Private photos of Zuckerberg and Paris Hilton Accessed on Facebook

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Byron Ng contacted the Associated Press and told them that he was able to access Facebook easily and access photos of any Facebook member. He said he wanted to see whether the Facebook privacy controls are strong enough to prevent access from outside.

Ng told AP that he was able to see the photos even when the Facebook members had marked their profiles as private and restricted access to only a few of their friends.

Facebook was contacted about the security hole on Monday. Facebook said they were able to fix the problem later that day, according to their spokeswoman.

Before they fixed it, Ng was able to access private pictures of Paris Hilton at the Emmy awards, as well as shots of her brother Nicholas drinking beer with his friends. He also saw photos of others on Facebook, with whom he was not connected.

The AP also tried to access the pictures based on Ng’s trip and they were able to do get the same access. AP reports it was able to click through a personal photo album that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg posted in November 2005.

Even when the site says it has the best privacy controls, that doesn’t mean they can’t be breached and this is a good example. If you don’t want to share sensitive photos with strangers, keep them off the Internet.