"Any amount Facebook might hope to gain from this suit is surely outweighed by the damage to its already poor reputation for privacy. More than anything else the lawsuit emphasises that Facebook is an insecure place to post personal information."

So, if someone hacks in successfully you're vilified for not stopping it, and are insecure.

And if someone fails to hack in successfully, and you stopped it..... you're vilified for being insecure anyway?

1. Compare this article, which criticizes Facebook for letting people know about attempts to breach its security with the El Reg article criticizing Apple for keeping security vulnerabilities secret.

What does El Reg advocate? Secrecy or openess?

2. Would El Reg advocate that banks not prosecute those who attempt to break into bank vaults?

It is generally desirable that those we trust with our data attempt to penalize and prosecute those who would steal our data.

They will be mining it for private pr0n. I have seen this done with Photobucket... some hacker was posting up various naughty images he had located through a buggy back door. All them photos that the Photobucket users thought were "private"... were being made very very public.

This same hacker then mentioned that he had a pr0n company nicking the photos from his site to post up on theirs... and so the chain continues.

I still don't understand why anyone would trust a third party with such private photos!!

me thinks th'reg is trying to say that the public will view the attempt as the act, believing that the attack must have been successful,else why prosecute?

publicity , good or bad , affects public image. jonny mnemonic q public will hear: "###### #### prosecute ###### hacked facebook ##### personal data ################################[ illegal actions by porn co.]########### [names] ############# second time#########"

and think " omigod! like, i'm totally screwed because facebook is so , like, insecure!"

result: more bad press..............bitch.

"More than anything else the lawsuit emphasises that Facebook is an insecure place to post personal information."

How exactly? As far as I can see there was an *attempt* to access data. Might as well report that I tried to hack into a mate's account. I used the cunning tactic of trying a few random passwords but none of them are right. I did try, however, so look how insecure Facebook is! Shock! Horror!

"The suit also names Ming Wu and six as yet unnamed defendants."

Dunt name em then duzzit?