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Off-Facebook activity

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Re: Off-Facebook activity

#321

Post by netule »

kcorey wrote: post #286
CodiePetersen wrote: post #284

I deleted my Facebook a couple months ago. Now I wish I would have kept it just a little longer to see what they had on me. But in the end I still would have deleted it. Facebook clearly can't be trusted with my data. Idc what connections it gives me. They have shown time and time again that they will exploit the tiniest things to predict and manipulate your behavior. And apparently companies desperate for even sligh…

It's still there. Try logging in. You might have to reset your password, but the bastard's haven't really deleted it.

I tried this, but it only gives me the option to sign up. I think I deleted my account around two years ago, and it's seemingly really gone.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#322

Post by FateOfNations »

reaperducer wrote: post #255
philwelch wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you’re a savvy customer you get “cash back rewards” from your credit card, meaning some of the fees just end up coming back to you.

A "savvy" customer has a card that doesn't make them perform a dog and pony show like you describe. A savvy customer's card charges the lowest reasonable rate in order to provide the service. Giving someone money and then feeling all giddy when you get a "reward" later means you've been gamed.

The merchant pays the interchange rate regardless if you get a reward or not. If you have a no annual fee card with no rewards, you are simply leaving money on the table (which your card issuer pockets), since you can get 1-1.5% cash back, also with no annual fee.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#323

Post by cosmie »

lawlessone wrote: post #97
kpozin wrote: post #12

In my profile, they managed to obtain a `PURCHASE` event from Macy's -- for an in-person purchase at a physical store . Macy's has my email address and certainly linked it to my credit card number, but this is nonetheless seriously creepy. I just tried to change my email address on Facebook and discovered that they canonicalize plus and dot variations in gmail.com addresses, and thus claim that the new email address…

>, they managed to obtain a `PURCHASE` event from Macy's interesting.. they could use that to predict earnings..

You don't even necessarily have to predict earnings. If you've ever connected to your financial account via a service like Plaid or it's ilk, that service has an API endpoint[1] they can call to neatly package up your income information. Sometimes it seems innocuous and unassuming for a one time use like identity verification, or to set up automated payments, or a one off transfer/disbursement. Other times it's for stuff like getting a consolidated view of your personal finance (i.e. a transaction aggregator such as Mint). But if you authenticate for anything, that service has access to everything.

And unless you rotate your financial passwords on a frequent basis, that access continues pretty much indefinitely[2].

[1] https://plaid.com/products/income/

[2] Not true for 100% of cases, but a general rule of thumb that's applicable to the majority of institutions they log into with your credentials.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#325

Post by yason »

ben7799 wrote: post #313
mcstafford wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I got rid of my account there wasn't an option to immediately delete an account. It first had to be deactivated, and would supposedly be deleted after a two-week cool-down period.

Yes I went through that too. It was about 2 years ago. They sent me all the warnings that they were deleting anything. Do I believe them at all? Not really?

I know people who have left Facebook and then much later come back, setting up a new account with new credentials and Facebook could still begin to suggest old friends and interests.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#326

Post by Spivak »

reaperducer wrote: post #255
philwelch wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you’re a savvy customer you get “cash back rewards” from your credit card, meaning some of the fees just end up coming back to you.

A "savvy" customer has a card that doesn't make them perform a dog and pony show like you describe. A savvy customer's card charges the lowest reasonable rate in order to provide the service. Giving someone money and then feeling all giddy when you get a "reward" later means you've been gamed.

But this is such a weird way to think about it. Credit cards don't cost anything. In some vague grandiose sense prices are slightly higher since credit cards exists and merchants want to cover their fees but my perspective as a customer spending via a credit card is basically free money. There's no dog and pony show except buying things like I normally would.

* I get literal cash through their rewards program which just slowly accumulates without me having to think about it.

* I get all the nice protections and can do chargebacks.

* The money I spend every month stays in my bank account until just after the bank calculates and cuts my interest check. Like it's super negligible but hey, if I'm getting an interest free loan anyway.

2% cash back from the card + 0.25% interest from the bank ain't nothing.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#327

Post by ynniv »

Amazonerh wrote: post #276
jannes wrote: post #25

My off-facebook activity was empty. That's encouraging, because it looks like my countermeasures have been working: - Fingerprinting resistance in Firefox (privacy.resistFingerprinting = true) - First-party isolation in Firefox (privacy.firstparty.isolate = true) - Blocking third-party cookies in Firefox (network.cookie.cookieBehavior = 1) - Firefox container when I need to login to ad/tracking companies (Facebook, G…

Out of all activities you listed, just 3rd party Cookie blocking and using any "login with Facebook" buttons would give the same result for Web. I don't think any of the activities you listed would prevent the data collected through apps though.

If you have a domain, you can give every service it’s own email address, ${service}@${domain}. They can try reporting that to Facebook, but unless someone understands that the entire domain is one account they won’t be able to correlate them.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#328

Post by TuringNYC »

robjan wrote: post #111
chippy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are credit cards different from debit cards in this regard? Do some credit cards not sell your transactions?

It's the card network (MasterCard, Visa, AE) that sells your data. They each have their own op out: * https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do * https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/about-mastercard/what-we-do/... .

Do they have access to purchase line items or only the overall transaction metadata?

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#329

Post by alasdair_ »

To me the thing that bothered me most was that a mental health site (Psychologytoday.com) that I used to find a therapist was passing the information on my searches to Facebook, presumably to aid in targeted advertising.

Honestly, I think that health-related searches that are directly tied to a specific individual (especially without informed consent - I didn’t log in or receive any notice this was being done) should be covered by HIPPA just like any other personally identifiable health record.

The other weird one was the huge amount of data my bank was sending. 20+ requests per session. I have no idea why they would do that.

Re: Off-Facebook activity

#330

Post by saghm »

ddalex wrote: post #171
abdusco wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you cope with constant reCAPTCHA prompts? I get prompted by Google when using search, because it thinks I'm a bot if I'm anonymous enough.

There should be an extension to automatically filter the reCAPTCHA-using sites out of the results of the search engines.

I think GP is saying that Google itself is presenting the captchas, not the Google results they click. I've had it happen a couple of times when using VPNs before.
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