In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg Broke Into A Facebook User's Private Email Account

This is the convoluted story of brainiacs acting badly.
It focuses on Mark Zuckerberg the founder and CEO of Facebook, a site 400 million people visit each month.

This story really occurs back in May 2004 when Mark was a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard. In an earlier post I detailed the evolution of the physical Facebook, long-term paper-and-ink networking handbook for students and faculty at Harvard. Mark collaborated with three other students in transforming this into an on line networking site for the same student body.

His co-collaborators accused him of stealing their ideas and wanted the Harvard newspaper to write an article on this. He successfully persuaded the editor that there was not a clear case of disputed ownership. The three disgruntled accusers responded by digging up another person to complain. The paper decided to reopen the investigation and ultimately to publish the story. Since you can print just about anything you want in America without regard to facts or reputations, the article doesn’t reach the point of criminal offense until Mark, assumedly angry and nervous, crosses the line.

According to the story, Mark uses log in data from the on line Facebook to hack into the email accounts of the reporters and to read their emails. If he did this today he would have violated Facebook’s privacy policy. But there was no privacy policy back then. In an ironic twist, perhaps his experience with disgruntled and litigious ex-friends inspired the sort of privacy policies which allowed Facebook to become so popular. Do any of the current Facebook junkies know the privacy policy? I would guess they checked the required box without a glance at the fine print. But this is just an hypothetical continuation of my “kids these days snarkiness” that keeps winding it’s way into my posts. I’m working on it.

Why is this a news story today? Can anyone hold a grudge this long? Maybe breaking up the team was motivated by the behavior issues of the complainer/litigants. I don't know...I'm just saying... Maybe he stole their ideas. Maybe they are jealous. Maybe the sports editor of the Harvard newspaper was the wrong person to make the call.