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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

gizmodo.com

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

#141

Post by mtgx »

B-Con wrote: post #49
ddebernardy wrote: post #44

The url should point to the Gizmodo article; not the sensationalizing tweet. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to... The actual story is FB enriching your profile with shadow contact information about you when you or third parties provide it with details it wasn't aware about yet. For instance when a friend of yours has your landline number in their address book and gives FB access to the latt…

Is this any surprise? Just a few hours ago the Acton article on the front page[0] talked about them doing this in WhatsApp: > Later he learned that elsewhere in Facebook, there were “plans and technologies to blend data.” Specifically, Facebook could use the 128-bit string of numbers assigned to each phone as a kind of bridge between accounts. The other method was phone-number matching, or pinpointing Facebook accoun…

I remember FB doing that with WhatsApp at least 6-9 months before announcing it officially and pushing the new "terms of service."

It's a shame the EU didn't punish them more severely over that, because they were basically already using the feature without mentioning it in their ToS for almost a year, if not longer.

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

#142

Post by throwawaymanbot »

darthoctopus wrote: post #139
pilif wrote: post #138

Didn't we have this discussion already earlier this year and they told us it was an unfortunate bug and that it has been fixed? Yes. Yes. We did: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17022162/facebook-two-fac...

not relevant

Yes.. yes it is relevant, its shows how Facebook morally and ethically operates.

Who are you to tell anyone what is or what is not relevant in a public forum. I hope you are not this overbearing in real life?

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

#143

Post by otachack »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #127
ummonk wrote: 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 agree with your sentiment. But, as someone who understands that not all people and companies use the same moral set as myself, this is why I've never set up 2fa using a phone. Why should I give some company my phone number? Increasingly it's become a single point of metadata to uniquely describe myself (just as my email addresses have).

You don't have to but it's the most user-friendly, although flawed, method of enabling 2FA. They could have easily used a software token but that requires non-tech savvy users to download a 3rd party authentication app, as well as understand the basic usage. Why do that when users can simply get a text sent on a method they most likely have?

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

#144

Post by notyourday »

icebraining wrote: post #116
amelius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The GDPR is not applied by courts, but by regulators, who are tasked with investigating just that sort of thing. Courts may come later, if the company disputes, I think.

Facebook files on every person in such regulator would make Stasi files look like a collection of drawings of a one year old.

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

#145

Post by rikkus »

TheGrumpyBrit wrote: post #58
rikkus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes using information for a purpose other than it was collected for. Hopefully this means in Europe we won’t see this spam.

Don't count on it. From the Gizmodo article: > I’ve been trying to get Facebook to disclose shadow contact information to users for almost a year now. But it has even refused to disclose these shadow details to users in Europe, where privacy law is stronger and explicitly requires companies to tell users what data it has on them. A UK resident named Rob Blackie has been asking Facebook to hand over his shadow contact…

Hmm the information isn't the algorithm. It would be excellent if the courts could get them to release this data!

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

#146

Post by ashwinikd »

denzil_correa wrote: post #132
tumetab1 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You can also use that to check who are your friend who gave FB your phone number. Can you explain further how this will work?

Probably by suggesting users who have your number as friends.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

denzil_correa wrote: post #132
tumetab1 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You can also use that to check who are your friend who gave FB your phone number. Can you explain further how this will work?

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by jsjohnst »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #127
ummonk wrote: 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 agree with your sentiment. But, as someone who understands that not all people and companies use the same moral set as myself, this is why I've never set up 2fa using a phone. Why should I give some company my phone number? Increasingly it's become a single point of metadata to uniquely describe myself (just as my email addresses have).

> just as my email addresses have

That doesn’t need to be the case though with just a little bit of effort and minimal cost. Use your own domain for email and set your account to be a catchall. Then use facebook.com@yourdomain.tld and your email address is no longer a cross site unique identifier.

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

#149

Post by muglug »

lysp wrote: post #32
hnzix wrote: 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.

You can even do a search by mobile number, by typing a mobile number into the search without pressing enter. Depending on the owner's security settings, Facebook will often suggest the profile of the person in the type-aheaded search results.

I believe they removed this feature a couple of months ago.

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

#150

Post by odyssey7 »

fouric wrote: post #90
tanto wrote: 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.

Most internet service companies, including Facebook and Google, don't give you the option of paying for privacy even if you wanted to.

I think that if it's possible to define a way of operating businesses in a way that doesn't harvest data in a way that's nonessential to the services, then there should be a law requiring this option: to pay out of your pocket directly the amount of revenue the company would have expected to make, in exchange for the company not doing this data collection. But it seems difficult to get to such a definition. I think this law would be very popular.
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