Remember that huge load of Facebook data that ended up on BitTorrent? We half expected some unscrupulous torrenter to download it and try to flog it to an equally unscrupulous business. Well, it seems they didn’t have to – businesses are doing it for themselves.
When 100 Million Facebook user’s personal details wound upon a BitTorrent tracker last week, it looked as though Christmas had come early to the direct marketing world. Although all the data was publicly available, this was the first time it had been so easily collated in a form that was ripe for exploitation by spammers, direct marketers and others.
As a reader of Gadget blog Gizmodo has discovered, there is some evidence that major companies and organisations have decided to do just that. Using software called PeerBlock he was able to find the IP addresses of the various parties currently downloading the Facebook data. By checking these against a DNS server he has created a list of organisations he says are grabbing it.
The Church of Scientology (the religion with Science right there in the name) is on the list, as are Time Warner, Sun Microsystems, Motorola, Pepsi Cola and many others – most of whom we thought would know better.
It is important to note that this only represents a list of companies who IP address has been linked to the torrent – this could be down to someone in IT grabbing it while on a lunch break rather than any kind of corporate policy.
Still, food for thought.
(via Gizmodo)
