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Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

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Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

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I'm not particularly worried, Google and Facebook have two of the best security teams in the world and spend an amazing amount of money to protect customer data. The amount of convenience I get from Facebook and Google outweigh the risk I'm exposed to in my opinion. If Governments want to create data protection regulations I'll save my opinion until I see whatever regulation is proposed but I think it'll be difficult…

You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#12
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post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

Do you have the "pay grade" to be able to make this assertion credibly? One cannot, in general, see the forest for the trees. This adage is not merely a put-down.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#13
post #11
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

> unless compelled to do so by law

That's a pretty significant hedge.

Also, how effective are Google's processes against dishonest employees? It would not be hard for, say, the Chinese government to plant a mole in Google's security team. (Actually, the real nightmare scenario is a Chinese mole in Intel or Apple's hardware team.)

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#14
post #12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

Do you have the "pay grade" to be able to make this assertion credibly? One cannot, in general, see the forest for the trees. This adage is not merely a put-down.

I worked for Google a long time ago and it's almost certainly true that this still official company policy. The real question is whether all Google employees always act in accordance with that policy. That is a much dicier proposition.

It's also an open question how much data Google is compelled to share by law in the age of NSLs.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#15
post #6

Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.

Not only that but Facebook and Google collect personal data voluntarily, to some extent. Equifax leaked THE personal identifier used in the U.S which affects a persons livelihood.

I'm not worried out Facebook getting hacked and someone getting 10 years worth of photos, shopping data, or browsing history. Even credit cards have better protection than what Equifax has for SSNs.

And again, the consumers who shoulder the burden of this catastrophic data breech had absolutely no say in who brokered the SSNs.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#16
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Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.

30 mil US accounts on FB were scraped using Mechanical Turk in an ingenious way. No hacking was required. I don't think that for many it matters if their data was obtained through hacking or through legal means. https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/facebook-failed-to-prote...

You don't have your social security number and loans on your Facebook profile (or maybe you do). However whatever you put on Facebook was your choice. Nobody "posts" to Equifax.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#17
post #6

Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.

> It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc

Facebook and Google are marketing/advertising agencies.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#18
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

> unless compelled to do so by law That's a pretty significant hedge. Also, how effective are Google's processes against dishonest employees? It would not be hard for, say, the Chinese government to plant a mole in Google's security team. (Actually, the real nightmare scenario is a Chinese mole in Intel or Apple's hardware team.)

Honestly Google is one of the few companies I know of which really considers internal threats and has taken precautions to reduce the likelihood that internal bad actors will have access, to reduce the scope of access to any bad actors that slip through, and to ensure that illegitimate accesses will be noticed, reducing the time a bad actor will have access.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#19
post #12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.

Do you have the "pay grade" to be able to make this assertion credibly? One cannot, in general, see the forest for the trees. This adage is not merely a put-down.

If you're asking whether I was the director of my agency or the CEO of Google then the answer is no. I have also not worked for the Government in about 6 years or Google in 4 years so maybe everything changed the moment I left.

However, I was an Assistant Director (which is a senior tech / middle management kind of level) at first an intelligence agency, and then at a similar grade in a law enforcement organization and then later a security engineer at Google.

The idea that an intelligence agency (or law enforcement agency) would ask Google for help isn't far fetched, in fact when I was in law enforcement we'd ask private companies for help all the time. Some of the time they'd help, the rest of the time they tell us to come back with a warrant.

Google was famously in the second category, to the point where we'd not even bother asking. Even if we had a warrant we'd hesitate because we'd expect Google to challenge the warrant in court and it'd be a huge expensive hassle.

When I worked at Google it was the same, the idea of sharing private information with anyone was anathema. Engineers even being able to see private information without an audit trail and alarms going off was next to impossible.

The idea of a secret extra-legal conduit of information from Google to the US Government seems so far fetched to me that I have trouble even considering it. If there is a conduit for information it's there because the US Government has some legal instrument to compel Google to create it and that Google grudgingly has accepted the instrument as valid.

But what do I know, like I said, I wasn't the CEO of Google or DIRNSA. Maybe I just was never in the right rooms or policy meetings? Maybe everything I saw was staged for my benefit.

Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You

#20

I think that the US gov has not yet realized the full potential danger of data exposure. The best thing is to plan for these disaster scenarios like you would pandemics, wars, and natural disasters. There should be strong regulations, a set of protocols, a way to mitigate these situations. Understandably, the government is way behind on this issue, still seeing the digital information (especially on social media) as…

I think the people have not yet realized the full potential danger of the US gov abusing our data.
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