Why go to the work of breaking into Facebook or Gmail when you an just exploit this proxy and get Facebook accounts and Gmail accounts and bank web sites and a million other sensitive things too?

Because I would bet that the security professionals working for and contracted by Google and Facebook to be an order of magnitude better at their jobs than those hired by Nokia. I would expect Google and Facebook to be better at closing holes and better at detecting and closing security breaches if and when they do happen.

You know you just agreed with the comment you replied to right?

Oops... I was distracted while reading and didn't read carefully enough.

Because this would only get the information for people who happen to be browsing to those services through specific Nokia phones.

Surely this is a giant target painted on Facebook or Gmail's servers for any blackhat out there who wants to intercept a whole lot of traffic.

Facebook and Gmail don't handle your connection to your bank.

Apart from that, we already know the Chinese have hacked GMail accounts on several occasions, so Google is already a definite target and the Incidents that have been reported may be just the tip of the iceberg so far as we know.

We also know that there have been cases of corporate and government espionage in the recent past. This is happening, right now, and we may never know how extensive it is. It's entirely possible that Nokia could become a target of either technical or even employee infiltration. If so, covert access to a service like this would be a fantastic coup, especially since Nokia phones are still popular in many parts of the world with unscrupulous and technicaly sophisticated governments.

Despite the irony, I'm not arguing it should be less of a concern.

Recent mishandling of user accounts by Sony Entertainment and LinkedIn gave us a glimpse of how much damage an intrusion can cause, even though (?) their management thought their intended purpose couldn't lead to any serious liability (speaking through my hat here).

Of course it is. But that's beside the point. The fewer servers that I interact with that have giant targets and potential security holes the better.

Facebook and Gmail will not have bank details or credit card numbers sent via them.

These servers probably do, as I'm sure some people use them to do online banking and shopping online.

You'd be surprised what sensitive details people send via Facebook messages, email and other insecure communication tools.