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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

#51

Post by ocdtrekkie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38
belltaco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google and Facebook have two of the best security teams in the world and spend an amazing amount of money to protect customer data Are you serious? Wasn't Google found to be sending data between their data centers in plain text? https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/30/5046958/nsa-secretly-tap...

I think one can excuse them from not securing themselves against their own government physically tapping their internal network.

It's referred to as "their internal network", but these taps were not within their buildings, as far as I recall. From my understanding, these are still leased lines run externally from facility to facility. It's been generally assumed that nobody is between points A and B on that line, but the line is still largely traveling through unsupervised space, and we are not the only government to have invested significant resources into tapping lines. (I believe both the US and Russia has submarines specifically designed to facilitate tapping undersea cables.)

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

#52

Post by notacoward »

JadeNB wrote: post #45
arkem wrote: post #8

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…

> 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. But the Google and Facebook security teams are particularly motivated to protect Google and Facebook, not me. If our interests happen to align, then I reap the benefits; but if they conflict, or even if they don't align particularly well, then the sterling…

Those teams are pretty motivated to protect users as well, because user population and network effects are key to their business models (perhaps a bit more for Facebook than for Google but still). If users started feeling like visiting those sites exposed them to security risks, as well as the existing privacy concerns, it would be disastrous for the bottom line.

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

#53

Post by notacoward »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #43
xtracerx wrote: post #22

Why does it feel like there is a barrage of propaganda being published against tech companies right now?

Think it is pretty clear there is. Now for what purpose and whom? Is it to create more distrust in the US? Is it to try to get us to destroy ourselves from within?

Some of it might be related to partisan politics, in which these organization play an increasingly important role. Some of it might be competitors or would-be competitors. A pretty fair bit, especially here, is likely to be sour grapes and tall poppy syndrome. Some people feel they deserve those billions, and are extremely bitter toward those who actually succeeded.

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

#55

Post by bogomipz »

As a natural-born American you still have the choice to not sign up for a Google account or a Facebook account. You do not however have the option of refusing to apply for a social security number when your child is born.

This piece looks likes little more than propaganda from the credit reporting agencies. Shame on you Bloomberg.

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

#56

Post by yandie »

lend000 wrote: post #40
tryingagainbro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. NSA begs to differ, on both counts https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files CIA too https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

They most likely have access on their own -- seems a bit suspicious why so many open AWS ops reqs require a security clearance.

This is why: https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

Only people with security clearance can access government cloud facilities

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

#57

Post by saalweachter »

JadeNB wrote: post #46
saalweachter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy libertarian SREs. :-P

> Crazy libertarian SREs. :-P A Google search didn't immediately clarify. What is 'SRE'? The most plausible de-abbreviation I could find was "site reliability engineer".

Site-reliability engineers is the correct de-abbreviation.

While data at Google is tightly protected, everything else at Google is fairly transparent. In particular, you can see who is using what resources. SREs, among other things, monitor and manage this resource usage. Large, abnormal usages ("Why is someone copying all this data off-site?") will be noticed, and some of the people who will notice won't take "because the NSA told us to" as an acceptable answer.

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

#58

Post by klodolph »

JadeNB wrote: post #46
saalweachter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy libertarian SREs. :-P

> Crazy libertarian SREs. :-P A Google search didn't immediately clarify. What is 'SRE'? The most plausible de-abbreviation I could find was "site reliability engineer".

See the SRE book: https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html

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

#59

Post by Gracana »

bogomipz wrote: post #55

As a natural-born American you still have the choice to not sign up for a Google account or a Facebook account. You do not however have the option of refusing to apply for a social security number when your child is born. This piece looks likes little more than propaganda from the credit reporting agencies. Shame on you Bloomberg.

> you still have the choice to not sign up for a Google account or a Facebook account

Unless you're careful to guard against it, you're loading up Facebook and Google's trackers on just about every site you visit. Registering for an account is not a prerequisite for them to build a profile on you.

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

#60

Post by program_whiz »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #31
singularity2001 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The danger is basically a nonrepudiation problem. Look at all the finger pointing after Trump was elected. It was Hillary's fault. It was Bernie's fault. It was the Dem's fault. Trump was what people wanted. It was the Russians. It was Facebook. It was the MSM. All this is just for an election. Assume someone does use the massive data stores of Google or FB to do something bad. How can you even identify that that hap…

That's sortof like in the old days when someone robbed the bank, you had no way to even identify them if they were masked. If they travelled far, you couldn't find them, no cross-state warrants. Also, they would rip off the traveling gold wagons and make off with untraceable gold they could melt and split for money.

In those days, the idea of tracing or catching these criminals would have seemed nigh impossible. I'm sure with enough brain power, lost billions, corrupt elections, and casualties, we'll come up with something sooner or later to mitigate the issues.

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