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Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#231

Post by justsid »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #196
viro wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Facebook should offer their users the option to remove their phone numbers with a real deletion. Man sometimes I think people forget phone books existed for a long time.

> Man sometimes I think people forget phone books existed for a long time. If the notion were introduced today, nobody would tolerate them. That they once existed is hardly an argument that such things are a good idea.

Not to mention that all people I knew growing up opted to have their numbers removed from the phone books. People don’t want their number to be visible to everyone.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#232

Post by throwawayboise »

gidam wrote: post #194
viro wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Facebook should offer their users the option to remove their phone numbers with a real deletion. Man sometimes I think people forget phone books existed for a long time.

the phone book are completely a different animal. As example they are almost useless to reverse lookup a number...

Reverse phone books were a thing. They were harder to get but libraries had them.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#233

Post by thisismessedup »

elbasti wrote: post #227

This leak is putting people's lives at risk. What is truly damaging about this breach is that it allows for bidirectional mapping of phone ⭤ name (and often location, since the data can include town/employer). The risk is much bigger than "I'm going to get more phone spam." Examples: - An abusive ex/stalker type can now search by name and find his ex's phone number and maybe even city/town. - Have you ever dealt with…

Seriously. I downloaded the leaks to see if any of my family members were included, so that I could alert them to watch out for targeted scams.

But of course I couldn't resist grepping for a few other things. For example, there were about 25,000 phone numbers, emails, and names of single people in my home city.

The same info is available for about 180,000 US-based people who list Facebook as their employer. I sure hope that nobody takes it into their head to complain about the breach to those people!

It is hella creepy that anybody can search through such a vast quantity of extremely personal information so easily. But this is also a predictable late-stage result of mass-scale social media use.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#234

Post by prox »

muzani wrote: post #92
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still going to be a scam message, but they can use your Facebook ID to see everything public on your profile now, as well as the other fields in the leak like full name, location, bio, birthday. So whatever the most convincing scam message somebody can come up with is combining all of that data. Off the top of my head, "happy birthday here's a gift from us" messages from companies leading to phishing pages and p…

Birthday is a form of identity verification too, for password reset.

None of the birthdays I enter are real. :P

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#235

Post by guram11 »

junon wrote: post #229
haolez wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong suspicion that, if a government tried to fine a company in billions, that company would simply leave the country forever. I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just an intuition that I have.

And go... where?

China seems like a place for big brother love

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#236

Post by rhacker »

haolez wrote: post #204
rubyn00bie wrote: post #166

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless and until, companies like Facebook are fined appropriate amounts they’ll never stop. Quite literally, every business school on the fucking planet will tell you do something if it’s cheaper. It is cheaper for them to not give a fuck, than to give one. Unless they are fined upwards of $20-50bn it’ll never stop because it’s always going to benefit their bottom line. Full…

I have a strong suspicion that, if a government tried to fine a company in billions, that company would simply leave the country forever. I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just an intuition that I have.

It would be pretty awesome if they left, and then we just blocked the entire IP address range with them.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#237

Post by IneffablePigeon »

haolez wrote: post #204
rubyn00bie wrote: post #166

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless and until, companies like Facebook are fined appropriate amounts they’ll never stop. Quite literally, every business school on the fucking planet will tell you do something if it’s cheaper. It is cheaper for them to not give a fuck, than to give one. Unless they are fined upwards of $20-50bn it’ll never stop because it’s always going to benefit their bottom line. Full…

I have a strong suspicion that, if a government tried to fine a company in billions, that company would simply leave the country forever. I'm not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just an intuition that I have.

To make a rubbish analogy, this is like arguing that making it illegal for teachers to do murders would make all the murderous teachers move. Great? We'll be left with the non murderous ones.

I don't think there's much that would wholesale get Facebook to withdraw from a huge market like the US but if they did then competitors that did obey the new laws would take their place, as long as the entire business model wasn't completely defunct.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#238

Post by worker767424 »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #166

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless and until, companies like Facebook are fined appropriate amounts they’ll never stop. Quite literally, every business school on the fucking planet will tell you do something if it’s cheaper. It is cheaper for them to not give a fuck, than to give one. Unless they are fined upwards of $20-50bn it’ll never stop because it’s always going to benefit their bottom line. Full…

My only issues with this are that it's impractically hard to protect data to the extent necessary, and large fines become a lever for disgruntled employees to cause massive damage.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#239

Post by worker767424 »

Someone wrote: post #203
rpastuszak wrote: post #67

"The Facebook spokesman said the social media company *was not confident it had full visibility on which users would need to be notified*." @Facebook here you go: https://haveibeenpwned.com

I think Facebook (rightfully, IMO) would argue the existence of that data dump is no proof that data came from Facebook’s servers. They can’t assume that, or trolls or unscrupulous competitors would start creating ‘Facebook’ data dumps left and right. I do wonder what EU regulators will say about their viewpoint that they do not have to inform their users, though.

One well-known company I worked had a data breach published online and reported on. I know people on the accounts team and security team and have seen the code for how passwords are hardened. No one internally who knew those systems thought it was a breach; it was more likely people reusing credentials that were breached elsewhere.

Re: Facebook does not plan to notify half-billion users affected by data leak

#240

Post by ProAm »

qudat wrote: post #212
rubyn00bie wrote: post #166

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless and until, companies like Facebook are fined appropriate amounts they’ll never stop. Quite literally, every business school on the fucking planet will tell you do something if it’s cheaper. It is cheaper for them to not give a fuck, than to give one. Unless they are fined upwards of $20-50bn it’ll never stop because it’s always going to benefit their bottom line. Full…

If customers do not care enough to stop using the product then there is no harm. Put in another way: the people you are trying to protect don't want your protection, because they don't care enough about the breach to stop using the product. They shouldn't be learning about the breaches from the company that has been breached because that gives the company too much power. Instead we should empower watchdog organizatio…

> If customers do not care enough to stop using the product then there is no harm

If you quit using FB and were still leaked, now what? If you were leaked because they hold a shadow account?

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