What's Wrong With Orkut.com?

I was an early Orkut invitee. I tried it out, invited a few people, and even founded the "Mexico" community.

But these online social networks aren't really for me. I got bored and eventually stopped logging in.

One of my friends (stuntdubl) mentioned that he had been amused by my recent change I had made to another community that I founded that he was a member of. I hadn't logged in for at least 3 months, so I had no idea what he was talking about.

After logging in, I was shocked to see that my profile image had been changed to a pornographic image, and this same (gay sex) image was being used as the community image in the group that Stunty had referred to.

I shot off an email to Orkut support:

My account was hacked. I havent logged in since, perhaps september, and I logged in today and it said my last login was 12/28/2004 - my password was changed and my name was changed to "Patrick Stupid", my profile made claims of gay sex acts, and one of the private communities I administer had all its messages deleted, all of them replaced with pornographic content.

I can only assume that this is some sort of security bug in the software.

Let me just add, that although no password is "guess proof" - my Orkut user name was something not related to my name, and my password was a string of relatively random digits and letters. About 2 weeks later I get this as a response:

Thanks for your bringing this to our attention. We're sorry about the
difficulties you've had. If you'd like to permanently delete this account, please follow these steps:

1. Select the "Home" link in the blue bar at the top of the page.
2. Click on the "profile" button under your photo.
3. Click the "edit profile" button that appears under your photo.
4. Click the "delete account" option on the right-hand side of the page.
5. Select "terminate account." If you wish to remain a member, choose "I changed my mind."

Please keep in mind that once you delete your account, you will not be able to restore or reactivate this account.

Stay beautiful,
orkut.com

Okay. I report a suspected security flaw, and Orkut's response is to tell me how to delete my account. Nice user support. I mentioned this to a Google rep at the New Orleans Webmasterworld Pubcon, and the rep said that Orkut Buyukkokten *is* Orkut.com's support team.

Fine, Orkut, I'll delete my account. Thanks for supporting your wonderful product.