Facebook does not seem to be getting things right. Call it bad times, bad omens or whatever, but the company that is looking to go public next year is really having a tough challenge on the home ground in ensuring user security and privacy compliance.

First, it was the Facebook cookie that collected user information without any user-sanction that caused a global uproar causing the FTC to intervene and ask for privacy compliance measures on the Facebook platform. If this was not enough to embarrass Facebook, we have had a security breach on the website and the nature of this purported security breach implies that many users have had a rather unpleasant experience of seeing pornographic images and violet pictures when they tried to access the Facebook site this Monday.

Analysts are perplexed at what is really happening, and whether Facebook has its own house under control. It is clear that the recent hacking of some Facebook accounts would have come as a telling proof of inability of the platform to handle user-injected malicious code. The question is that whether the company is geared up to manage the user-security or whether it is actually demonstrating enough fire-power to assure users of fool-proof security.

Who caused the issue or what caused this disaster is something that is irrelevant. The fact is that a particular vulnerability within the platform was exploited by the hackers to inject pornographic and violent pictures, thereby causing deep mental anguish to the users who were subjected to this mental cruelty. Think of many youngsters whose parents would not have liked them to see any of those violent or porn pictures and you can appreciate the concerns that come to the mind.

So, is the Facebook doing enough to gauge the vulnerabilities on the system? Or has it done enough in the past to reach a stage of in-depth vulnerability assessment on the site? These are very tough questions, but at the same time these are some of the most essential questions that need to be asked of a company that is intending to trade on the major indices across the States next financial year.

Facebook, on its part said that is has been able to contain the damage from spreading virally within the website. It also mentioned that the security breach happened because users were tricked into copying-pasting malicious code in their browsers and this allowed inadvertent access into their Facebook profiles, subsequently leading to the hacked profiles showing unintentional content. However, this again calls for the control flow within Facebook to be modified so that any malicious code and malicious site URLs can be tested before being allowed to percolate throughout the site.

Whether Facebook’s defence can be taken on a verbatim basis is something that is unclear; the fact still remains that the malicious piece of code did come to the users of the platform and spread from within the platform. The question, however, is whether Facebook would spend its efforts in trying to pin the blame somewhere else to deflect the blame or whether it will take this as a way forward to promote user security and fix its own house to prevent such a recurrence in the foreseeable future. Time shall tell, and we shall see.

This guest post is written by Rob Smith, a professional SEO and SEM specialist with keen interest in vehicle tracking technology, that eventually rides on client end scripts that interact with servers in real-time. The vehicle tracking tech ensures complete user security, data confidentiality and promotes enduser safety as a business objective.