Student loses Facebook internship after pointing out privacy flaw

Khanna's app showed that users of Facebook Messenger could trace the exact locations of people they were talking to

A Harvard University student claimed that he lost his internship at one of the top social networking websites, Facebook, for launching an application from his dorm room which allegedly exploited the company's privacy laws on the mobile messenger.

Aran Khanna said he did not write the program with 'malicious' intent, rather, he believed it was his social responsibility to inform people about the consequences of unintentionally sharing data on social websites. 


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Khanna's app was developed in May and he called it Marauder's Map, paying tribute to the Harry Potter book series. The app was designed to show how data from Facebook Messenger could be used to locate precisely where people were and who they were talking to.

PHOTO: NDTV

Therefore, a conversation between two complete strangers could eventually lead to the two being able to trace each other's exact location.

According to Khanna, about 85,000 people downloaded the app over a short period of time, however, Facebook asked him to disable it soon after.

A week later, the company introduced a Messenger app update, eliminating the flaw.

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Further, addressing the concerns of millions of users, Facebook spokesperson, Matt Steinfeld said "The company had been working on a Messenger update months before it became aware of Khanna's app."

This article originally appeared on Boston.com