What if Facebook partnered with Blackberry?
Facebook has gone under scrutiny lately for its security practices. With nearly a quarter of the world’s population now on Facebook, Facebook’s security may be at risk. According to The Guardian, a hacker was able to exploit a flaw and have created a hack to collect thousands of names, pictures, and locations from Facebook.
While this may not be a total compromise of Facebook’s security, there is a feature that enables users to search for other users by a phone number. This feature could allow a potential hacker to generate a script that uses Facebook’s API to create thousands of phone numbers and perform automatic searches which in turn is a search algorithm that could be used to hack Facebook accounts. By running a script like this, someone could potentially gather information to discover names, locations, and other details associated with a Facebook account.
So, is this something the general public should be alarmed about? Possibly. While many people post up their location, family photos, phone numbers, favorite shopping locations, etc. they be unaware that this information could be used against them. Bits of personal information could be piece milled together for possible identity theft. While this discovery may be harmless to many, users should make sure they keep their phone number private on Facebook. Phone numbers could be sold to various marketing companies who may hound users day and night and the victims may never know how their number was distributed.
Why BlackBerry?
While personal identifiable information (PII) may be up to the individual user to protect, the security of Facebook itself may be improved if they were to partner with BlackBerry. Why BlackBerry? BlackBerry may have lost its popularity among the masses that it once had however; the Defense Department still uses BlackBerry devices because of its security advancements.
BlackBerry has already partnered with Samsung to offer a higher level of security to Android devices. The reason being that the end to end encryption BlackBerry has to offer can be used for Samsung’s Knox system for additional layers of encryption support. This move is a large picture push with Samsung so they can bring their devices up to the government’s stringent security standards.
What does this have to do with Facebook?
How many status updates and selfies eventually make it from a mobile phone or device to Facebook? According to Digitaltrends.com, 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day! This could be a hacker’s playground if they were able to find an exploit into user’s accounts. However; a partnership between BlackBerry, Facebook could mean additional layers of security to make their user’s data safe and protected. With The BlackBerry/Samsung partnership, Android users would benefit from that security by default.
If you are reading this you probably have a Facebook account yourself. Wouldn’t you feel more secure in knowing your account would be much more protected with the power of BlackBerry behind it? Just a few years ago the HTC Status became the first smartphone in the US to have a physical “Share to Facebook” button which enabled the user to share photos, status updates, websites, and just about anything else by the press of a button. This partnership could bring that Facebook button to nearly every Android based Smartphone through their connection with BlackBerry.
Unfortunately, high profile hacks are growing more common these days which puts users at risk. While Facebook expresses concerns over user security, they are still just as vulnerable as anyone else to attacks and often put it on their users to protect their own data by limiting the amount of PII they distribute. However; Facebook users could benefit from a Facebook/BlackBerry partnership with the additional layers of security.
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