Fresh security fears for Facebook users

THE revelation that a security consultant collected the names and profile URLs for 171 million Facebook accounts from publicly available information has yet again raised concerns about what is private and what is not private on the world’s most popular social networking site.

Ron Bowes, the consultant who collected the accounts, uploaded the data as a torrent file, allowing anyone with a computer connection to download the data.

Facebook says no data was “stolen,” the site was not hacked, and that this is how the site is supposed to work.