Instant Alert: Facebook has reportedly fired an employee accused of using privileged access to 'stalk women' on Tinder

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Facebook has reportedly fired an employee accused of using privileged access to 'stalk women' on Tinder

by Jake Kanter and Rob Price on May 2, 2018, 4:21 AM

Facebook has investigated and reportedly fired an employee who was accused of using his privileges to "stalk women" online.
Cybersecurity expert Jackie Stokes made the claim about the Facebook engineer on Twitter, citing "Tinder logs" she had been passed by a source.
Facebook said it had a "zero-tolerance" approach to abuse and it fires anyone it deems guilty of "improper behavior."

Facebook has reportedly fired an employee accused of using his privileges to stalk women online.

The company launched an investigation into a claim made by cybersecurity expert Jackie Stokes, who said the individual was a security engineer and "likely using privileged access" to find women.

In a thread of tweets, Stokes said she had confirmed the man works at Facebook through his Tinder profile, LinkedIn, and through Facebook's outgoing chief security officer Alex Stamos' connections on encryption key directory Keybase.io.

Stokes, the founder of cybersecurity consultancy Spyglass Security, tweeted what appeared to be a screenshot of a conversation between the individual and her source. She did not say where the conversation took place, but in a separate tweet said she had "Tinder logs."

I really, really hope I'm wrong about this. pic.twitter.com/NDkOptx8Hv
— Jackie Stokes 🙋🏽 (@find_evil) April 30, 2018

Just hours after investigating the claims, the employee was fired, according to Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox. Business Insider has contacted Facebook for comment.

In a statement confirming it was looking into the matter on Tuesday, Facebook said it does not tolerate abuse of its platform.

A spokesman said: "We maintain strict technical controls and policies to restrict employee access to user data. Access is scoped by job function, and designated employees are only allowed to access the amount of information that's necessary to carry out their job responsibilities, such as responding to bug reports, account support inquiries, or valid legal requests. We have a zero-tolerance approach to abuse, and improper behavior results in termination."

It's not clear how exactly the Facebook staffer might have used his access to the platform to track women down online. Stokes declined to comment further when contacted by BI.

But late on Tuesday, she did praise Facebook for its swift response to the issue:

I'd like to thank the many Facebook employees who reached out to me personally to find out what they could do to help, and especially their CSO @alexstamos for deft handling of a dicey issue during a time when words and actions matter more than ever.https://t.co/W8Joe2Bc6e
— Jackie Stokes 🙋🏽 (@find_evil) May 2, 2018

Facebook's swift response on the so-called "stalker" comes after the company announced that it was launching a dating service. The irony was not lost on Cox: "Firing an employee for using company collected data to stalk women at the same time as announcing a dating service is very 2018 Silicon Valley."