Privacy body likens Facebook to Willy Wonka factory

The head of the National Privacy Commission (NPC) compared the tech giant Facebook to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and scored the social network for its lax data security practice.

“Facebook is like the factory of Willy Wonka. You don’t know what is inside. You just know it produces chocolate,” NPC chair Raymund Liboro told the Inquirer amid reports of another privacy issue hounding Facebook.

Liboro made the remark after former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs claimed in his cybersecurity blog, “Krebs on Security,” on March 21 that the passwords of 200 to 600 million users were “stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees.”

Facebook, on the same day, said in a statement that the issue was found during a routine security review in January, but claimed it was already “fixed.”

Liboro said the commission asked Facebook’s regional office to clarify the issue but Arianne Jimenez, Facebook’s privacy and public policy manager for Asia Pacific, claimed no harm had been done.

Liboro said the storage of Facebook passwords in plain text “needlessly exposed people to risk.”

Liboro, however, said the NPC was still not considering it a security issue. More details were needed from Facebook, he said.