Facebook – This may be one of the most influential trend that has hit almost all ages today. But, do users know the dangers of having a Facebook account?

In an interview by Rumpus.net with an anonymous Facebook employee, they have found out a couple of inevitable abuse of access by the social network’s employees. Though, the anonymous interviewee has admittedly done it once, it was merely because of professional purposes.

Their abuse of private data was pretty much unpreventable; however, the simple act of amassing data tends to lead to corruption.

Here are some of the things the anonymous Facebook employee revealed:

• The social network has a total of 200-220 million active users, and more than 300 million total accounts, including fake and disabled accounts.
• Apparently known by the public, Facebook records and archives information on whose profile you view a few months ago.
• Facebook employees can just “query the database” to locate Facebook messages.
• At one point, the Facebook staff were able to access everyone’s account with the use of a “master password”, which unlocks anyone’s account. But, the use of this password has been discouraged, implying the password might still work. And what was the password? “With upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.”
• At least two coworkers were fired for abusing their access to users’ profiles.

Nevertheless, they might have replaced the master password after firing the staff. But the employee said, managers aren’t “on your ass about it,” and added:

When I first started working there, yes — I used it to view other people’s profiles which I didn’t have permission to visit. I never manipulated their data in any way; however, I did abuse the profile viewing permission at several initial points when I started at Facebook.

It also sounds like Facebook admin lacks in monitoring the staff from looking through the users’ privacy:

Your messages are stored in a database, whether deleted or not. So we can just query the database, and easily look at it without every logging into your account. That’s what most people don’t understand.

“People confronted with a pile of information feel compelled to start digging”, commented The Rumpus.

Thus, anyone can try at least once to access any profile.

And what’s the best protection for a user? “Throw as little as possible onto the pile.”

Photo credits: Google