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Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

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Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#12

Post by weinzierl »

Site is down, but the link that fits the title better is [1] anyway,because that is where the dataset originated. This page also has the timeline of the release. Very short timeline, that is, because you can imagine how quickly they had to take it down.

[1] http://masonporter.blogspot.de/2011/02/facebook100-data-set....

Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#13

Post by jaequery »

I'm trying to see which is a bigger problem at hand. The Equifax breach a couple months back or the FB fiasco.

Equifax breached over 143 million users with social security #, credit card #, and personal data.

For FB, can someone explain to me what was the actual damage, was it just personal information about you?

Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#14

Post by smaili »

jaequery wrote: post #13

I'm trying to see which is a bigger problem at hand. The Equifax breach a couple months back or the FB fiasco. Equifax breached over 143 million users with social security #, credit card #, and personal data. For FB, can someone explain to me what was the actual damage, was it just personal information about you?

Best way I can think of explaining it: The Equifax breach was more of how you're identified, whereas with Facebook it's more of who you are.

Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#15

Post by ellisv »

jaequery wrote: post #13

I'm trying to see which is a bigger problem at hand. The Equifax breach a couple months back or the FB fiasco. Equifax breached over 143 million users with social security #, credit card #, and personal data. For FB, can someone explain to me what was the actual damage, was it just personal information about you?

> For FB, can someone explain to me what was the actual damage, was it just personal information about you?

FB allowed apps to access data about the user (who authorized the app) and their friends (who did not need to authorize the app).

The kind the data FB has can be used to reveal a lot of information about you (e.g. age, where you live, etc.) and this information can then also be used to derive things you haven't told FB -- such as estimating your income or predicting your SSN [1].

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10975

Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#16

Post by ashelmire »

734786710934 wrote: post #9
richdougherty wrote: post #7

> to my surprise, the dataset included each user’s unique Facebook ID number. Come on Facebook, you should be hiding your internal identifiers from third parties. Ideally each consumer of Facebook data should have its own mapping of identifiers to make it more difficult to combine datasets later on.

Facebook has restricted apps to only receiving app-scoped IDs since 2014.

Only took them 10 years?

Re: Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

#19

Post by 2aa07e2 »

compsciphd wrote: post #8
richdougherty wrote: post #7

> to my surprise, the dataset included each user’s unique Facebook ID number. Come on Facebook, you should be hiding your internal identifiers from third parties. Ideally each consumer of Facebook data should have its own mapping of identifiers to make it more difficult to combine datasets later on.

considering that for a long time facebook didn't have "usernames" and everyone was identified by a number this doesn't seem strange (especially as my faulty memory might mean that they created usernames post 2005)

One can still find the id, even when a person has chosen a username that masks it. Right click the block option of a user you are not friends with, copy the link and voila, you've got the user id now.

I mostly use that to see public but normally inaccessible pictures of people I am not friends with (i.e. pictures they've been tagged in).

Try it yourself (for some reason this only works on desktop mode): https://www.facebook.com/search/{$PUT_THAT_ID_HERE}/photos-o...

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