Facebook fires employee accused of stalking women

The social network fires a security engineer who allegedly used company resources to stalk women online.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent

Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.

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Katie Collins

May 2, 2018 4:23 a.m. PT

Facebook stock — Security researcher Jackie Stokes reported the issue to Facebook.
Dominic Lipinski - PA Images/Getty

Facebook confirmed on Wednesday it has fired a security engineer accused of using company resources to stalk women online.

The accusations against the unnamed employee were lodged Sunday by Jackie Stokes, the founder of Spyglass Security. Stokes reported the issue to Facebook, which investigated the issue "as a matter of urgency."

"It's important that people's information is kept secure and private when they use Facebook," said a spokesman for the company in a statement. "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."

News of the firing comes a day after Facebook announced it was launching its own dating service. "This is going to be for building real, longterm relationships, not just hook-ups," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking at the F8 developer's conference in San Jose. The conference is set to continue later today.

First published May 2 at 4:33 a.m. PT.
Update at 10:01 a.m.: Adds comment from Facebook.