The flaw was first demonstrated Thursday. “This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone,” security researcher Charlie Miller said of it earlier this week. “Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.”

Well, not anymore, as Apple (AAPL) was quick to note. “This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone,” said an Apple spokesperson. “Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.”

You’d think that in this age of social networking and Internet stardom, ego surfing would be a near-compulsion among Web surfers. But according to the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, just 47% of Internet users have searched for themselves online (53% say they’ve searched for someone else).

Not as many as you’d expect, is it? Still, it is double the 22% that ego-surfed back in 2002. “Yes [the number's] doubled, but it’s still the case that there’s a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines,” said Pew researcher Mary Madden. “Certainly awareness has increased, but I don’t know it’s necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us.”

Apparently not. The same study found that 61% of adults say they’re not worried about the personal information available about them online.

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org launched a campaign yesterday against Facebook’s “Beacon” advertisements, which transform member transactions on third-party partner sites into product/service endorsements and insert them into their friends’ “news feeds.” Facebook members, or should I say “fansumers,” are automatically opted-in to the program, and while they are offered the chance to opt out, they can do so only on a case-by-case basis.

MoveOn considers that to be a glaring violation of privacy and has launched an online petition protesting it. “Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed without permission to lots of people–and Facebook needs to reverse this massive privacy breach,” MoveOn.org spokesman Adam Green said in a statement. “They should respect privacy by switching to an opt-in process like most other Facebook applications, not opt-out–which was solely designed to benefit corporate advertisers.”

Facebook, of course, says it’s not violating anyone’s privacy. “Information is shared with a small selection of a user’s trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users,” the company said in a statement. “Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook.”

Of course they are. But as Forrester’s Charlene Li notes, they’re easily missed and don’t give users nearly enough control over their behavioral data. “The biggest problem is the lack of transparency,” Li explains. “Facebook is right in that I would really like to have some things that I do on third-party sites to conveniently appear in news feed, e.g. events I’m attending from Evite or eBay/craigslist listings so that my friends know about them. That’s the promise of Beacon. But I need to be in control and not get blindsided.”

• 72% of respondents divulged one or more email address
• 84% listed their full date of birth
• 87% provided details about their education or workplace
• 78% listed their current address or location
• 23% listed their current phone number
• 26% provided their instant-messaging screen name

Yikes. You’d think institutional privacy concerns would be enough to make folks think twice about expanding their Facebook networks with reckless gusto, wouldn’t you? Guess not.

“It certainly doesn’t bode well when you’re talking about privacy concerns,” Ron O’Brien, a senior security analyst at Sophos, told InformationWeek. “The information they’re offering up could be just as valuable as credit card information for someone trying to build a profile of you. People need to be more selective about whom they provide information to. … Collecting ‘friends’ is encouraged by social-networking and business-networking sites,” he added. “It’s a status thing to see how many friends or contacts you can rack up. … This was intended to demonstrate to the average user that they need to exercise a lot of caution. The Web is a doorway and it shouldn’t be constantly open.”