'Socialbots' steal 250GB of user data in Facebook invasion

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique capable of stealing personal information from Facebook. Using 'socialbots', computer programs that mimic real Facebook profiles, the researchers were able to harvest vast quantities of personal data.

The 102 "socialbots" researchers released onto the social network included a name and profile picture of a fictitious Facebook user and were capable of posting messages and sending friend requests. They then used these bots to send friend requests to 5,053 randomly selected Facebook users. Each account was limited to sending 25 requests per day to prevent triggering anti-fraud measures. During that initial two-week "bootstrapping" phase, 976 requests, or about 19 percent, were accepted.

Facebook's fraud detection was avoided by rate-limiting the posts and friend requests to avoid CAPTCHAs. Only 20 profiles were detected by Facebook, all of them, interestingly, the female bot variant.

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