I Pasted a Link, Inspected the HTML, and Facebook Gave Me $1000
1 min read
Summary
A man claims that through some simple internet sleuthing he found a way to see who had signed up for private events on Facebook, despite the guest list being hidden.
Alongside the story, which he shared on Facebook, he claimed that he had reported the bug to the social network in July; at which point Facebook rewarded him $1000 for his find.
However, when reached for comment, Facebook called the man’s story “fake”.
The man said that it wasn’t until he dug further, that the true implications of his findings became clear: he could see every guest listed for every private event he had been invited to.
Even more concerning, he could see every guest on every private event that his Facebook friends were members of.
In total, he estimated that potentially up to six-and-a-half billion people could have been affected.