Saturday, June 13, 2026
ADVT 
International

Indian American Harvard Student Loses Facebook Internship

IANS, 13 Aug, 2015 02:14 PM
    Facebook cancelled an Indian-origin student's internship after he exposed a serious privacy flaw in the social media giant's messenger service, a media report said.
     
    Aran Khanna's application, Marauder's Map, used data from Facebook Messenger to map users' location when they sent messages, Boston.com reported on Wednesday.
     
    The computer science and math student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, US, posted about his app on social media sites Reddit and Medium in May this year and soon it went viral.
     
    The app caught the attention of Facebook and Mr Khanna was asked to disable it.
     
    However, before it was disabled, the extension was downloaded more than 85,000 times and "shared on over 200 publications", according to Mr Khanna.
     
    About a week later, Facebook released a Messenger app update to provide users "full control over when and how you share your location information".
     
    Facebook cancelled Mr Khanna's summer internship, saying he did not meet the high ethical standards expected from the interns.
     
    The student accepted another internship with a tech start-up in Silicon Valley and later detailed the experience in a case study titled 'Facebook's Privacy Incident Response: A study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger' in the Harvard Journal of Technology Science

    MORE International ARTICLES

    Rush to join class action lawsuit against Facebook

    Rush to join class action lawsuit against Facebook
    Over 11,500 people have joined the class action lawsuit filed by an Austrian law student against Facebook over the company's privacy policies....

    Rush to join class action lawsuit against Facebook

    Modi's Nepal visit: Unfurling vision of an integrated South Asia

    Modi's Nepal visit: Unfurling vision of an integrated South Asia
    Flying in to Kathmandu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wanted to forge a "new relationship" with Nepal that could serve as a model for regional partnership...

    Modi's Nepal visit: Unfurling vision of an integrated South Asia

    72-hour humanitarian truce begins in Gaza

    72-hour humanitarian truce begins in Gaza
    A 72-hour humanitarian truce brokered by Egypt between Israel and Palestine went into effect Tuesday in the Gaza Strip....

    72-hour humanitarian truce begins in Gaza

    Egypt to dig new canal alongside Suez Canal

    Egypt to dig new canal alongside Suez Canal
    The Egyptian government Tuesday launched a project to dig a new 72-km canal alongside the original Suez Canal...

    Egypt to dig new canal alongside Suez Canal

    India, Nepal to review 1950 pact, secure border

    India, Nepal to review 1950 pact, secure border
    India and Nepal Monday agreed to "review, adjust and update" a 1950 bilateral friendship pact and not to let "unscrupulous elements"...

    India, Nepal to review 1950 pact, secure border

    NASA creates space engine like none other

    NASA creates space engine like none other
    In what could be a game changer in space exploration, NASA has successfully tested a "microwave thruster system" that requires no propellant to generate thrust....

    NASA creates space engine like none other