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533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

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Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#151

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

Once people accept that there’s no such thing as a free (as in beer) app or service. In addition to there needs to be serious laws put in place that gives users control of their data. And they should be getting paid for facebooks profits—not the share holders.

The notion that there's no such thing as free (as in beer) app is keeping people away from free (as in freedom and beer) software. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it, although it would be nice if more people volunteered to bake the cake. Or you could donate to the bakery.

Software is weird, the best software is both free as in beer AND free as in freedom.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#152

The root of the problem is not the privacy policy or the system security. The root of the problem is the collection itself. All large businesses, health care providers, and governments maintain databases. Every one of them will eventually be leaked. All it takes is a corruptible trusted insider.

> Every one of them will eventually be leaked. [X] Doubt

Why on earth did you pick this username

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#153

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

> my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me

What about your phone number? Does your therapist have it? Maybe your therapist granted Instagram/Facebook access to her contacts?

Or maybe you yourself granted Instagram access and your therapist is in your phone's contact list?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggest you send Facebook a CCPA or GDPR data deletion request (even if you don't live in California or the EU) for your real identity. Cases like yours is why we created https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/facebook.com , which makes its dead simple to send such requests. Free & open source.

Note that Facebook happily ignores Subject Access Requests with complete impunity: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/

Yes, I submitted GDPR (Article 17) right to erasure requests, and I got utter garbage (please use the UI)

Facebook:

> Thank you for contacting Facebook. We have reviewed your report and it appears you would like to delete your Facebook account.

>

> Please note, for security reasons, we are unable to delete accounts on behalf of users so you will need to log into your account and delete it yourself. We have put in place a very quick and easy process for people to schedule the permanent deletion of their Facebook account.

>

> Before permanently deleting your account, you may want to log in and download a copy of your information from Facebook. Once your account has been deleted, it cannot be recovered.

However, after back and forth with them for a few weeks, I got this:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting Facebook. Based on the information you've provided, it looks like you're trying to request the erasure of certain personal data under Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

If you wish to ask for personal data relating to you to be erased in accordance with the GDPR, please use the following form: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/259518714718624?ref=cr

Additionally, as per your request, your account has been scheduled to be deleted.

Please keep in mind that you have up to 30 days to cancel the deletion. Once your account has been processed for deletion, it may take up to 90 days for all of your information to be permanently deleted.

For more details, please visit the Help Center article below:

https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674

We store data until it is no longer necessary to provide our services and Facebook Products, or until your account is deleted, whichever comes first. This is a case-by-case determination that depends on things like the nature of the data, why it is collected and processed, and relevant legal or operational retention needs. For example, when you search for something on Facebook, you can access and delete that query from within your search history at any time, but the log of that search is deleted after 6 months. If you submit a copy of your government-issued ID for account verification purposes, we delete that copy 30 days after submission.

Learn more about deletion of content you have shared (https://www.facebook.com/help/356107851084108?ref=cr) and cookie data obtained through social plugins (https://www.facebook.com/help/206635839404055?ref=cr).

When you delete your account, we delete things you have posted, such as your photos and status updates, and you won't be able to recover that information later. Information that others have shared about you isn't part of your account and won't be deleted.

If you have another question or concern, please visit Privacy Basics (https://www.facebook.com/about/basics?ref=cr) or our Help Center (https://www.facebook.com/help?ref=cr) for additional information.If you have more questions about our Data Policy (https://www.facebook.com/policy.php?ref=cr), please reply to this message.

Thanks, Privacy Operations

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#156
So when are we going to stop companies from accessing your address book and 'uploading it' as part of the sign up process? Or even using Facebook and its services in general.

Well the biggest offender now has leaked the data of hundreds of millions of users who have attached their phone numbers and full names.

Now let's see if the users REALLY care this time that when they signed up to Mark Zuckerbergs website, it wasn't a good idea to sign up with a phone number in order to 'stop bots'. They did not learn with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, are they finally going to learn?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#157
post #23

I’ve been getting a lot of automated/unsolicited calls recently. Begs the question if this might be the source of my woes. Is there a trustworthy phone number version of https://haveibeenpwned.com ?

"Is there a trustworthy phone number version of https://haveibeenpwned.com ?" An "exact" google search excluding adjacent phone numbers seems to work well for my numbers, and culls a lot (not all) of the autogen pages. So if your number was 212-555-1239, search Google with these strings: "(212)555-1239" -1240 -1238 "212-555-1239" -1240 -1238

you genius

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#158

I mean, at this point I think everyone should just accept that at the very least their name, age, address(es), email(s), phone number(s) and screen name(s) have been fully leaked if you have ever had any kind of online presence. Not saying that's right or good, but at this point it's just a fact. So if that's the case, I think we should move beyond really even trying to think of this info as private or a marker of id…

Like really? Don't you have to walk to a bank or show some ID? I live in the EU and I do operate under the assumption that banks take reasonable measures to ensure an account is linked to a legal identity.

No. Many online services will let you open a bank account with name, address, phone, DOB and social security number.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggest you send Facebook a CCPA or GDPR data deletion request (even if you don't live in California or the EU) for your real identity. Cases like yours is why we created https://yourdigitalrights.org/d/facebook.com , which makes its dead simple to send such requests. Free & open source.

Note that Facebook happily ignores Subject Access Requests with complete impunity: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/

Nice (and detailed) blog post. In such a case there is a clear escalation path (in the EU). Either email your DPA (Data Protection Agency) or take legal action. Here are the emails addresses of the various DPAs: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en

We are working on automating the escalation to the DPA part as well.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#160

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

The reason we are here is because the one subset of the population which can do something about it has sold out. Is it the congressmen? No, it is us. Also the professors that taught us and the departments that accredited us. Either we did nothing to fight back or we are ourselves complicit and helped them build this world we live in.
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