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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

#281

Post by jononor »

orangecat wrote: post #71
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 (…

The phone automatically connected the mail address to my Google account and now every time I call him the (anonymous) picture of my Google profile shows up on his phone. That behavior doesn't require Google to have associated your phone number with your account; the mapping could be happening entirely on your friend's phone.

Android offers to sync your contacts to the cloud/between devices. I think its still opt-in, but could be different on other devices than I've had.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#282

Post by jononor »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #66
eanzenberg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I mean one way to combat this is through data warfare and sabotage. If enough people behave erratically and poison the well of data it will make it harder for these companies to infer as much as they do now. For example, click, view, watch, like at random ads and if enough people do this inference will be harder.

On the other hand, whatever brings power away from large telecoms is good for all of us, even it means integration with Google makes calling simpler and easier.

None of these companies are our friends. Not even in the 'enemy of my enemy...' sense, as these companies happily partner with eachother whenever it makes sense financially.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#284

Post by nsajko »

nmgsd wrote: post #245
ihm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you. Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's goi…

I agree strongly with you that the direction to be taken is independent messaging clients for existing messaging channels as long as those channels allow third party API use. What channel would you use to share the keys on FB? The Facebook API simply will not let you do that anymore. Direct messages have a character limit and you can't just post to someone's wall anymore. I tried working on something like this for se…

What's the point of encryption if you are going to share the keys via fb? That does not seem better than using a substitution cypher.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#285

Post by nsajko »

ihm wrote: post #123
makecheck wrote: post #72

In computer security, every time machines become fast enough to breach the limits of an algorithm we invent something new so that “hard” problems remain “hard” and therefore encryption is still secure. There has been no corresponding increase in the difficulty of invading privacy. 30 years ago, even though you probably “could” observe somebody for a long time and eventually connect some dots about them, it would not…

I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you. Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's goi…

Don't know how many will read this now, I'd just like to point out that since you can only message addresses/accounts you're "friends with" on Fb AFAIK, you can effectively broadcast to all your friends without Fb knowing the plain-text recipients.

It is simply necessary to have the plain-text in a publically known format, e.g. prepended with date or name or whatever. Then you post the cypher-text to your "timeline" (or whatever it's called) and try decrypting all your friends' posts to find which one is meant for you.

To get around Fb-imposed usage restrictions use a steganography or obfuscation tool. https://seecret.io is already linked to somewhere on this thread.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#286

Post by nsajko »

wmeredith wrote: post #128
ihm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you. Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's goi…

Eh, your head is in the right place, but honestly if you have all the meta data, the message content almost isn't needed.

See my reply to ihm about how to deny Fb metadata.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#287

Post by nsajko »

bigbugbag wrote: post #224
ihm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love if someone made a Chrome extension that encrypted all the posts and messages you put on Facebook. That is, any post you made would be made as a ciphertext, the extension would swap keys with all your friends in the background, and would decrypt their posts when displaying them to you. Sure Marky Mark still sees when you post, who you send messages to, etc. but it's a much better situation than what's goi…

This is missing the point as metadata is way more sensible than actual message content. Besides, being contrary to ToS you'd get your facebook account blocked or banned. Look at how fast AdNauseam got the boot from google to get an idea.

See my reply to ihm about how to deny Fb metadata and circumvent usage restrictions.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#288

Post by erikpukinskis »

tuna-piano wrote: post #79

Facebook's dominance is even more pronounced in parts of the developing world. I've met people in Asia (Myanmar and Nepal) who have just accessed the internet for the first time in the past 12-24 months (through their Android smartphones). But they don't know the true internet - they only know the internet through the Facebook app. They use it like we use Google and web browsers. To them, Facebook is the internet. Th…

Don't they ever get bounced out to, like, BuzzFeed links from inside Facebook?

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#289

Post by erikpukinskis »

rayday wrote: post #160

"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively working on us. We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing. Nothing will stop it. It will use any mean…

... until someone releases the Tentacled Superbeing App, where you can create your own tentacled superbeing.

Problem solved. Once kids can do it too it loses its power.

Re: Facebook's tentacles reach further than people think

#290

Post by erikpukinskis »

659087 wrote: post #235
rayday wrote: post #160

"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," Tapping, scrolling and even just having the app with Location Services installed means we are actively working for Facebook, and Facebook is actively working on us. We are effectively lab rats to this self-perpetuating Orwellian superbeing. Nothing will stop it. It will use any mean…

If we were smarter as a species, we would have started regretting it a long time ago.

Ted Kazinski (the Unabomber, who tried to slow technological progress through terrorism) tried the path of regret and it didn't work out well. Is there another branch on that path that you think works better?

My attitude is: let's accept that things are changing, but try to build tools that make people better equipped to deal with the bad stuff we anticipate happening.

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