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Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#51

Post by jacquesm »

anigbrowl wrote: post #47
jacquesm wrote: post #4

The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people wh…

That's actually why I gave up on avoiding it (after leaving my fb account dormant for ~5 years). If I'm being tracked anyway I might as well enjoy the social benefits of the platform, which are not insignificant. FB absolutely knows more about me than any individual person at this point. I've decided, for good or ill, to accept that and leverage it; rather than feeling upset about my inability to enforce a right to p…

There is no way I will go down that route. That's defeat and it simply will not happen with me being an enabler. If that means I'll miss out on the occasional party then so be it.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#52

Post by curun1r »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
mali9 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One small difference is that the activity on GMail or large email providers is generally two-way and it becomes clear when you understand that clicking "Send" sends your mail away to be stored in GMail forever unlike where photos somebody would be taking with their friends are not aware if it is put in Facebook or similar social places.

That isn't true. Many domains are routed through Gmail where you have absolutely no way of knowing up front that you are going to be sending that mail through Google. It looks like any other email address on a private server. https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome

No, it doesn't. It has an MX record that will clue you into it being hosted by Google. It may be inconvenient, but "absolutely no way" is hyperbole.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#53

Post by jaskerr »

killjoywashere wrote: post #42
ghughes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.

The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much. See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).

Which "Dictator's Handbook"? There are two on Amazon.

[1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

[2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-A...

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#54

Post by vidoc »

killjoywashere wrote: post #42
ghughes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until the law cracks down on this. The people who work on these systems are smart enough to comprehend the wider consequences, but they do it anyway because money. Without significant external pressure, there will always be a long line of engineers willing to dial their cognitive dissonance up to 11 and build software that is clearly unethical in exchange for a fat paycheck.

The law will not crack down on this. The politicians stand to gain too much. See The Dictator's Handbook (which is as relevant to democrats as autocrats).

Recent BBC Panorama on the matter was pretty good:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qgbc3

That said, I'm personally certain the laws will evolve rapidly in a favorable manner. Privacy issues resulting from Facebook/Google and co are becoming increasingly unacceptable for the society.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#55

Post by jacquesm »

curun1r wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true. Many domains are routed through Gmail where you have absolutely no way of knowing up front that you are going to be sending that mail through Google. It looks like any other email address on a private server. https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome

No, it doesn't. It has an MX record that will clue you into it being hosted by Google. It may be inconvenient, but "absolutely no way" is hyperbole.

Right, what's the last time you checked the recipients domain MX record before sending an email?

That's just nonsense, nobody does this, people just send mail through some client and never ever check MX records by hand unless they are trying to debug some kind of problem, in fact, the vast majority of people have no clue that something like an MX record even exists. To them email is roughly equivalent to magic.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#56

Post by narag »

freeflight wrote: post #38

Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google account. The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (…

I had a similar realization when I found a private photo, so private that I had deleted it from everywhere in some Google's "backup" sites. I am very careful disabling every feature that could mean that personal images or text from my phone will end up "in the cloud" and still it got there through an accident... and a lot of Google's disregard for my wills. It's almost impossible to stop them.

The photo being private is most likely not what you think :)

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#57

Post by scottlamb »

freeflight wrote: post #38

Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google account. The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (…

Could you help me understand why you find that scary? It's not giving him any information which wasn't previously available to him. I think you're concerned that people are overlooking his screen, and you'd rather he explicitly choose everything that pops up when you call? Do you think he wouldn't have included any identifying information about you?

As a user, I'd rather have not only a name but also a picture of a person pop up when they call me, and I'd rather it happen with as little work as possible on my part.

(disclaimer: I work for Google, although I had nothing to do with how this works)

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#58

Post by sjg007 »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

The bigger problem for me is how facebook tracks and identifies even people who do not have a facebook account. They simply infer such a person exists from photograps, contacts and other one sided activity and can start to track that person, tie all this information together and then target them with ads even though they never signed up for Facebook. Such shadow profiles are a much larger problem to me than people wh…

Creating profiles or dossiers on people seems like a breach of the fair credit act

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#59

Post by e12e »

curun1r wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true. Many domains are routed through Gmail where you have absolutely no way of knowing up front that you are going to be sending that mail through Google. It looks like any other email address on a private server. https://gsuite.google.com/signup/basic/welcome

No, it doesn't. It has an MX record that will clue you into it being hosted by Google. It may be inconvenient, but "absolutely no way" is hyperbole.

  user@example.com$ cat "./forward"
  user@gmail.com
How will you know that user@example.com ends up at Gmail?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#60

Post by GuiA »

scottlamb wrote: post #57
freeflight wrote: post #38

Google does some pretty scary stuff too. I made a point of never giving them my mobile number or any "real information" about me. When a friend of mine added me to his contacts, on his Android phone, he also added one of email addresses to the contact, which is the same one I used to register my Google account. The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (…

Could you help me understand why you find that scary? It's not giving him any information which wasn't previously available to him. I think you're concerned that people are overlooking his screen, and you'd rather he explicitly choose everything that pops up when you call? Do you think he wouldn't have included any identifying information about you? As a user, I'd rather have not only a name but also a picture of a p…

OP desired to keep his Google associated email and non Google associated phone number separate, and behaved as such. That's a very reasonable thing to want and do.

But Google used OP's friend's phone, bought from them, to surreptitiously acquire the connection between his email address and phone number.

That was against OP's desire, and his friend never explicitly agreed to provide that information. I fully understand why he would be upset.

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