Imagine that! Dawood Ibrahim’s location being given away and/or confirmed by a Facebook entry! Who would have thought that the seemingly harmless social networking site could spell possible trouble for India’s ‘most wanted’ man.
According to a news report in the Hindustan Times today, Ibrahim’s daughter Mahrukh made a post to her Facebook page, which indicated that her father is in Karachi. An innocent post, which—I imagine—sent, or will send myriad Pakistani bureaucrats scurrying about to prepare yet another statement denying that its borders provide asylum to the man allegedly responsible for Bombay’s ’91 blasts.
To quote the news story: A status message posted on May 5… on the popular social networking website said: “Missing mom and dad and Junaid and Reenz and Moeen and Mazia and everyone in Karachi.”
These are the names of the gangster’s family.
Mahrukh is believed to be based in Lahore with Junaid, her husband and cricketer Javed Miandad’s son…
A message posted on the profile April 19, says: “Happy 25th anniversary mama and papa. I love you!” Sources said the date matches Dawood’s wedding date.
Hah!
The report also states that the Indian intelligence were aware of the existence of the Facebook profile, and that the privacy settings on Mahrukh’s profile were changed on Friday, blocking access to her photos and status messages.
Interestingly, such an inadvertent disclosure from a posting on Facebook pushes to the fore the site’s privacy policy, which makes most of the user information public by default. Profile owners would therefore have to opt out if they wish to keep their information private.
The incident illustrates how something, which is personal in nature—if not properly protected—can easily fall into the wrong (or right) hands if it is on the Internet.
According to a story (Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking) published in The New York Times on May 10, a Facebook user would have to ‘click through more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require choosing among a total of more than 170 options’ to keep their personal information private. Mahrukh might have learnt how to do that a little too late.
But she is not alone. Facebook’s new policy had hundreds of thousands of users around the globe flummoxed by the many buttons they had to click just to keep things within their personal domain. As a result, the site faced the collective ire from privacy groups, US government officials and users who complained. In fact, many people quit the site in disgust.
Me, I have often been tempted to set up an account. All my friends are on it. They share pictures, status messages, plough virtual fields, maintain fish tanks and the gods know what else. But, for some reason or the other, I have always declined those weekly invitations. Besides, I just don’t have the patience to go through Facebook’s 5,830-word privacy policy, and it always makes sense to read the fine print on sites where you’re going to be entrusting your personal information. Interestingly, the United States Constitution, without any of its amendments, stands at the lesser 4,543 words.
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