Harvard student loses Facebook internship after launching app exploiting its privacy flaws

A Harvard University student says he lost his internship at Facebook after he launched a browser application that exploited privacy flaws on its mobile messenger.

Aran Khanna's app showed that users of Facebook Messenger could pinpoint the exact locations of people they were talking to.

Khanna posted the app from his dorm room in May and tells Boston.com (http://bit.ly/1NcW7km ) 85,000 people downloaded it.

Facebook asked Khanna to disable it. A week later, Facebook released a Messenger app update addressing the flaw that a company spokesman said had been in the works for months.

Khanna received a call from Facebook telling him the company was rescinding his internship offer because he violated the Facebook user agreement.

Facebook was launched from a Harvard dorm room in 2004.