contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID.

Isn't the ID part of the URL anyways? So he collected names from public Facebook profiles. Wow!

he's no worse than any search engine, haven't they have done the same thing?

These users have chosen to share the info so I don't understand why one commenter in the story said it was "awesome and a little terrifying", it was already there, just because someone put it in one list is no big thing.

I agree. How is this any different from a search engine crawling your site? If you put your personal information on a public site then you can't be shocked when someone comes arcoss it.

Magnets and jatar are, of course, right.

But, then, too many people on Facebook who do not realize that Google, Bing and Yahoo can find what they post on Facebook. It's Facebook, not the internet, many believe.

File this under the same kind of news that says to lose weight, eat less. Well, duh! But, does everyone know that? No. So, is it "news?" Yeah, it is big news to many.

The torrent is attracting hundreds of downloads

Wow! HUNDREDS?! </sarcasm>

This is a story because the vast majority of users of social sites do not know that their information is crawled. This is the issue.

They post their inner thoughts, their lifestyle details, information which can readily be used for identity theft without realising that the information can be garnered and stored forever.

You can state caveat emptor if you wish but it still does not make it right.

What really makes Facebook interesting, for me anyway, is the future of politics. Do you think someone like Bill Clinton would have been elected if Facebook had been around when he was in college and all his swingin' activities were in photo albums for everyone to see? I believe all the crazy stuff going on Facebook today will be used against people down the road....and I think social sites in general will fade out whe people realize they DON'T want all their personal information and exploits available to everyone.

At least the search engines will drop stuff eventually if it is removed from the site.

Rogue archiving that doesn't allow the content owner to remove their content is a problem.

I'd add that simply because content appears on the Web that does not mean that anyone can appropriate it for their own use. In almost all cases, someone owns that content - the author, the site owner, etc.

Asserting that ownership globally may be problematic, of course.

"..simply because content appears on the Web that does not mean that anyone can appropriate it for their own use"

Factual lists of public information are not protected.

Maybe his publishing this data will actually wake a few people up to how vulnerable their data is online. 99.99% of users likely have very little knowledge of how their info can be crawled and scraped and unfortunately, outside of the tech community, likely very few care.

This made the national TV news in the UK; with users warned to "check their privacy settings".

>>Factual lists of public information are not protected.

It's not clear that user-created profiles or other user-generated content would fall into this category.

>> that user-created profiles or other user-generated content

Only the names and profile URLs! That is much less than what Google and other SEs publish.

Good linkbait though. He made it even onto TV.