Count Infinity

Photo by lovelypetal, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license

Yesterday Gizmodo posted an article about a new torrent containing information scraped from 100 million Facebook profiles. Yes, your profile is in there.

Today they traced the IP addresses of the people downloading, and identified which corporations were behind those IP addresses. They posted a list of the companies, but it’s hard to say whether you should be more surprised about who is in the list, or by who isn’t.

To start with, there are two very notable entries missing from the list: Google and Microsoft. I don’t think anyone expected Microsoft’s hands to be clean on this one, but they seem to have held their head high. Similarly, Google seems to have lived up to the image that they try to convey, and kept their hands out of the cookie jar. Microsoft and Google are especially notable because of their size. Nobody, authorized or not, used a Google or Microsoft server to download this. No buts. No excuses.

Now, who IS on the list is similarly interesting. Disney and Lucas Films were especially disappointing entries for me. The Church of Scientology was an odd find. Both Mcafee and Symantec were present, and there’s scarcely a name on the list that most people won’t recognize.

The most ironic entry though, was Apple Computers. For years Apple has been putting on a pretty face, trying to look more “honorable” than their competition. In recent months this “we have higher standards” image has been compromised in almost every area, starting with the leaked iPhone, and ending most recently with the antenna issues and the horrible handling of the PR on that. This ices the cake though. There is nothing “higher standards” about Apple. While their competitors stayed away, Apple stooped down to pick up this trash.

http://gizmodo.com/5599970/major-corporations-are-downloading-those-100-million-facebook-profiles-off-bittorrent