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Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#191

Post by Hydraulix989 »

mandevil wrote: post #153
btown wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Facebook is being sued for... not having technical mitigations to guard against contractual breaches?

Well sure, I don't have a contract with Dr. Kogan, so what can I sue him for? There is no breach of any contract between us. I do have a contract with Facebook, so they are pretty much the only people I can sue. They can turn around and sue Dr. Kogan because they did have a contract with him, but I can't sue him directly for breaching a contract I'm not a part of.

I believe by using Dr. Kogan's app and explicitly giving Dr. Kogan permission to use your data (by accepting the FB interstitial UI that confirms with you as a user whether you would like to give a third-party access to your FB data via the FB API), you are entering in some kind of contract with him, no?

FB doesn't just hand users' data over without user confirmation... Users see UI permission dialogs and have to explicitly agree to it first (similar to an iPhone app asking for permission to use your microphone or location -- how is Apple responsible if said app gets hacked and leaks your microphone recordings?).

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#192

Post by ergocoder »

tsimionescu wrote: post #177
ergocoder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's relevant. If you share your friend's data, it's primarily your fault. You know your friend's email, and you decide to share it with someone else. Now I agree that FB should bear some responsibility since it's such a large platform. But it's you who is mainly at fault for sharing. If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby, you wouldn't blame the hotel, right?

That's not what happened here. People weren't actively posting their friends' details to some stranger. They were using an FB feature and checking a box. They barely even had any way of knowing exactly what data about their friends would end up being shared with the 3rd party.

Your defense boils down to "users are too stupid".

Sure, but, at some point, the users need to take blames for their own actions too.

"I'm too stupid" can't be the defense for everything.

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#193

Post by ergocoder »

tsimionescu wrote: post #178
orangeoxidation wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby, you wouldn't blame the hotel, right? I wouldn't. But if my friend went to reception and told the staff "Hey, you know my friend in room 101? Please share their mail with the stranger in room 301. Thank you." I very much would.

Even worse - in this case, the hotel itself was asking your friend "hey, do you want us to share information about the one in room 101 with the stranger in room 301? The stranger in room 301 won't talk to you unless you do".

You answered yes. Then, later, you blame the hotel?

You bear no responsibility at all?

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#194

Post by ergocoder »

orangeoxidation wrote: post #170
ergocoder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's relevant. If you share your friend's data, it's primarily your fault. You know your friend's email, and you decide to share it with someone else. Now I agree that FB should bear some responsibility since it's such a large platform. But it's you who is mainly at fault for sharing. If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby, you wouldn't blame the hotel, right?

> If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby, you wouldn't blame the hotel, right? I wouldn't. But if my friend went to reception and told the staff "Hey, you know my friend in room 101? Please share their mail with the stranger in room 301. Thank you." I very much would.

Your example is ridiculous because mail is a physical object.

A better example would be "could you tell the stranger in room 301 that my friend's email is ABC?"

Then, later, your friend sue the hotel for telling the stranger about their email.

Yeah.... You should at least bear the majority of responsibility here, no?

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#195

Post by tsimionescu »

ergocoder wrote: post #193
tsimionescu wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse - in this case, the hotel itself was asking your friend "hey, do you want us to share information about the one in room 101 with the stranger in room 301? The stranger in room 301 won't talk to you unless you do".

You answered yes. Then, later, you blame the hotel? You bear no responsibility at all?

I didn't in this scenario, my friend did. I don't even know which friend it was.

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#196

Post by Nextgrid »

wilsocr88 wrote: post #186
Nextgrid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook did not "sell" anything in this case. Facebook is a neutral carrier that got duped like everyone else. A malicious company used Facebook's API to ask for access to people's data and certain data about their friends, and people stupidly said yes. Should we now fault Facebook for complying with their user's wishes?

That very plainly was not the users' wishes. The users' wishes were "go away, window, I want to see my feed, yes whatever, click." That was something that ill-informed users were effectively tricked into doing by a malicious third party who intentionally fogged up the information they gave to those users. The fact that Facebook gathered the data to begin with is already a huge problem. If they need to do that to exis…

> The users' wishes were "go away, window, I want to see my feed, yes whatever, click."

Facebook will never ask you out of the blue whether you want to share your data with Cambridge Analytica. They have nothing to gain from it.

What happened is that idiots clicked on some kind of personality test (or similar) shared by one of their equally-stupid friends, the consent prompt appears as it should (and is very clear about what data will be shared) and they clicked yes. There are arguments here that these links should've been identified/marked as malicious and thus removed to begin with, but that's a separate issue.

Removing API access because some people are dumb will lead to lots of collateral damage (including towards those same idiots who expect to be able to "Login with Facebook" everywhere and are suddenly locked out of all these accounts), and will not solve the problem - malicious parties will just start asking for raw Facebook credentials or to install malicious apps/browser extensions to work around the lack of API access.

> The fact that Facebook gathered the data to begin with is already a huge problem

Which data are we talking about here? My understanding is that the data obtained by CA is data that the user explicitly put on their profile (such as photos, etc) and "friends" relationships. Ad targeting data (which is the real issue when it comes to Facebook's data collection) was not included.

---

My worry here (and the reason for the relatively harsh language) is that this lawsuit will set a precedent and give arguments for platforms to restrict API access even more and hurt potential competition as well as impose annoying & unnecessary barriers to users who know what they're doing. We already have this issue with banking where some banks insist on using a hardware 2FA device to protect against scams, and it's not really effective because people are stupid enough to use the 2FA device over the phone with a scammer despite the bold warnings about not using it over the phone printed right on the device itself.

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#197

Post by shanemlk »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #100
shanemlk wrote: post #98

Why do my comments keep getting down voted? How much more obvious can it be that zuckerburg has caused more damage to the Earth than good? WHY DO I HAVE TO DEFEND MYSELF FOR SUCH A CLEARLY OBVIOUS OPINION? You are "HACKERS". Start acting like it.

Probably because the language you chose to use is less than civil.

"Let's be civil!" - white people as they murdered hundred's of indigenous tribes.

Re: Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data

#198

Post by marcosdumay »

prostoalex wrote: post #150
marcosdumay wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can collect each piece of information as soon as the user decides to use some app that needs it to function. Just not before.

A polling app building a “psychological compatibility profile” can arbitrarily add new data points, and “streamline” the onboarding process by collecting all of the necessary data with one click (with fully disclosed list of collected data points). Which is what CA has built. Not just them - any survey app claiming to help you find out “which Game of Thrones characters you and your friends are” can arbitrarily claim…

Did people directly add permissions to CA on their accounts? I got the impression they were mislead and wanted to add some different applications with different features.

An app to help you find out "which Game of Thrones characters you and your friends are" can arbitrarily claim those data points, and then use them to discover which Game or Thrones character you and your friends are. On that case, even storing the data looks like a violation, even more sharing it with anyone.

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