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Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

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131–140 of 143 posts

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting stickers over your cameras might be a reasonable thing to do, but it's pretty silly to pretend your threat model is the same as Mark Zuckerberg's.

I keep reading similar statements on HN. Are we honestly saying that because of Zuck's "stature", there are more people actively attacking him than people taking access of an attack vector to gain access to as many people/devices as possible? Sure, some hacker might get some cred points for being the one to hack the Zuck, but ultimately these guys are after financial gains. This seems to be a prime example of quantit…

If I was a billionaire I would pay security experts to make sure my workspaces were secure, things like locking down USB ports and blocking video/audio inputs that aren’t used would be a completely expected part of that. Still rich with irony though.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#132
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess VP of Abuse is just not a good look

well, VP of Abuse is exactly as good as VP of Spam. You know, it's not clear, whether you are trying to to reduce abuse/spam, or create it.

To be fair it’s often not clear whether Facebook are trying to reduce integrity, or create it. :)

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#133

It easy, nowadays, to do anything and say it's a bug. Easy to escape that way than getting your ass kicked by loads of lawsuits.

Same exact thing with the Robinhood infinite leverage. People tried to defend them saying “robinhood isn’t responsible because it’s just a bug”. Being ignorant of FINRA regulations and refusing to fix it when it has come up multiple times is not a bug. Not every fuckup is “a bug”. Calling it a bug does not release you from all liability.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it seems to be the norm in business and society these days. It all started when people started espousing "it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" nonsense, which I guess is one of the pillars that made Silicon Valley what it is today. And now it's a race to the bottom as everybody now needs to follow the same philosophy to compete.

In a way it is the same thinking that speeding drivers use. They need to get somewhere in a hurry and it is too much to be bothered and slowed down by being careful. Traffic rules as a source of nuisance. Then when an accident happens or get caught by police they will blame bad luck or everybody else. Thinking long term (playing the infinite game) is so overrated...

Make me think of "tax are bad" people.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this comment even trying to say? There are plenty of bugs that result in less data... many of them are called crashes and FB has them just like any other app.

ELI5: It's a pithy sardonic addition to the chorus of scorn rightly directed at Facebook, rearticulating the consensus opinion that one consequence of their persistent malfeasance and its regular public disclosure is a profound loss of trust, such that genuine mistakes will never be perceived as such; and furthermore, this creates a self-perpetuating cycle in which embarrassing true bugs are interleaved with further…

ELI5 of my comment:

The comment I replied to is not nearly as pithy as it thinks and comes across as more corny than commentary.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#137
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a high value target to me , though. If the environment is untrustworthy enough for Zuckerberg to defend himself against it, he should consider his own role in making it that way.

But the truth is you should always treat your environment as untrustworthy. I don't think you should deduct him points for blocking his webcam. It is an ADDITIONAL privacy step. He runs a company with thousands of employees, and with any company like that you never know if someone may decide to become a bad actor, and physically compromise him. But yeah lets continue to hate on facebook.

> But yeah lets continue to hate on facebook.

Yes, because they're voracious collectors people's personal information. We can hate on "bad actors" as well, we don't have to choose one or the other. But as long as Facebook is behaving creepily, whether deliberately or inadvertently, let's hate on them. There is no reason to tolerate their mistakes.

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#138

Booting the camera so it is quickly available? Sure, that is a user-facing benefit. My immediate hunch is rather that they love tracking emotional responses such as widening eyes as people interact with content. Because knowing the true emotional responses instead of just hitting "like" on a post would be extremely valuable data.

It's the rear camera that's activated...

https://twitter.com/neo_qa/status/1190639141979140097

Re: Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

#140
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People rarely look at the code even when its open source

Not only that, even if you have reproducible builds, they're a lot harder to verify on mobile targets where you can't just compare all the installed files.

What am I missing? The binaries are the same. I dont see why paths matter. One can hash and intersect the sets.
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