Tech News

Facebook made a grave error this week when it sent users' e-mails to the wrong friends. Users affected by the mixup weren't able to access the site for a period of time.

Facebook moved quickly in trying to figure out how users' e-mails could have been redirected. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network also quickly apologized to users for any inconvenience.

"During our regular code push early Wednesday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time," Facebook's Kathleen Loughlin said. "Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and worked diligently to get everything back in its rightful place."

Facebook wouldn't say how many of its 350 million users were affected. "We are still investigating and the information we are sharing right now is limited," Loughlin said.

Privacy Breach

Details about what kind of content was in the redirected e-mails was also not being shared. One user reported receiving more than 100 e-mails intended for other Facebook users.

Before Facebook's error, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research center, warned the Federal Trade Commission of ongoing privacy risks associated with social networking. Early this year, EPIC filed complaints against Facebook on some of its privacy practices and pointed to some risks associated with cloud computing.

Facebook users can post messages to their friends' walls that can be seen by others if the user receiving the message hasn't blocked them. Users' comments about photos and other posts are also often made available for others to see. Sending e-mails from one friend to another, however, was supposed to be the most private way of reaching out and communicating with friends.

E-mailed content is not meant to be seen by anyone other than the recipient. The only time more than one person can... Tags: research

Carlsbad-based Dot Hill Systems, a manufacturer of external RAID storage devices, said today that it is in a definitive purchase agreement to buy Cloverleaf Communications, a software firm developing storage virtualization and storage management products. The deal is worth $2.5M in cash plus approximately $9.5M shares of its common stock. Cloverleaf has headquarters in New York, with research and development in Israel. Dot Hill said the buy would broaden its reach into storage virtualization, data management services software, and the unified storage market. Elic Yavor and Yosi Klein, two of Cloverleaf's founders, are among those joining Dot Hill as part of the acquisition. Tags: development, research, software

NewsFactor - A week ahead of Earth Day, McAfee is offering insights into spam's impact on the environment. McAfee's research reveals that spam is not only a nuisance that hinders business productivity, it also damages the environment and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Tags: research