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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

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Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#91
post #88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your weed dealer provide the service for free? If you want to be treated as a $$$ paying customer start paying. Problem with social networks and $$$ is that network effects will not come into effect as not everyone will be willing to pay. There are actually ethical information dealers but they require you to pay them as you are paying your weed dealer.

I mean, if you give a $$$ option instead of giving up data than you removed the intended targets of most ads out of your advertising pool.

The ultimate goal is to make money, not serve ads.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#92
post #30

Facebook gonna Facebook. It's long past time to consider regulation of an ethically bankrupt corporation.

It would be really surprising if that was a facebook only thing. For starters Google pesters me at least as much to add my phone number to secure my account.

I think it will stop pestering you for a phone number if you give it some neutral second factor like a Security Key ?

(Security Keys are actually way more anonymous than I'd even thought possible until I understood how they work, if you know Susie uses the same key for DropBox and GitHub, and you suspect Susie also uses this key for the account NumberOneSecretTrumpFan on GitHub, and then you steal all the account credentials from GitHub somehow, this doesn't end up being enough to verify that Susie has the same key as NumberOneSecretTrumpFan, nor is it enough to sign into Susie's DropBox account, and unless GitHub's data includes the backup passphrases or whatever it's not even enough to sign into GitHub as Susie, NumberOneSecretTrumpFan, or any other Security Key user...)

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#93
post #17

As a security engineer, I cannot overstate just how horrible this is. Phone numbers might not be an ideal 2nd factor for authentication, but to punish users for setting up 2FA by using the provided phone number for ad targetting is incredibly unethical.

I never heard of this company when I did a monitor.firefox.com search of my work address.

Exactis Breach date:June 1, 2018 Compromised accounts:131,577,763

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#94

As an FB Marketing API developer, this has been available for several years . The way it works, advertisers can send their phone list to FB for ad targeting. However, phone hashes are sent, not clear ones. Personally, as long as the user has an opt-out and opt-in options, I don’t think ad targeting is necessarily an unethical pattern, the blurring lines of ads and recommendations would be actually a pattern that user…

Speaking as someone who hasn't used facebook in years, I think it's awkward trying to compare it with netflix/spotify. The latter are narrowly-focussed, with a clear target for recommendvertising - i.e. I am viewing a film or listening to music, the case for suggesting another is pretty good, and useful. That's very different from, for example, recommending a product to me when I'm viewing my friends' photos.

Also, one pays for Netflix, and there are no ads. They try to give you, the user/customer, a better experience, so that more users/customers sign up and pay.

Needless to say, Facebook's goals and incentives are very different.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#96
post #17

As a security engineer, I cannot overstate just how horrible this is. Phone numbers might not be an ideal 2nd factor for authentication, but to punish users for setting up 2FA by using the provided phone number for ad targetting is incredibly unethical.

I never heard of this company when I did a monitor.firefox.com search of my work address. Exactis Breach date:June 1, 2018 Compromised accounts:131,577,763

https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites

> Compromised data: Credit status information, Dates of birth, Education levels, Email addresses, Ethnicities, Family structure, Financial investments, Genders, Home ownership statuses, Income levels, IP addresses, Marital statuses, Names, Net worths, Occupations, Personal interests, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Religions, Spoken languages

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#97

This is exactly the kind of abuse that GDPR is designed to curtail.

Small question: how do you prove it, adequately for a court of law?

I imagine that to prove it, you'd have to make several accounts, with several phone numbers, and somehow demonstrate to a judge that the information leaks through. Not an easy task.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#98
post #21

Another personal observation. I have an Instagram account that I thought was fully incognito. I never connected it to any other social account, I used a separate email for authentication etc. Just days after the Instagram founders left Facebook I started receiving friend suggestion on my IG that were very very relevant. Those were people I knew in real life and mostly connected via Facebook but not only. I shouldn't…

This is a perfect example of the need for physical comparmentation. Separate devices never connected through the same internet service. As far as devices go, to think you have separated “anything” on only one device, you’re living in fantasyland.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#99
post #4

The reason I never give fb my mobile is if you use a pseudonym account, it will suggest your profile as a friend to anyone who has your mobile in their phone contact list (eg ex-partners, stalkers, employers, drug dealers). Found that one out the hard way. I know Zuck wants me to preemptively upload my nudes, but still.

> The reason I never give fb my mobile Here's the issue with it. You might not give it but your friends would. Therefore, this strategy is pretty useless as network effects kick in.

TIP which I discovered by accident: create a bogus account with your phone number.

Facebook will remove the phone number from your account when you do that. You can also use that to check who are your friend who gave FB your phone number.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#100
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically how FBI Director Comey's secret Instagram account (and thus Twitter account) was unmasked. But it was even worse - you are suggested to 3rd party people who just follow the people who know you: https://gizmodo.com/this-is-almost-certainly-james-comey-s-t...

Yep, something similar I discovered recently that if you sign up to Instagram with somebody's email that they use on Facebook then within a day or two you'll start to see all of their friends from Facebook whom are also on Instagram in your recommended follows. All of this happens without email verification..

> All of this happens without email verification

This has very interesting consequences...

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