Facebook's Other Privacy Fight

On a day when Facebook should be celebrating a $60 million investment from Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, the company found itself locked in a bitter fight with 02138, a magazine about Harvard, over the publication's disclosure of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's Social Security number and home address.

In materials accompanying an article on Facebook's legal battle with three former Harvard students who accuse Zuckerberg of stealing Facebook's source code, the magazine posted his Harvard application, which contained some very personal information, including his Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend, and the address of his parent's house in New York.

In a statement, Facebook chief flack Brandee Barker said that the company has notified the court that its founder's privacy had been violated.

"We filed the motions to let the court know that its orders were being violated," Barker said. "One reason the court ordered certain documents' protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud. We want to be clear on what these motions are about. These are not about an article the magazine has written, these are about documents that were protected by a court that have been misused."

The move came a day after the giant social-networking site said it would make changes to its new Beacon advertising system to address Facebook users' privacy concerns.

Today, Barker also took a swipe at Zuckeberg's former classmates.

"Mark Zuckerberg and many others built Facebook through their own ingenuity and hard work, and they are focused on building it further," Barker said. "It is unfortunate but not surprising that others falsely claim credit for it after its enormous success."

The lawsuit against Zuckerberg, filed by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accuses the Facebook C.E.O. of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he briefly worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own fledgling social-networking site, now known as ConnectU.

The editor of 02138, Richard Bradley, defended his publication decision to post the documents.

"We believe that we have a legal right to post them online and that you have a legal right to read them," Bradley wrote on the magazine's blog. "Meantime, spread the word that a company which plans to collect and sell personal information about 50 million people doesn't want one magazine to conduct legitimate reporting about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg."

02138 president and founder Bom Kim, who launched the magazine a year ago with Dan Loss and with the backing of Atlantic Media, expanded on the issue to Kara Swisher.

"I hope this points to the fact that Zuckerberg and those around him are concerned by the questions the documents raise about Zuckerberg's behavior in the past and in the origins of Facebook," he told Swisher.

Sam Gustin