Meta’s cuddly spy called Muse has exposed private conversations by making links to shared chats publicly searchable. Predictable. When someone shared a conversation, Meta created a web link with the title of that conversation. Those links ended up in publicly accessible records where strangers could find them. Security firm Claroc discovered more than 6,800 shared conversations with a single search. Some contained sensitive personal and business information, including a loan application, a bank fraud alert and confidential company documents. Anyone who found these links could open the conversations without a password or permission from the person who shared them. Meta says it has suspended the sharing feature, but records of the exposed links remain publicly accessible. Meta should shut down this service. It’s riddled with security vulnerabilities and poses serious risks to everyone’s privacy, including people who don’t use it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t use any of Meta’s products. If someone gives Muse access to their emails, messages or other private accounts, highly sensitive information about you could end up in Meta’s hands without your knowledge or consent. If someone shares conversations you’ve had with them, or talks about you in messages Muse can access, Meta will learn who you know, what you’ve said, what you’re thinking, your emotional state and your personal vulnerabilities. That kind of information is being used to build detailed profiles and social graphs about people who’ve never used Muse or agreed to share anything with Meta. You’d have no way of knowing what information had been collected about you or how it was being used. And because Meta is a US company, information it holds is subject to demands from US authorities. This is an extraordinary invasion of privacy, including the privacy of people who’ve never used the service. | 128 comments on LinkedIn