Facebook E-mail Leak Claims are Bogus

From PC World: It's healthy to distrust many aspects of Facebook, especially after it recently crowned itself prince of privacy problems. However, the anti-Facebook pig pile has gotten out of hand when legit publications like The Register rail against the social networking site without warrant.

The latest thrown spear accuses Facebook of leaking "thousands" of e-mail addresses unassociated with the site via the "Find a Friend" feature. Where did this report come from? One man: a blogger named Cory Watilo. So where did "thousands" come from? Nobody knows.

Watilo discovered this "bug" after he Googled his e-mail address to see where it appeared on the Web. He found Google had indexed it from its association with Facebook. However, Watilo claimed he never gave that e-mail address away.

All Facebook -- a blog devoted to guess what -- leapt on the carcass and proceeded to gnaw. Facebook then released a statement:

"We are investigating this situation but in cases we have identified, Facebook users have republished e-mails from Facebook elsewhere on the Internet, making public their own e-mail addresses. In some instances, these venues have been personal blogs or public mailing list archives such as Yahoo Groups. As a precaution, we have stopped indexing these pages in Google but cannot control users who choose to republish their e-mails in blogs or mailing list archives."

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