long as you show up in results on top, but question is whether it works, and whether it poses a risk.
cloud9ine’s last blog post..Hardees - the inevitable breakfast switchover
May 24th, 2008 at 6:24 am
It’s no big deal really because if you notice, if the person have the account set to private, the pictures won’t show up. It’s basically providing pictures from profiles that almost anyone can see even without this “service”.
I guess the only way this is useful is for those who have public profiles with a private folder. I haven’t tried it out yet, but most likely that’s how it works.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
That is an amazing piece of information. Never would have thought about it. In my industry (I run a martial arts school) I run into myspace problems with kids all the time. Threats and such are always happening there. this just opens more possibilities for harassment.
And yes it’s nearly impossible to get kids not to post private things online. Unfortunately their priorities are out of whack.
I’ll stumble and digg this article. It’s a good one.
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