Thursday March 5th, 2009 04:03 There’s a Bug Lost Somewhere

I rarely add people in plurk voluntarily – unless they’re a relative or an offline friend/acquaintance. Those purely online pals that are on my list may consider themselves lucky ‘coz there must be something unique with them that I’ve picked them out from the scores of those who have attempted to add me. My policy is this: if I know you or at least have a semblance of interaction with you, you’re a friend; but if you’re some faceless name off the internet, you’re better off rejected or perhaps when I’m in a good mood – as a fan. It does sound conceited but a blogger whose existence is out online for everyone’s consumption also yearns for some privacy in the same tune as some bigger celebrities want to keep theirs. This is the same mantra that I keep for all the other social networking sites that I am a part of: friendster, facebook and less so for multiply. So it came as a big, big surprise when last night I discovered I had pending friend requests to two virtual strangers over at plurk. I first suspected that someone knew my password and was logging in without my knowledge but I also remembered how my plurk’s one of a handful of online accounts that I have with a password that is unique to itself. Then, I thought that perhaps, somebody must have been using my laptop behind my back – but then I also remembered how I’m with my laptop almost 24 hours a day. It was indeed a big mystery – until a friend of mine wondered how come a stranger’s plurks were appearing in his timeline when he neither knew him nor added him. I never knew that it would be the key to my own mystery.

A bug. Some programmer had left his bug somewhere in plurkville and now it’s wreaking havoc by sending friend requests to total strangers. Take this guy for example and count the number of friend requests waiting for him: 116! And there it was, included in the waiting list are two of my friends including the one who brought up the issue.

This just makes me wonder how safe exactly are these social networking sites. Yes, they offer some sort of privacy to their members by making their timelines viewable only to contacts but, how effective are these strategies? I remember how another friend had the same “plurk privacy” issue a few months back wherein someone got hold of information by allegedly hacking his way to her plurk timeline and used these to incriminate her or perhaps use a printer for a hardcopy of the information he gathered. Not that I’m saying I’m tolerating her act (I believe she has her faults too), but the point of the matter is how online networking is never safe despite what the developers claim them to be. Somehow, in some way, some genius would find his/her way through all the security loopholes waiting to be discovered and threaten every member’s privacy to some extent. I am not saying however, that this person hacked plurk in any way. By the looks of it, he too, perhaps, is a victim of the bug lost somewhere in plurkville. So before this goes out of hand, I think the developers of plurk need a wake up call to iron this boo boo soon – and fast.

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