Facebook fires employee over allegedly using internal data to stalk women

Facebook has fired an employee for potentially using company data to stalk women online.

The company’s firing comes after Motherboard reported that the company was investigating an allegation that one of its employees was using internal data to stalk women.

The company said it is still looking into the matter.

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“We are investigating this as a matter of urgency. It’s important that people’s information is kept secure and private when they use Facebook,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, said in a statement to The Hill.

“It’s why we have strict policy controls and technical restrictions so employees only access the data they need to do their jobs — for example to fix bugs, manage customer support issues or respond to valid legal requests. Employees who abuse these controls will be fired,” he continued.

The allegations were initially flagged by Jackie Stokes of Spyglass Security, who tweeted about message she received about a Facebook engineer.

“I’ve been aware that a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely using privileged access to stalk women online. I have Tinder logs. What should I do with this information?” Stokes tweeted, including screenshots of the interaction in a subsequent post.

The incident comes just as Facebook announced that it is developing its own dating app to compete with services like Tinder.