Myspace Hack and Identity Theft

A 17-gigabyte file that contains more than half a million previously private images that were pick pocketed from Myspace is out in the wild and downloadable via BitTorrent. This privacy breach, if true, would be one of the largest security exploits on the Web 2.0 social networking site.

It seems that Myspace has responded by patching the security holes, but that’s like closing the barn door after the cows have escaped. Too little, too late.

With the amount of personal data that these sites hold, there should be a greater effort in enforcing user privacy and stiffer penalties for not protecting private data. This time it was just pictures — next time, on a different site, it could be credit card details or social security numbers.