WTF Facebook‽
I recently got MobileMe. When I was setting it up to sync all my contacts over multiple devices I somehow lost around half of my phone contacts. It wasn’t too big a deal as I have few contacts and most are intimate friends and family. Except for my friend Sam who lives in Northampton. I had no way of getting in contact with him. He isn’t a friend on Facebook and all I could remember was his now defunct and embarrassing Hotmail username. I could just wait until he got in contact with me. But he’s a Formula 1 mechanic and I needed advice about my little Honda.
Next I typed his email address into Google hoping it would take me to one of his online profiles, but it returned no results. I tried to add his Brother on Facebook and get in contact that way, but Facebook search is awful and I couldn’t find him. It couldn’t find Sam either. Well, the right Sam.
I eventually remembered that when I needed to reset my Facebook password a few weeks ago it listed all my associated e-mail address to choose which one I wanted to send the new password to. I typed in Sam’s hotmail account and clicked ‘forgot password’? and sure enough it listed his Gmail address.
I thought, ‘great, I’ll send him a quick e-mail now’. I’m halfway through asking for his details when I hear the indistinguishable noise of that Facebook chat beep. I go to the tab and sure enough I can see a chatbox. Sam and his Brother are chatting back and forth about what he wants for Christmas. ‘WTF’ I thought. This was bizarre. I typed in “Matt?”. He replied “yea”. I said “Sam has been hacked. Ha. Facebook security. Bullshit.”
I got to Sam’s profile page and sure enough I am logged in as him. I can post and change settings. I didn’t, but I could. I haven’t tried this with any other accounts, because you know, it’s probably illegal or something and this may of just been a one-time glitch. But still, an idiot like me managed to hack into a Facebook account. By accident! All I needed was his e-mail address. No password – nothing. WTF Facebook?