Mr. Genachowski apparently inadvertently passed around a malicious link to his Facebook friends via Facebook's messaging system. Facebook confirmed the incident in a statement, saying that Genachowski's account was compromised and that it has been flagged as is standard procedure. As of right now, Genachowski's account is nowhere to be found on Facebook.
In fact, Facebook stated that Genachowski — just like everyone else — will need to take a few additional steps should he wish to reinstate his account. "Users whose accounts have been compromised are put through a remediation process, where they must take steps to re-secure their account and learn security best practices. This is what happened with Chairman Genachowski’s account."
According to the report on the incident:
On Friday morning at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no longer active. The messages indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send out spam.
As of Friday afternoon Mr. Genachowski’s Facebook profile was no longer visible on the site. A Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said the company learned of the problem this morning and suspended the account, as it routinely does in such cases. An F.C.C. spokeswoman said Mr. Genachowski was vacationing and declined to comment further.