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New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

reuters.com

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Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#21

Post by East-Link »

politician wrote: post #4

nit, > Facebook is facing a slew of lawsuits and regulatory inquiries over privacy issues, including a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation into disclosures that Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with the defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is not defunct, but rather changed its name to Emerdata. It's too bad Reuters didn't…

>Cambridge Analytica is not defunct, but rather changed its name to Emerdata. It's too bad Reuters didn't get that part correct.

That's not true, I used to work there. Everyone was laid off in July or so.

I haven't heard of anyone joining Emerdata, and I do see those guys now and again. I know where all the technical people work. Emerdata was created before the media shitstorm to absorb all the pointless corporate entities that had been created within the SCL group over the years and were now mostly idle.

A few of the people from Cambridge Analytica (or rather SCL elections) started a new political consultancy under the name Auspex International. So focus your conspiracies there if you must, noting:

- They're pretty open about it being an operating business and having employees from CA

- Very few of the higher-ups from SCL are involved, just one guy from the board I think. (He's a 20-something guy and wasn't even on the board til 2018. Bad timing!)

- They haven't taken on any technical staff from CA; although they did try to early on, no one had any trouble finding a job that would be less of a headache.

Please notice that you have engaged in lazy misinformation-spreading and you're participating a conspiracy theory. It's attractive to think that you're hot on the tail of a shadowy illuminati-esque group, but that's not the case. It was just an ad tech company with a few political clients and some snake oil regarding psychographics.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#22

Post by sp332 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #15

> "The report said that the company can access data in some cases even when the user is not signed into Facebook or does not have a Facebook account." I realize frivolous comments on HN are frowned upon but frankly this leaves me speechless.

They're called "shadow profiles". https://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/1429223/facebook-is-...

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#23

Post by awakeasleep »

jniedrauer wrote: post #18
chmaynard wrote: post #13

Ever wonder why Facebook is giving everyone on earth so much free software and processing power? They seem to be making money, how do they do it? [10 minutes of deep thought] Ok, we get it. If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Edit: If a for-profit company offers you something of value at no cost, you or someone else will end up paying for it later. Advert…

> If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Where does free software fit in this?

Exactly where the license places it

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#24

Post by doctorpangloss »

jniedrauer wrote: post #18
chmaynard wrote: post #13

Ever wonder why Facebook is giving everyone on earth so much free software and processing power? They seem to be making money, how do they do it? [10 minutes of deep thought] Ok, we get it. If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Edit: If a for-profit company offers you something of value at no cost, you or someone else will end up paying for it later. Advert…

> If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Where does free software fit in this?

It's great that "if it's free, you should run away" or "if you're not the customer, you're the product" or any of those other sayings are finally been seen as extremely reductive.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#25

Post by chillacy »

hrktb wrote: post #17
chmaynard wrote: post #13

Ever wonder why Facebook is giving everyone on earth so much free software and processing power? They seem to be making money, how do they do it? [10 minutes of deep thought] Ok, we get it. If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Edit: If a for-profit company offers you something of value at no cost, you or someone else will end up paying for it later. Advert…

> If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. You are explicitely asking people to think for themselves and understand what’s going on. From this point of view I think that last bit feels mantra like and going on the opposite. The same way “if you’re not the customer you’re the product” was relevant in some cases but has started a life on its own and could go con…

I might nit and say that a lot of these things (especially vaccination and legal representation) are subsidized, the government or insurance is paying so you can get it for “free”.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#26

Post by davidf18 »

I wish Apple would install a filter on their data so that FB and others can't access our data at all should we choose. Thus, at least if you use iOS and MacOS with Safari you would have some level of protection.

Cuomo is not very useful as a governor.

I tried to take the #1m subway at Columbia University and the train was stalled in the station with huge crowds waiting for the train to be fixed (have a nice video). The governor Cuomo essentially controls our subway and bus system in NYC and spends money that should be used for subway maintenance on mega-rejects having nothing to do with mass transit. Hence, the subways are far less reliable than they were even a 6 years ago.

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#27

Post by detaro »

alex_chang wrote: post #14
dillondoyle wrote: post #6

I assume this is other apps using FBs analytics toolset? Where I can send a custom event with {email:dillondoyle@gmail.com, data: {likes_dogs: 1, likes_cats: 0}} or what they are mad about is {weight: 120, has_hiv:0} ? IDK seems silly to me or maybe I'm in too deep and can't see the forest for the trees.

Yup. Next story that's going to come out is how Google is "doing the same thing" via Google Analytics etc.

Doesn't Google Analytics forbid passing actual personal user data into it? I thought that's how they solved the GDPR compliance issues, by explicitly declaring it as not fit for personal data (outside what GA collects and anonymizes itself, like IPs).

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#29

Post by awalton »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12
awalton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cambridge Analytica is not defunct, but rather changed its name to Emerdata. Not technically correct, but basically the truth. Cambridge Analytica declared bankrupcy in May of last year and the creators of that company created Emerdata and rehired many previous employees of Cambridge Analytica. Their HQ is even in the same exact building. They're just playing the shell game, really. "Oh no, we're not the bad guys,…

The trouble is, it works. Depressingly well. Every story out there is about Cambridge Analytica, only a tiny proportion have been written recently enough to mention the phoenix. Yet they often won't, or give entirely the wrong impression like TFA here (defunct - oh that's a relief it's all over then). The number of old pieces that have had an update is so low as to be effectively none. So we have to wait for the next…

> The trouble is, it works. Depressingly well.

It does... if countries allow it. There was either some fear that this was happening or deliberate intent to keeping this from happening with the case of North Korea's sanctions - my memory's a bit fuzzy since the class I took where this came up some many years ago.

E.g. Some unethical people would setup a black exports shipping company to ship stuff to North Korea, and then when they got caught, they'd declare bankruptcy, liquidate hardware to some shell or holding company, shut that company down, create a new legal entity, rebuy all of the same equipment from the holding company, and restart the same old behavior. While the courts waste their time chasing defunct companies, the bad actors get to continue their bad behavior. This is just a new version of that game that's even easier since there are far fewer physical assets that need to be shelved or hidden (perhaps even none if the servers are all in someone's cloud).

Countries have largely stopped this kind of sanction-avoidance behavior by arresting the people in charge, ceasing assets to prevent them from being relabeled under the new company, and freezing accounts to prevent recapitalization under these kinds of shell corporations, in addition to requiring strict compliance around interactions with these sanctions countries and business entities.

tl;dr: the CA folks should be sitting in prison right now, and Facebook and Google should be sanctioned and require strict supervision in the way it shares data with its customers, to prevent this kind of microtargeted-electioneering-as-a-service. Laws like the GDPR won't actually stop anyone from collecting onerous data, since it basically only requires people to consent to it, and as we've seen with EULAs, people are willing to click through anything if it gives them the end result of using an application. The time for a law like that would have been literally 15-20 years ago, before companies like Facebook could tell you what someone's likely eaten for lunch or Target could tell when someone's gotten pregnant by their purchase histories. Unlikely we're going to be unringing that particular bell now...

Re: New York governor orders probe into Facebook access to data from other apps

#30

Post by elorant »

chmaynard wrote: post #13

Ever wonder why Facebook is giving everyone on earth so much free software and processing power? They seem to be making money, how do they do it? [10 minutes of deep thought] Ok, we get it. If someone offers you something of value for free, politely say "no thanks" and run the other way. Edit: If a for-profit company offers you something of value at no cost, you or someone else will end up paying for it later. Advert…

The scariest thing about Facebook is that they allow advertisers to target by e-mail. This has a number of implications. Say I want to target a specific individual. I create a bunch of fake profiles to meet the minimum number of required e-mails for an ad and then launch it. This way the only real person who's gonna see it is the one I'm targeting.

Now imagine running this scheme with everyone you know. Your ex, friends, co-workers, your competitors, you name it. You can learn all their needs and desires by creating dozens of fake ads that lead to a bogus site that doesn't actually sell shit but works as a front for whatever product you want to advertise.

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