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Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#81

Post by saimiam »

samsolomon wrote: post #34

A comment on the WSJ brings up an interesting point—if Zuckerberg were to run for president, would he have access to this information? What else could he have access to? Given the amount of data Facebook has about everybody, I find that possibility worrisome. It seems obvious that a campaign strategist could segment individual states, regions and cities. They could target people based on likes and interests. They cou…

You know, it's at times like this that the term limited Presidency sounds like a wonderful idea. Imagine a Zuckerberg getting elected time and again because his minions have us convinced that we love him.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#82

Post by AlexandrB »

saimiam wrote: post #81
samsolomon wrote: post #34

A comment on the WSJ brings up an interesting point—if Zuckerberg were to run for president, would he have access to this information? What else could he have access to? Given the amount of data Facebook has about everybody, I find that possibility worrisome. It seems obvious that a campaign strategist could segment individual states, regions and cities. They could target people based on likes and interests. They cou…

You know, it's at times like this that the term limited Presidency sounds like a wonderful idea. Imagine a Zuckerberg getting elected time and again because his minions have us convinced that we love him.

Putin got around Russia's term limits by repeatedly swapping jobs with Medvedev (the prime minister). Zuck could do effectively the same thing by getting a string of cronies elected after himself. Term limits are of little use without checks and balances like an independent media.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#83

Post by javajosh »

softawre wrote: post #56
javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily I work somewhere that I can give a justified 'no' and keep my job. That is lucky! Where do you work?

> You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like.

Actually, I can't identify you from your HN profile. I guess I could google your username or something, but I'm a little unclear why you wouldn't just, you know, say where you work.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#84

Post by willstrafach »

jondubois wrote: post #11
thinkMOAR wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ethically dubious", i consider it criminal; though they probably got some (lawyer written) fine print to say it is not so.

Yes, it sounds like malware. Had any other company done this, it would have caused outrage but for some reason Facebook just seems to get away with everything. I remember how big a deal the News International phone hacking scandal was; this actually seems much worse.

Companies which track app download and engagement metrics also do this via VPN apps. That is how they are able to obtain such data. Not new, but also not discussed much.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#85

Post by gaius »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #79
gaius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most users fully appreciate that it exists purely to log your activity on sites that Google doesn't directly track through ads

I'm just a welder, but... DNS can't log your activity on a website, can it? All DNS does is resolve hosts, right? DNS service can log that you resolved a host, but doesn't know what you did with the IP address it returned.

It can log that you went somewhere that Google could not otherwise track you. And not just websites; mail, SSH, anything else. I'll wager a fair few people's attempts to avoid tracking for certain activities, clearing cookies, private mode, whatever, has been thwarted because they forgot they'd set this up.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#86

Post by ucaetano »

javajosh wrote: post #83
softawre wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can identify me by going to my profile if you'd like.

Actually, I can't identify you from your HN profile. I guess I could google your username or something, but I'm a little unclear why you wouldn't just, you know, say where you work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=teej

Currently - head of data engineering at Minted

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#87

Post by AznHisoka »

This type of "spying" has been going on for a long long time [1]. It's just that people have conveniently ignored it, and the companies that use this data have not been outed. See SimilarWeb, Jumpshot and other clickstream companies that buy Google extensions and keep track of every single URL you visit.

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-extens...

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#89

Post by adjkant »

AznHisoka wrote: post #87

This type of "spying" has been going on for a long long time [1]. It's just that people have conveniently ignored it, and the companies that use this data have not been outed. See SimilarWeb, Jumpshot and other clickstream companies that buy Google extensions and keep track of every single URL you visit. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-extens...

I think the reason you see the objection more here is the consolidation of information Facebook is going for.

Re: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

#90

Post by fenwick67 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #76
gaius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google can do this for anyone using 8.8.8.8 for DNS. You don't think they run it out of pure altruism do you?

To be fair, Google DNS is more trustworthy than ISP DNS, and if you're using Chrome, you're not exposing anything that Google isn't reading anyway. DNS requests are much less informative than full browsing history. It is probably better to use OpenDNS, but they used to do the same spammy redirect on NXDOMAINs that ISPs do (I think I heard they stopped that). To be honest, the real reason I don't use them much anymore…

The internet isn't just the web. Setting your DNS to Google's will also tell them what other applications you use and what you connect them to.
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