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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

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311–320 of 478 posts

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

#311
The only justification I could come up is that Facebook has grown so big that "one hand does not know what the other hand is doing." The security and privacy folks at Facebook agreed to this kind of abuse is somewhat hard to believe and the most likely explanation is that these features never got fully reviewed and vetted. Either way its a big failure.

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

#312
post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

I wonder too if there is a boiling point with the mechanisms at play. Google was a "do no evil" company, and yet there was maybe a small earthquake within the company regarding the news coming to light they're making a censorship-friendly version of their search.

I take everything Facebook has done that caused any level of public outcry as a guide book to design a better platform, likewise with Google. And I won't dive into the history or foundation of Facebook, however it's not surprising their path would lead to problems - and at indirect cost to society.

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

#313

It’s a cycle. Facebook has been doing nasty shit and apologizing for it since 2003. I’m starting to think they aren’t actually sorry. https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t...

Pretty much no one is actually sorry. They're just sorry the underestimated the negative response.

Once or if it impacts them enough personally then they'll be sorry, however that's the problem with rewarding people relatively blindly.

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

#314
post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

As someone who has occasionally runs experiments with FB adverts for various types of business. I feel it's boiling point will be when people and organisations advertising on the platform really start to look deeply into the value for money they are getting on it. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen organisations throw money at it in return for dubious clicks from markets they never targeted, bot like user…

I mean, Facebook tricked advertisers initially into spending 100s of millions into the platform (if not billions?) with their bait and switch of telling advertisers they'd "own" the users that liked their pages - and people still trust them even with that starting pointing to keep advertising? It's strange to me.

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

#315
We know that social networks are here to stay, and even if people disagree the writing is on the wall for Facebook to have Myspace moment, as soon as an alternate is available.

What will it take for some prominent VCs/Investors to just come together and create a fund to fund FB replacement? If done right, they will make a killing (from a returns perspective).

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

#316
post #261
post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

I think platforms like Facebook depend on being "cool" over some demographic. Then other demographics adopt it, time passes, other demographics grow tired of the same old Facebook look their parents also used, and Facebook starts to die. We've seen this as well with other social networks like hi5, myspace, that once dominated entire continents as the preferred social website. Of course they are smart and competent pe…

It is an anti-network effect. The early adaptors are cool, the late adaptors are not. In Facebook's case, the early adaptors are now old people posting photos of their children. The users aged to irrelevance.

There definitely was a big difference between MySpace and the other social networks. Facebook ran well and worked. People forget the total shit show MySpace was in the middle of 2008. The site ran terribly, was getting hammered by spammers, and they starting covering it in banner ads. We didn't see a repeat of those problems with Instagram or Snapchat.

There is a coolness factor. It isn't as defined as fashion, or the latest hot nightclub, but it is there. That alone won't be enough to make the "next" Facebook, but I think it is the foot that gets stuck in the door.

Facebook might be able to acquire the next challenger in the US, but they will definitely fail to get it by EU regulators.

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

#317
post #264

I am becoming anxious to see some action out of the DOJ Anti-Trust division against Google, Facebook, and Amazon, etc. These tech behemoths effectively own most of the consumer internet and they use their muscle to either acquire or force out the majority of other players. More regulation is not going to cut it (or else it would have already). In America (and most places), law normally lags quite a bit behind the eve…

I think we need proper privacy measures, since the misuse of data is not necessarily an "antitrust issue". For instance, would breaking up Facebook really mean that the newly formed constituents respected privacy? And would antitrust enforcement against Google or Facebook reduce privacy exploitation by smaller entities?

I'd argue that it would not -- 1,000 small Facebooks could still violate privacy. Creating privacy legislation is the only real way to achieve proper privacy guarantees.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa... so it was around in the open since around 2013, and still not fixed? 0_0

Almost every shop does this, no verification before use. ffs, at least provide a "report not mine" function.

I've only ever seen a "report not mine" function from Google. Where else have you seen it? I am not on FB/LinkedIn/most similar ones, so I may be missing examples.

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

#319
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB's terms of service do not allow pseudonym accounts.

Do people honestly give a shit about terms of service?

Yes. Especially ones with broad arbitration clauses, and double especially ones where your access to the courts is determined by whether you opt out within a short time period after agreeing to them.

These are frighteningly common, typically enforceable in the US even for consumers, and typically enforceable in most countries for even small business customers (though rarely for consumers in much of Canada and Europe if the vendor has enough ties to the area for local consumer protection law to apply and you win the race to the courthouse).

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

#320

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…

Check the TOS and/or implementations for many of the tracking providers and you’ll see they use hashed emails. Show me a way to extract the common domain name from the below: 9425ca8eb02d022309ec175a7067b1567a5f741ec7010cc1b5034287f9db6e2f 4d1c86b9f418c713e784760fea809e34418c2f13e993d907783572ecc2c9bb6e

Its pretty simple to crack unsalted hashes using rainbow tables, unless each hash is salted with a random distinct salt and if that is the case then these hash seem pretty useless. So how do tracking providers use these hash ? What other info is sent along with the hash ?
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