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Facebook Fires Employee Who Allegedly Used Data Access to Stalk Women

Fired on same day company announced new dating features.

Facebook has fired a security engineer who allegedly used his access to company data to stalk women. “We are investigating this as a matter of urgency,” Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Facebook, said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s important that people’s information is kept secure and private when they use Facebook. 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.” The allegation surfaced after Jackie Stokes, founder of cybersecurity consultancy Spyglass, tweeted that she’d been made aware of “a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely using privileged access to stalk women online.” The firing came on the same day Facebook announced it will introducing dating features.