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Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

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Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#21
post #10
post #5

cameradust, browser fingerprinting, graphic/sound card canvas, memory canvas mouse usage, keyboard usage, cpu serial number, MAC, router MAC, system logs, telemetry

Sounds too complicated, and half of that is not even accessible from the browser. He used just the browser.

BTW stop creating voting cadres, it is trivial to trace them back to the central login and ban that too

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#22
post #16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds too complicated, and half of that is not even accessible from the browser. He used just the browser.

javascript has a lot of power, and it acesses more than the browser, and none of this is remotely too complicated, it happens on a daily basis. your browser does a lot more than you think. FB most definately does not stay in your browser when it gets its hooks on you. BTW modal dialog buttons do more than the label says, the old meme "what button do i push to hack someone" can be written to "what button do i click to…

How would you access my CPU serial number or my router MAC address from JS? I would think you’d need a zero-day to accomplish this, and it seems dumb for Facebook to be burning browser exploits on fingerprinting when they could make much more money selling them.

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#23
I think there's a much simpler answer than some sort of "deep browser fingerprinting" or other scary voodoo.

1) User requests account deletion. Facebook does not delete it, keeps track of his phone number via shadow profiles. (Mike is still mike@gmail.com, 800-555-1234)

2) User creates a new Proton Mail address. (Fakey@protonmail.com)

3) One of his friends adds that email address to his contact. (Mike, mike@gmail.com, fakey@protonmail.com, 800-555-1234). This user is on Instagram, Facebook, or has some mobile app that uses their analytics.

4) Facebook makes the association after scraping his friends contact list.

Essentially, his friends betrayed him, likely unintentionally.

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#24
post #5

cameradust, browser fingerprinting, graphic/sound card canvas, memory canvas mouse usage, keyboard usage, cpu serial number, MAC, router MAC, system logs, telemetry

cameradust? that's clever if it means what i think it means, aka looking at artifacts in a photo caused by "gunk" on your lens.

yes it does, there is also acoustic analysis of keyboard noise, quite a lot and this all happens at the time of account creation and early account use until the FB AI thinks it knows who you are, there is no need for constant listening or watching,

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#25
post #7

OP was probably not a very technical user, else he/she would've understood that 1. They should've deleted _all_ relevant cookies (in the browser, as well as in the browsers cookie database) 2. There are many 3rd party companies that sell data packs that derive residential IPs from VPN IPs (we use some at work). A trusted/good VPN is a must 3. They probably came via the same User Agent (didn't mention changing browser…

What is a trusted/good VPN to use?

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#26
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cameradust? that's clever if it means what i think it means, aka looking at artifacts in a photo caused by "gunk" on your lens.

yes it does, there is also acoustic analysis of keyboard noise, quite a lot and this all happens at the time of account creation and early account use until the FB AI thinks it knows who you are, there is no need for constant listening or watching,

So you're claiming that Facebook is using 0days to bypass browser controls on your mic to do acoustical analysis of keyboard noise when you sign up?

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#27

I think there's a much simpler answer than some sort of "deep browser fingerprinting" or other scary voodoo. 1) User requests account deletion. Facebook does not delete it, keeps track of his phone number via shadow profiles. (Mike is still mike@gmail.com, 800-555-1234) 2) User creates a new Proton Mail address. (Fakey@protonmail.com) 3) One of his friends adds that email address to his contact. (Mike, mike@gmail.com…

This is 99% likely the case. Everyone thinks that we need technical voodoo to figure out who a user is.

No, people are just far worse at separating their “new” identities from their old ones than they think.

You don’t even need a shadow profile tracking previous info to do this. Just infer PYMK via a few friends he adds on the new account.

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#28
post #7

OP was probably not a very technical user, else he/she would've understood that 1. They should've deleted _all_ relevant cookies (in the browser, as well as in the browsers cookie database) 2. There are many 3rd party companies that sell data packs that derive residential IPs from VPN IPs (we use some at work). A trusted/good VPN is a must 3. They probably came via the same User Agent (didn't mention changing browser…

>2. There are many 3rd party companies that sell data packs that derive residential IPs from VPN IPs (we use some at work). A trusted/good VPN is a must

link to some of those companies?

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cameradust? that's clever if it means what i think it means, aka looking at artifacts in a photo caused by "gunk" on your lens.

yes it does, there is also acoustic analysis of keyboard noise, quite a lot and this all happens at the time of account creation and early account use until the FB AI thinks it knows who you are, there is no need for constant listening or watching,

Do you have a source for this? I've done a reasonable amount of work on weaponizing these sorts of attacks and it's definitely nontrivial. I'd be shocked to find out that Facebook had successfully deployed them at scale.

Re: Created a fake account and Facebook still figured out who I am. How?

#30

I think there's a much simpler answer than some sort of "deep browser fingerprinting" or other scary voodoo. 1) User requests account deletion. Facebook does not delete it, keeps track of his phone number via shadow profiles. (Mike is still mike@gmail.com, 800-555-1234) 2) User creates a new Proton Mail address. (Fakey@protonmail.com) 3) One of his friends adds that email address to his contact. (Mike, mike@gmail.com…

Yep, IIRC it was confirmed that FB crosses people's contact lists to match profiles to people.
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