Facebook fires engineer accused of stalking, possibly by abusing data access

Facebook has fired a security engineer after he was accused of stalking women online possibly by abusing his "privileged access" to data, raising renewed concerns about users' privacy at the social network. The controversy, which came to light after the employee allegedly called himself a "professional stalker" in a message to a woman he met on Tinder, is particularly bad timing for Facebook, which announced this week that it is launching an online dating feature while it continues to battle a major privacy scandal in the US and the UK. Facebook confirmed to the Guardian that the employee was terminated, but it did not provide any details on his position or the data he may have accessed, saying in a statement it was "investigating this as a matter of urgency". The allegations emerged on Sunday in tweets from Jackie Stokes, founder of the cybersecurity consultancy Spyglass Security, who said she learned that "a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely using privileged access to stalk women online". I really, really hope I'm wrong about this.