New Livejournal release is the cause of massive user privacy breech
Are you a still a Livejournal user? Well, son, better hold onto your butt.

Yesterday morning, Livejournal announced that it had implemented release 86, which supposedly "fixed" and "improved" several features of the site. A little over 24 hours later, the complaints on the release post are still rolling in (around 800 comments worth at the time of this posting) concerning issues with the release. In fact, several users are encouraging others to contact the Better Business Bureau and find another journaling site to use. Now, this is the normal reaction to any given new Livejournal release, but this time, as Raylan Givens would say, it's justified.

So, what's all the hub-bub about? Well, as you may have noticed as a Livejournal user, the hover menu on a user's ID has changed significantly and certain browser add-ons like LJ Login no longer work. What you might not know is that there is now a random, but rampant privacy breech on the site. Several users are able to see the f-locked and the private entries of other users/communities even if they are not friended by or they are banned from that particular user/community. Not only that, but several users have been taken to another user's entries when they try edit their own. The same mix-up in redirects goes for the redirect to edit profiles, edit journal information/settings, managing userpics, and even checking your message inbox. To put it simply: certain users have complete access to another user's account.

Whether or not people will exploit this fact remains to be seen and the Livejournal staff has yet to comment on the issue.