81–90 of 142 posts
Why is it surprising or even remotely controversial that an app that people explicitly authorized to access their messages (informed consent) then proceeded to access their messages? The app didn't have access to friends' messages, so I don't see what the issue is here, other than yet another clickbait headline.
Why is it even possible for an app to request your Facebook messages though?
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For people I've discussed with, the surprising part is that they can do anything with it. You and I know that (currently) if someone has the data, they'll scrape/manipulate it at will. I believe, a reasonable person, would expect the limits of the access grant to end with the purpose of the app (a quiz) and not extend any further. Most contracts/agreements have limits and this one is implicit in the working of the ap…
>Yes the user agreed to grant some permissions so a quiz could be taken. You had to authorize the messages permission separately from all other permissions. If you didn't want your messages accessed, you simply declined that permission. This one's on the user, not on anybody else.
Facebook has already updated the numbers from from 47 million to 80 something million. This is going going to go bigger than Yahoo scale: "all accounts and all data" pretty quickly
The real number is north of 2 billion.
"Malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery."
"Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way."
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access...
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For people I've discussed with, the surprising part is that they can do anything with it. You and I know that (currently) if someone has the data, they'll scrape/manipulate it at will. I believe, a reasonable person, would expect the limits of the access grant to end with the purpose of the app (a quiz) and not extend any further. Most contracts/agreements have limits and this one is implicit in the working of the ap…
>Yes the user agreed to grant some permissions so a quiz could be taken. You had to authorize the messages permission separately from all other permissions. If you didn't want your messages accessed, you simply declined that permission. This one's on the user, not on anybody else.
Everybody (and Facebook best of all) knows that users will click [Accept] or [I've read the 27 page T&Cs] or [I hereby give Cambridge Analytica my firstborn child] without even slowing down to consider any consequences - in return for another tiny dopamine fix.
Why is it surprising or even remotely controversial that an app that people explicitly authorized to access their messages (informed consent) then proceeded to access their messages? The app didn't have access to friends' messages, so I don't see what the issue is here, other than yet another clickbait headline.
For people I've discussed with, the surprising part is that they can do anything with it. You and I know that (currently) if someone has the data, they'll scrape/manipulate it at will. I believe, a reasonable person, would expect the limits of the access grant to end with the purpose of the app (a quiz) and not extend any further. Most contracts/agreements have limits and this one is implicit in the working of the ap…
Perhaps the personality quiz example that seems to be the cornerstone of this whole CA story is different: I'm not sure what your expectations would be allowing such an app access to your messages would be. However, there are quite a few examples of strange behaviour of software running on phones that it's pretty clear that isn't what you had in mind when you opted in. An example that comes to mind is Facebook apps activating your microphone to log conversations with people you have in person (I'm not sure there is any proof of this one yet but would anyone be surprised?): when you opt in to microphone use it's so that you can make calls on the app not to invite spying. "But you opted in!" Yeah, okay. "Sorry!" - Zuckerburg
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>Yes the user agreed to grant some permissions so a quiz could be taken. You had to authorize the messages permission separately from all other permissions. If you didn't want your messages accessed, you simply declined that permission. This one's on the user, not on anybody else.
You're ignoring the 'reasonable person' argument which is important and forms a significant part of the legal system re: understanding contracts that you are signing. The reaction by the public and HN as a whole is perfectly justified. The permissions dialog is less interesting than the title of the app which wasn't "App to steal and repackage and sell your data you idiots!". In net, the app didn't tell the truth abo…
The Obama For America app stole data from about 4x the number of profiles that this app did - about 200 million people, less than 1 million of whom gave them any form of consent, much less informed consent, as was given here with the messages permission. Do you have an issue with that app’s title?
The headline is misleading. The article isn't about Cambridge Analytica: "Because of an editing error, an earlier version of a headline with this article misidentified the entity that improperly harvested the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users. The information was collected though a quiz app developed by the researcher Aleskandr Kogan, not by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica." "It is not c…
"Aleksandr Kogan, a Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University, admits harvesting the personal details of 30 million Facebook users via a personality app he developed.
He then passed the data to Cambridge Analytica who assured him this was legal, he said. "
From https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/facebook-row...
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Your moral compass need to be checked.
And when I’m done doing that, I should probably check my sanity, because I have to be imagining this thread. It’s absurd that someone thinks that they have an expectation of privacy when they voluntarily choose to send a message to someone else. I know you can’t satisfy everyone all the people all the time, but this idea is just bonkers.
So perhaps it's not an expectation of privacy, but more of an expectation that your private messages won't be distributed by third parties for profit.
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You're ignoring the 'reasonable person' argument which is important and forms a significant part of the legal system re: understanding contracts that you are signing. The reaction by the public and HN as a whole is perfectly justified. The permissions dialog is less interesting than the title of the app which wasn't "App to steal and repackage and sell your data you idiots!". In net, the app didn't tell the truth abo…
The permissions dialog is less interesting than the title of the app which wasn't "App to steal and repackage and sell your data you idiots!". The Obama For America app stole data from about 4x the number of profiles that this app did - about 200 million people, less than 1 million of whom gave them any form of consent, much less informed consent, as was given here with the messages permission. Do you have an issue w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the correction, I thought CA paid for access to the data the test collected.
My understanding is the "quiz app" was more of a phishing scheme to get users to share their Facebook data with Cambridge Analytica (including data that user had access to about their friends).