How Facebook knows who you might be dating online • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook knows who you might be dating online

#61

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #16

newman314 wrote: post #10

I think this goes well beyond that. I've had FB suggest neighbors to me even though we have never exchanged emails or friends etc.

That's simply down to proximity. Facebook, like Google, can tell based on your GPS where "home" is (where your phone spends the night, basically) and it knows the same about your neighbors. Your smartphone is a funnel for detailed information about you to whatever apps you install on it, especially social and communication apps. Google in particular creeped me out with this kind of "feature". A few years ago when I s…

Question: what, if any, phone do you use these days?

Re: How Facebook knows who you might be dating online

#62

Post by newman314 » Fri, Oct 16, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #16

newman314 wrote: post #10

I think this goes well beyond that. I've had FB suggest neighbors to me even though we have never exchanged emails or friends etc.

That's simply down to proximity. Facebook, like Google, can tell based on your GPS where "home" is (where your phone spends the night, basically) and it knows the same about your neighbors. Your smartphone is a funnel for detailed information about you to whatever apps you install on it, especially social and communication apps. Google in particular creeped me out with this kind of "feature". A few years ago when I s…

I do not have FB GPS enabled.

As a side note, the fact that Google and Microsoft want people to use long SSID names to output is rather ridiculous. That really needs to be opt-in not not opt-out for any data collection.

Re: How Facebook knows who you might be dating online

#63

Post by morganvachon » Mon, Oct 19, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #61

morganvachon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply down to proximity. Facebook, like Google, can tell based on your GPS where "home" is (where your phone spends the night, basically) and it knows the same about your neighbors. Your smartphone is a funnel for detailed information about you to whatever apps you install on it, especially social and communication apps. Google in particular creeped me out with this kind of "feature". A few years ago when I s…

Question: what, if any, phone do you use these days?

I have an iPhone 6, and I'm seriously considering backing down to a non-smart phone in the future. These days I mostly use it for SMS, voice, and very, very light web browsing (basically HN and a few other news sites, and sometimes my mobile banking site). I don't do apps, and the only really compelling feature of the iPhone is Apple Pay. Now that my credit and debit cards are all smartchip enabled, even that is just a gimmick.

In fact, I'd say the only thing keeping me on a smartphone at all is playing Ingress, and my wife and I both are getting bored with it. Our local groups are also playing less and less.

Re: How Facebook knows who you might be dating online

#64

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Oct 20, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

morganvachon wrote: post #63

dredmorbius wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: what, if any, phone do you use these days?

I have an iPhone 6, and I'm seriously considering backing down to a non-smart phone in the future. These days I mostly use it for SMS, voice, and very, very light web browsing (basically HN and a few other news sites, and sometimes my mobile banking site). I don't do apps, and the only really compelling feature of the iPhone is Apple Pay. Now that my credit and debit cards are all smartchip enabled, even that is just…

Thanks.

I'd rightgraded to a feature phone, which often gets left off and/or at home. I recently picked up a WiFi-only tablet. For much use, that's as much connectivity as I need, though the ability to access a very small set of tools while in motion (mostly transit/navigation related) would be useful. There I could get a 4G LTE wireless hotspot, and the price for both devices and services is about right, but, as with the tablet itself, my concern is control. I'm fighting Samsung for who's boss of my tablet (have yet to root/re-ROM it), but for now, I most definately am not, and no, I'm not OK with that.

A hotspot would have to support very extensive /etc/host blocklisting -- I've grown quite fond of my laptop's 60k+ entries, and use of dnsmasq. Actually starting to look at what I'd have to do to build and configure my own device, though I'm not sure that'll happen.

Among other benefits, battery life for both phone and tablet is vastly better than what I'd previously had for smartphone alone. Phone'll last a week, tablet at least all day, heavy use.