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Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

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Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#181

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

ru999gol wrote: post #104
wtmt wrote: post #57

Ok, so Facebook has yet another appalling practice that's been known for quite sometime (see the Telegraph article linked in this one). The percentage of users boycotting the company and its products don't seem to materially matter. Facebook is making more money now than before. Facebook will not behave well on its own. Regulation and really hefty fines running into a low double digit percentage of revenue (not profi…

hahaha thank you, the thought of republicans or democrats effectively regulating a predatory corporation for malicious business practices made me laugh out loud :D

I mean, Democrats have tried it in the past.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#182

Post by mannykannot »

bertil wrote: post #155
tobr wrote: post #82

If you are a Facebook employee, or are close to one, please help me understand. How does it feel to see reports like this being released almost weekly? I realize people are very good at dealing with moral dissonance when their paycheck depends on it, but surely you must be thinking, talking to your colleagues, about what your personal responsibility in this is?

Overall, the vast majority of similar reports are completely irrelevant, partial or non-sensical. Happy to give details but the most common pattern is the same person demanding that Facebook regulate speech in one sentence and being outraged that Facebook feels allowed to regulate speech before that sentence is over. Most journalists who write about Facebook are deemed as “having no idea what they are talking about”.…

To say that "the most common pattern" in the "vast majority of similar reports" is one of making starkly contradictory complaints, appears utterly self-serving - a convenient distortion designed to make it look as if there are no valid issues.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#183

Post by dgellow »

Vinnl wrote: post #95
dgellow wrote: post #66

Isn’t it the same for Twitter? I tried recently to create a second account, it’s now impossible to do so without specifying a phone number during signup. And the mobile application was trying to access my contact list, which seems to be used to suggest people to follow by looking for their phone number (see https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/upload-your-contac... ).

I think there's a "Sign up with email" link on Twitter. Though of course, every time I created a new account there it was quickly blocked, only allowing me to unblock it by providing a phone number. That might have to do with a number of privacy-enhancing browser extensions I've got installed. That said, thanks to GDPR, I'm relatively confident that they've actually deleted my phone number when I asked them to after…

Where do you find this “signup with email”? I don’t see it, but I may be looking at the incorrect place

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#184

Post by _rs »

sokoloff wrote: post #132
StudentStuff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think VOIP has great untapped potential for this, having helped many people get vanity numbers with their name embedded. Once the job hunt is over, you can literally reject all calls, and build a caller ID blacklist of spammy companies and recruiters. Plus, numbers are 1/4th to 1/10th the cost of domains these days.

Are they? I pay $1/mo for phone numbers, which is quite close to what I pay for most of my domains.

Could you share some places you use to buy numbers like that? Do you just set them up to forward, or do you have more control than that? I've always been interested in this, but apart from Google Voice, I haven't found a good way to get started.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#185

Post by leesalminen »

naveen99 wrote: post #167
vowelless wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are rarely usable on web sites for 2fa as they disallow voip numbers. In fact, many websites don’t allow google voice numbers for the same reason.

Is it easy to distinguish voip numbers ?

Yes, using Twilio’s lookup service it’s trivial.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#186

Post by bogomipz »

no_identd wrote: post #86
arcturus17 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in favor of a transparent society I suggest you read The Transparent Society by Byung-Chul Han. It’s a brutal 50-page indictment of the hypercult of transparency and its effects on the human soul, on the political discourse, and on traditional values like truth and beauty. Might change your view on the costs of transparency.

The Hypercult of Transparency[nice choice of words!] exists because people keep falling for the Transparency=Accountability meme. And until the rather recent advent of homeomorphic encryption, that meme did have some rather humongous amounts of truth to it. However, given the existence of homeomorphic encryption, this no longer rings true. Speaking of homeomorphic encryption and Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com…

Whats the connection between discussions about "the cult of transparency" and homeomorphic encryption?

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#187

Post by swsieber »

Lewton wrote: post #141
C1sc0cat wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be your browser doing that.

It was in the iOS Facebook app

Well... your phone knows your number, so they might not have gotten it from somewhere else.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#188

Post by sokoloff »

_rs wrote: post #184
sokoloff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I pay $1/mo for phone numbers, which is quite close to what I pay for most of my domains.

Could you share some places you use to buy numbers like that? Do you just set them up to forward, or do you have more control than that? I've always been interested in this, but apart from Google Voice, I haven't found a good way to get started.

Twilio is the easiest by far, IMO.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#189

Post by anticensor »

Teever wrote: post #102
nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This would be a violation of our data privacy policies and would result in immediate termination of all employees involved.

Given the complete lack of respect that Facebook has for individual privacy and the wellbeing of our society in general why should anyone believe this?

It would violate terms of service you agreed to.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#190

Post by bogomipz »

shadowprofile76 wrote: post #73
gotocake wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that you’re getting slammed for a pat, trite, or unhelpful answer to a complex problem, but it also happens to be the only answer. It’s an answer with real consequences, but when weighed against giving your privacy over to FB what else is to be done right now? Public social networks are poison, they’re inimical to privacy, and we need to get off of any that harvest personal information. Telling people to “q…

One major difficulty with leaving Facebook in particular over privacy concerns is that it doesn't really stop the social network from violating your privacy, or letting others do it (often without bad intentions on their part). Aside from its now famous shadow profiles, you've got your friends and family or work/business associates posting things with you in them, photos, videos etc and even naming you (don't think t…

Agreed although I was curious about one of your points, specifically can FB users tag a person who is not on FB? If so this is really troubling. Also do you know if FB uses shadow profiles to suggest tag name in pictures the same as it does for regular users?
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