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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

#181

Post by daemin »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #168
daemin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hate how all the social media apps want to grab your address book to "see who else you know on here". They all do it.

At least on recent Android you can deny it. The UI doesn't support it and you need to resort to hacks such as https://whatsappwithoutcontact.com/

For WhatsApp in its initial incarnation I did not mind allowing it access to my contacts since the phone number was the way it identified people and since it was universal.

With these upcoming incarnations I'm not sure I want to use it, and I'll be looking for a simple IM application which just charges a simple fee for service.

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

#182

Post by gruez »

icebraining wrote: post #126
vezycash wrote: post #50

On android, if messenger handles SMS, FB knows how much you have in the bank and your transactions.

How so? Do you get your transactions by SMS??

maybe not by default, but if you have transaction notifications delivered through SMS, it's possible

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

#183

Post by da02 »

spr1ted wrote: post #156

People of multiple platforms dislike me for discrediting facebook. Simply talking about facts and what they could expect. They think they know it all. Some corps are good some are evil. People tend to forget that an evil person could also be your most trusted and reliable one. I work as a cyber security engineer and the things i have see flying by are crazy. The fact that information is sold without you4 knowledge is…

What are some crazy things you've seen?

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

#184

Post by bilbo0s »

oedmarap wrote: post #133
mojuba wrote: 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…

When I was in another country on a business trip I bought a temporary local SIM, originally valid for two weeks but I've kept it active as I travel there often. I used that foreign number to create my Instagram account and I've gotten the benefit of only being shown suggested accounts from locals from that country (zero people I know). Same goes for ads as well. Currently I keep it on roaming and actually use it to v…

Just as a warning to anyone who might try this, it won't work. (At least not without a massive amount of opsec effort expended on your side.)

I'll give you an example of why it might not work. Since your phone has roaming, you happen to have it with you at work, or at a party, or at the library, or anywhere really. If even a single acquaintance of yours is "nearby", the information is leaked. If acquaintances seem to always be "nearby", children, wives, husbands, siblings, your info is DEFINITELY leaked.

If anyone is going to try to use this strategy for anything which might result in the loss of your livelihood, (eg - porn), please realize there are many, many, many more precautions you will have to take than are listed in oedfmarap's comment. If you just do what you see in that comment, you could find yourself without a job somewhere down the line.

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

#185

Post by stallmanite »

tanto wrote: post #78
anonytrary wrote: post #11

"Give me as much service as you can while keeping me as far off the grid as possible" is a skill that is sorely lacking in this market. I don't have this problem with weed dealers, but I have this problem with information dealers. Internet companies could seriously learn a thing or two from the black market on how you treat your customers.

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.

So if I pay GM for a car they won't data-mine me? Just yesterday on HN we learned that this is not the case. Why do you think companies wont take your money and then proceed to sell your data anyway?

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

#186

Post by barkingcat »

ardy42 wrote: post #180
barkingcat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this it though, the engineers designing the ad targeting system at Facebook is linking the random emails you use as "catch all" to your main identity so you can be targeted specifically even though neither party has full knowledge of the linkage between your catchall email and your main identity email. This is facilitated by information that is not under your control. If facebook was able to design and build th…

> Isn't this it though, the engineers designing the ad targeting system at Facebook is linking the random emails you use as "catch all" to your main identity so you can be targeted specifically even though neither party has full knowledge of the linkage between your catchall email and your main identity email. If you use the method described in the grandparent, you use a unique email address for every site (e.g site1…

This is no longer "just a little bit of effort and minimal cost" - most likely no one will use unique emails for every site as well as use private browsing mode permanently in order to avoid cross cookie / cross site contamination via 3rd party (non facebook) tracking. Which is cited as a "feature" - allowing clients to bring their own ad tracking database and integrating that into the FB one in order to make ad targeting more specific.

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

#187

Post by krageon »

da02 wrote: post #183
spr1ted wrote: post #156

People of multiple platforms dislike me for discrediting facebook. Simply talking about facts and what they could expect. They think they know it all. Some corps are good some are evil. People tend to forget that an evil person could also be your most trusted and reliable one. I work as a cyber security engineer and the things i have see flying by are crazy. The fact that information is sold without you4 knowledge is…

What are some crazy things you've seen?

You don't need his crazy stories, really. All you need to do is accept that Facebook isn't behaving exceptionally poorly, this is industry standard. Lo and behold - the entire sector is suddenly a cesspool of disrespect and money grabbing at the cost of your data, your privacy, anything they will be able to get away with. And they can get away with a lot, because you are not allowed to talk when you work anywhere. On pain of basically having your life ruined.

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

#188

Post by krageon »

kozikow wrote: post #178
jsjohnst wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can do it with Gmail to some extent already. E.g. instead of using myemail@gmail.com I would use myemail+facebook@gmail.com. Gmail ignores anything after the plus. As someone mentioned, marketing companies usually share just the hash of email. The trick is not too popular and I didn't experience a company handling it yet.

A vast majority of companies either don't accept the plus because they are too lazy to implement proper email validation, or they strip the pluses from gmail addresses because they're strictly useless to them.

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

#190

Post by inetknght »

krageon wrote: post #187
da02 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some crazy things you've seen?

You don't need his crazy stories, really. All you need to do is accept that Facebook isn't behaving exceptionally poorly, this is industry standard. Lo and behold - the entire sector is suddenly a cesspool of disrespect and money grabbing at the cost of your data, your privacy, anything they will be able to get away with. And they can get away with a lot, because you are not allowed to talk when you work anywhere. On…

@da02 asked @spr1ted for some examples and you come in saying he's crazy and deny that examples are needed?
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