India-origin student exposes serious privacy flaws, loses out on internship at Facebook

Facebook has been hiring interns from different corners of the world. However, latest reports state that Aran Khanna - a computer science and mathematics student of Harvard University, can’t work as an intern at Facebook anymore. You will be shocked on knowing the reason to this.

A report by Boston.com stated that Aran Khanna created a Google Chrome extention - Marauder's Map, which highlights serious privacy flaws of Facebook. This new app reveals the fact that Facebook shares the location of Facebook Messenger users with everyone, by default. According to the report, the app also showed the locations, which were accurate to within three feet, in a group chat with people he barely knew. Khanna shared detailed information about this app on May 26 on Twitter, Reddit and Medium. This app was downloaded around 85,000 times. As the Marauder’s Map app went viral, Facebook could easily track down on the source (creator) of this app.

Reports also state that Facebook forced Khanna to disable the app, within three days of its launch. Facebook also deactivated location sharing from desktops, which meant Khanna’s app wouldn’t work even if he hadn’t taken it down. ‘This mapping tool scraped Facebook data in a way that violated our terms, and those terms exist to protect people's privacy and safety. Despite being asked repeatedly to remove the code, the creator of this tool left it up. This is wrong and it's inconsistent with how we think about serving our community,’ said a spokesperson to Boston.com.

Further, Facebook also requested Khanna to remain mute and cancelled his internship. The social messaging platform then released a new version of its Messenger app, with an improvisation in its location sharing feature.