I had my mobile phone-number appear pre-filled in an add-your-number-to-your-account prompt on Facebook's mobile website while I never provided it in any way to Facebook myself (in the meaning of: neither added it to my account nor mentioned it ever on the website; I never used their apps at all either) . They had farmed it from one of my contacts adressbook obviously.
Not surprising that they'd do that but still a disconcerting feeling to actually see it happen.
Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
101–110 of 478 posts
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#102Honestly, I hate how many 2FA systems want you to use a phone number. There are other ways that are much better.
Everybody punts security issues from identification to the next guy. Eventually the only safeguard left between you and the bad guys is a minimum wage salesman working at the t-mobile counter. It's sad to know that all of your primary email addresses, with links to online shopping accounts with credit cards, bank accounts, etc, can all be accessed by spoofing your phone number.
I honestly wish sites would use client side certs or auth via a private key.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#103This 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.
It's "easy".
1. Ask for the judges phone number 2. Register new account with judges phone number (clean browser, no friends added or pages liked) 3. See friend recommendations from the judge in this new FB profile.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#104As 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…
> Would you rather use Netflix or Spotify without recommendation engine?
Hell yes.
Related artists per track, that would be more, than enough.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#105I'm in a wired situation, I opened my facebook account with a phone number, not email, my username is phone number I had ~5 years ago. I lost the sim card ~4.5 years ago, so since then I still use the same login. Every time I login facebook asks me to update my phone number because it's no longer valid, so they probably know it's been recycled and someone else owns the number. Another thing... a year ago, I got a new sim card with new phone number again (I change my number every 1-2 years), and since that time I can't use this phone number to setup 2FA because... someone else on Facebook has this number in their profile!
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#106I'm in a wired situation, I opened my facebook account with a phone number, not email, my username is phone number I had ~5 years ago. I lost the sim card ~4.5 years ago, so since then I still use the same login. Every time I login facebook asks me to update my phone number because it's no longer valid, so they probably know it's been recycled and someone else owns the number. Another thing... a year ago, I got a new…
It's admittedly off topic but if you don't mind me asking, what are the reasons for you to change your number every 1-2 years?
Doesn't that complicate things with past clients, old friends and maybe even with family?
I changed my number 3 years ago but I still keep my old number active because it occasionally gets calls or text from past contacts.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#107As 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…
> However, phone hashes are sent, not clear ones. The space of phone numbers is small enough that this is not a significant consideration.
"No worries we hashed IP adresses"
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#108Earlier 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'm probably wrong but I feel like there's a market for an ethical advertiser that does no tracking and placed ads by content only. is that impossible? it was reality until the 90s
I think (but might be wrong) that duckduckgo works like that.
They show ads based on search the content rather than via tracking.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#109Another 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.
Qubes OS disagrees with you here.
Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the more relevant ads are robocalls like in this case?
Who is still answering phone calls on their cell from numbers not in their contact book? If you call me and you're not in my phone my phones just dumps you direct to voicemail. Not excuse this behavior in the least, but robo calls in general are a solved problem for me.
Here's a typical problem:
* Be in the US, get your mobile number years and years ago and it has the area code of where you lived at the time.
* Move somewhere else, keep the mobile number.
* Now you get 4-5 robocalls per day spoofing numbers from "your" area code and calling at reasonable hours for that area... which are not reasonable hours where you now live.
And if you say "just turn on do not disturb", remember some folks have to be on call for their jobs, don't know in advance what numbers the pager alerts will come from, and so have to leave the phone open to ring from whoever calls. Which will be robocalls with "helpful" offers at 4AM.
What I would love to see in a future mobile operating system is the ability to say "block all calls from this area code unless they're in my contacts".