Facebook caught asking for new users' email passwords

Facebook is asking new users to give it the passwords to their email accounts as the price of entry, reports The Daily Beast.

Facebook users are being interrupted by an interstitial demanding they provide the password for the email account they gave to Facebook when signing up. "To continue using Facebook, you'll need to confirm your email," the message demands. "Since you signed up with [email address], you can do that automatically ""

A form below the message asked for the users' "email password."

"That's beyond sketchy," security consultant Jake Williams told the Daily Beast. "They should not be taking your password or handling your password in the background. If that's what's required to sign up with Facebook, you're better off not being on Facebook."

At this point, the most unsettling thing about Facebook is that it keeps churning out the apologies and promises as it descends to abuses that would have seems impossible to get away with even a few years ago. It's a wolf with a tiny, creepy sheep mask balanced on its snout that far too many journalists feel bound to respect.

One of the most nauseating things online is writers who are scathing about Facebook on social media but whose published journalism takes everything it says in steeple-fingered good faith. Twitter, the bar next to the public defenders' office.