Facebook withdraws internship of Indian-Origin student for exposing major flaw

Hyderabad, August 14: Facebook Inc cancelled the internship of an Indian-origin Harvard Student Aran Khanna for developing an app that exposed the privacy flaws in the messanger service of the social media network, according to media report. Aran was to start his coveted internship at Facebook three months ago. Just before his internship began, Aran is believed to have launched a browser application named Marauder's Map, which can use the data from Facebook's Messenger to trace where the users were at the time of sending their messages, news reports explained. The reports said that the app is said to have 'capitalised' on a privacy flaw. Apparently, Facebook was aware of the flaw for at least three years. It is reported that the Facebook Messenger app apparently automatically shares users' locations with people who they messaged. On May 26, Aran is believed to have tweeted about the app. The tweet went viral. And in just three days, Facebook told Aran to immediately disable the app. Later, it withdrew its offer of internship to him, reports further said. Even before the app was disabled, it is believed that 85,000 people downloaded it, Aran conirmed. He then published his experience in the form of a case study few days back in the Harvard Journal of Technology Science.