Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

311–320 of 524 posts

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

#311
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they mean it can't effectively be sold if everyone has it. It loses value as a commodity if anyone can access it, but the value of the data is still in tact.

But facebook is not in the business of selling your data. It's in the business of selling your attention and it uses data to do so. There's nothing about this leak that changes Facebook's position in this market in this regard.

> But facebook is not in the business of selling your data.

There are an awful lot of arguments against this stance and the argument supporting the claim appear to split hairs in a very convenient manner.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the security field and let me tell you something I realized: nobody cares about security. If someone cares about security, it's because they've had many many incidents in the past. We humans are not a species that is good at preventing, we are good at reacting. the security handbook[^1] has a chapter on that actually, and they basically say that role playing is the only way of not getting burned. Humans are…

I think part of the problem is that many orgs see security as an overhead that engineers do to sleep well at night. A few more breaches, a few more fines and it will finally be seen as a feature to keep the CEO out of jail.

This is just it. I also work in the security industry, and the fact of the matter is that we (security professionals) can't give guarantees. I don't know what exotic exploit or bug will exist tomorrow. Security professions basically offer what (to me) seems like a crappy insurance policy. Depending on your orgs threat model, it is often just cheaper to deal with the breaches. --- I am not saying facebook falls into this category. ---

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

#314

Don’t worry, Facebook will soon put out a press release including the phrase “we need to do better.”

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019."

https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1378398417450377222

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

#315
At this point Facebook should be closed down immediately, only leaving an option to download your own personal data. I think they shouldn't be able to reopen until the whole thing is regulated, severe fine applied and damages to all affected users paid.

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

#316

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.

Google has a huge number of activist (and surely some corruptible) employees, and yet the incidents of users data getting out are very close to zero. I think this demonstrates that user data can be managed safely and effectively. Usually the incidents reports on user data leaks show that the company seemed to barely be trying - We need laws that force them (even small companies) to put serious effort into it.

You don't know that. While the publicly available data leaks are indeed rare, you cannot know if they don't use the data for trading or other purposes for their personal gain without disclosing it to the public.

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

#317
post #314

Don’t worry, Facebook will soon put out a press release including the phrase “we need to do better.”

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019." https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1378398417450377222

What a pathetic response. Does it mean users changed where they live? Change their names? Deleted and started a new account so the ID is different?

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

#318

Would like to know if non Facebook users are included because Facebook has non Facebook user's phone numbers due to the fact that Whatsapp uploads the entire phonebook to Whatsapp. That means Facebook is likely to know your phone number although you don't use Facebook or Whatsapp.

https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

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

#319

Obviously it is bad if your personal data is compromised after you (or some else) upload it to an online service like Facebook. But in this case, it’s important to remember that phone companies used to regularly leak most of their customer’s phone numbers (and names) in the form of a telephone directory. So a question to consider is: suppose that the white pages were still commonly produced and contained most people’…

You can't compare that at all! They leaked IDs and from that you can go to user profile and learn more about them. You cannot do that from a phone company leak.

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I'm just getting a "Please open Telegram to view this post from @freedomf0x" message. Any way to access this without signing up for Telegram? The irony of giving my personal info to another 3rd party just to check if my personal info was leaked by a different party is too much...

the telegram has a text file with links to links by country, I've just stuck that at https://pastebin.com/3SvG1FJ0

Goes without saying, do not use the link above. Downloads malware.
Post reply on HN