Online social gaming company, Rockyou with 32 million gamers, and $129,000,000 of funding, got fined $250,000 for revealing the usernames and passwords of their online community members, and putting at risk their webmail (Gmail, Yahoo etc) accounts. Oh and they fibbed about their security, compromised by a hack that’s been around ten years.
If capitalism was all about inflicting dodgy products and exploiting workers, the new social capitalism is about exploiting the members. That would be us. After all, we are Google’s, Facebook’s, Twitter’s, Rockyou’s product. The only things produced in social media sites are members (members produce the rest). So Rockyou is fined $250,000 for:
- revealing usernames and passwords of 32 MILLION members
- due to a TEN year old hack
- fibbing about robustness of security
- keeping everything in plain text, not encrypted
- included all the other stuff they kept like your Gmail, Yahoo, etc accounts (3rd party credentials)
- 139,000 accounts were known to be for kids under 13 (against COPPA)
$250,000 - which is a lot of money – if you are me.
If you are RockYou…
| TOTAL | $129M |
| VENTURE FUNDING TOTAL | $129M |
| Series A, 1/07 3 First Round Capital Lightspeed Venture Partners Sequoia Capital |
$1.5M |
| Series B, 3/07 4 Lightspeed Venture Partners Partech International Sequoia Capital |
$15M |
| Series C, 6/08 5 Doll Capital Management |
$35M |
| Series C, 11/08 6 SK Telecom Ventures SoftBank Capital |
$17M |
| Series D, 11/09 7 SoftBank Capital |
$50M |
| Venture Round, 6/10 8 SoftBank Capital |
$10M |
… it’s a drop in the ocean. Who cares? It’s just our lives online that are put at risk. Our identity, our personal information, our family, our friends, our reputation, our banking details, our holiday plans, our shopping online, our credit cards, our whole lives. Nothing important…
Ever get the feeling the courts have no clue about what’s happening out there? THE most important crime in the future will be theft of profiles, and at the moment, compromising the identities of 32 million people gets a slap on the wrist. Astonishing.
My identity can’t be stolen – I only have to Facebook, Tweet, blog or point to a YouTube video or Flickr photo to show who I am. UNLESS those accounts are hacked and stolen. And that is where the dark forces will gather in the future. We are not prepared… move over banks: Facebook, Twitter and Rockyou thefts will be a lot more lucrative.
Crunchbase for the VC figures, Techspot for the news story.