According to a report by Page Six, Mark Zuckerberg who got his first bodyguard in 2011, now has no less than 16 people protecting him at his $7 million home in Palo Alto, California.
Zuckerberg is now so concerned about security that he has employed the bodyguards to work in shifts, day and night.
The article explains that a number of Silicon Valley’s high profile people are beefing up their security details following threats from unstable website users.
An unnamed source was quoted as saying, ‘You’re touching hundreds of millions of people. All the CEOs get threats, and they take them very seriously.’ If that’s the case, then Facebook – which announced that it had 1.56 billion users last month – may get more than most.
Residents living near Zuckerberg’s $10million house in Liberty Hill, San Francisco, around 30 miles from Palo Alto, have been complaining about his security detail in recent weeks.
In a letter written by one of his neighbors, Zuckerberg was accused of permitting his security detail to ‘permanently’ and ‘illegally’ occupy two prime parking spots in the area. A spokesperson for Zuckerberg denied that the parking was illegal.
Following his rise to Fame internationally, Zuckerberg has taken expensive steps to ensure his privacy.
In 2013, it was announced that he had purchased four houses surrounding his own Palo Alto mansion for a total of $30million when he discovered that a real estate developer was planning on buying one of the properties and and advertising it as being next to Zuckerberg’s house. However, backfired when one of the sellers accused Zuckerberg of not keeping his end on an agreement, and filed a lawsuit against him.