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Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

gizmodo.com

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Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#161

Post by bad_user »

jcoffland wrote: post #160
bad_user wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this happens quite often, like every time people get together.

Your saying people who use FB regularly share photos outside of FB and then upload someone else's photos to FB? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's not the normal path. I think people who use FB generally share photos with their friends who are also on FB, through FB.

Not in my experience and I have many friends outside of tech circles, since I'm not living in a tech bubble. When people get together group photos happen, or photos that you want, made with somebody else's phone.

The result is basically dozens of photos out of which only the best 2 or 3 get shared on Facebook.

And in general Facebook is not how those photos get shared. Not even its Messenger because it has annoying size limits, which matter for videos. If I were to guess, out of Facebook's properties, WhatsApp is probably the most popular photo sharing app by volume ;-)

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#162

Post by maigret »

metildaa wrote: post #143
zoul wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone SE is small and fairly cheap.

Its also a redheaded stepchild that Apple has discontinued without a replacement, not a great place to migrate to if you want a new phone of similar size in 3 or 4 years running iOS.

Of course it’s all hypothetical, but many pundits are betting on a comeback of a SE type of iPhone, as the expensive strategy is not working for Apple.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#163

Post by JoeSmithson »

drdaeman wrote: post #135
nlh wrote: post #112

I was talking to a friend today who said, fairly succinctly, that Facebook's single biggest problem is that they Totally and Royally Suck(TM) at PR. I wonder what would happen if they were just straightforward about this. "Friends you May Know is really cool! We use your phone's location data and do cross-checks on your address book to make the most intelligent suggestions. We even use some unique features of your ca…

> Friends you May Know is really cool! I've got over 9000 suggestions and not a single accurate one. Maybe they have the best technology and all the data out there, but I'm skeptical they can really use all the data they supposedly have on me. Same goes for any targeted advertisement, not just Facebook. Some come close (based on simple topic preferences), but in all those years I've yet to see any large number of the…

I take it a kind of weird 21st century compliment that my machine learnt ad suggestions are so poor. I think it indicates Google/Facebook don't have that much data for me. Sometimes it's fun game trying to work out how the algorithm possibly thought I would know people from other countries with no mutual friends.

> subscribe to Grammarly

Oh my god. I considered installing it just to stop the ads, but I see that doesn't help.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#164

Post by the-watchtower »

I am going to go out on a limb and say that this crosses the line from "invasion of privacy" to "just plain evil." Seriously: this is the type of stuff that you expect to find in state-sponsored malware, not software that's forced onto the majority of consumers.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#165

Post by xg15 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95
mc32 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, though I’m loath to insinuate they are an authority on anything, the UN has declared Internet access and access to information and dissemination a basic human right. “[The UN] condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online”. It appears they believe it’s close to being a utility, and I’d argue in a way it has become close enough to ne…

> the UN has declared Internet access and access to information and dissemination a basic human right ISPs are a utility. Facebook is not.

How about Google?

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#166

Post by glandium »

pasta wrote: post #154
glandium wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: my Android phone battery was being sucked at a fast pace last month. I don't remember exactly how it presented itself in the UI, but I ended up figuring out that the Google app was the culprit, because it was using the GPS... which I had explicitly disabled. An internet search showed I was not alone with such problems, and that the solution was to manually revoke some permissions for the app (thankfully it…

On Android location != GPS. For location also Wi-Fi is used. So GPS can be turned off but they can track your location by looking at the available Wi-Fi spots around you.

My battery was being sucked by GPS according to the battery usage reporting. And that stopped being the case when I revoked the Google app permissions.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#168

Post by xg15 »

Pardon for the somewhat OT post, but the quotes about patent use in the article made me realize once again that I don't get how the patent system works.

> [Facebook:] "We’ve often sought patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."

> “A lot of patents are filed at the idea stage rather than the actuality stage,” said Ranieri by phone. “A tech company that files a patent has, hopefully, at least thought about how to do it. You’d hope they could implement it if asked, but it doesn’t mean they have done so before.”

So if registering a patent neither requires that I actually intend to make use of the idea, nor that I even knew how to do it, what keeps me from patenting moonshots such as "A general framework for DNA-editing based cancer therapies" or "A method to construct a moon base using a mix of on-site material and material sourced from earth" and start raking in cash once someone else figures out the details and actually wants to do it?

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#169

Post by cm2012 »

xg15 wrote: post #168

Pardon for the somewhat OT post, but the quotes about patent use in the article made me realize once again that I don't get how the patent system works. > [Facebook:] "We’ve often sought patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans." > “A lot of patents are filed at the idea stage rather than the actuality stage,” said Ranieri by phone. “A tech company th…

Companies do this all the time. Amazon succesfully patented a 1 click buy button, for god's sake.

Re: Facebook Knows How to Track You Using the Dust on Your Camera Lens

#170

Post by gvurrdon »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #89
gdulli wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been floored that people leave their location services turned on by default. I have mine on for no more than a few minutes a month. I only turn it on when I'm in an unfamiliar location, don't have my bearings, and looking at the map alone isn't enough to help without GPS.

I'm sure you believe that corporations are evil and basically out to get you, but the vast majority of people doesn't. I think it's safe to assume that you're the outlier here. Have you ever tried putting yourself in the shoes of people who leave their GPS on? Can you see how much better the user experience is? Can you understand why someone who never had a negative experience involving their location data might pref…

I’d also pay for the ability to see where I was at a particular time, as it does seem like a very useful feature. In fact, I did pay for it by obtaining an iOS app that stores location history locally.

Google’s implementation looks really convenient but feels too creepy to me.

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