Hundreds of Facebook groups hijacked

An organization called Control Your Info says it has no sinister motives despite seizing control of hundreds of Facebook groups and insists it only want to highlight a security flaw in the way the social network handles group administration.

The group had administrators who eventually stepped down from their respective group pages, thus creating an administration power void on the group's Facebook page. As a result, anyone can take over a group, view the members' personal information, and change group information to say whatever they want.

Control Your Info believes this to be a major flaw in how Facebook manages group administration and by hijacking these group pages, it intends to bring this matter to everyone's attention.

"Hello, we hereby announce that we have officially hijacked your Facebook group," a message written on Monday reads on one hijacked group. "This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted, we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image severely." Hijacked groups also had their names changed to "Control Your Info."

Janis Roukkos, a representative from Control Your Info says his organisation wants social networking sites to get their users to start thinking about "the safety in your social-media life to the same extent you do in your real life."

According to Roukkos, Control Your Info will restore the names of the hijacked groups and return control to their rightful administrators by the end of next week.