Spanish brickie finds Facebook hacking flaw 

(MENAFN - Jordan Times) A Spanish builder stumbled on an online loophole that enables users to send Facebook messages in other users' names, prompting an alert by authorities, he said Wednesday.

Spain's Internet watchdog said it had alerted the US online networking site after Alfredo Arias, 37, warned them of the glitch that allows a hacker to use Facebook e-mail addresses when sending spoof messages. Arias found that anyone who knows how to create an online messaging form - a simple procedure for a website designer - can enter another person's e-mail address in the "sender" field and send a message as if it were from them.

The procedure is a common trick of online frauds, but Spain's government Internet watchdog Inteco said it was concerned to see that Facebook's e-mail service did not have safeguards to stop its addresses being misused this way. "It is very easy. You only have to know how to create a web page to do it," Arias, from the northern Spanish city of Leon, told AFP.

He said he alerted the institute and published details of how to carry out the procedure on his blog. Inteco issued a warning to web users about the risk. "We issued this message when we heard of this concrete case," a spokeswoman for the institute told AFP, adding that it had alerted Facebook.