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Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

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Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#231
post #16

Sometimes company legal teams can be the most accessible way to draw attention to something like this, and I don't mean in a combative way. They're very risk conscious, they see a '10+ years of building a heavy metal community, gone like a puff of smoke' in terms of risks, both of bad publicity but also if you were to somehow litigate because of the damage to your business or project. Often they have an email address…

The patio11 blog post you're looking for is https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

Not terribly important but there are a few paragraphs there that contain a number of factual assertions completely contrary to my experience with the training we all received at a major regional US bank. I wasn't a CS rep (I'm an engineer) but everyone received a lot of training on this stuff (our customer service tenets were treated with the same seriousness as anti-money laundering, know your customer, and all the other stuff every person in the bank received training on, because failures in these areas can all lead to very bad places) regardless of their position.

Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department.

At a first approximation everything in that paragraph is wrong. Banks care a lot about reputational damage (i.e. you can make them look horrible on twitter or in a news article) and will immediately begin taking you more seriously if you mention you might contact a lawyer, are already in touch with a lawyer, etc. It's true that communication is better and things work more smoothly if you have all your ducks in a row, but I think a respectful customer service rep is just going to assume that a paper trail exists or can be produced. They aren't going to try to take advantage of a situation where a person does not have every last document at hand during the call in order to provide worse service.

Perhaps interestingly, "legal department" is a phrase I do not recall anyone using at any bank or credit union where I've worked. I mean, they've got lawyers, and I suppose most of them are organized into one or more departments... nevertheless.

If you're feeling contrary, especially on the topic of reputational damage, you would be right to point out that banks like Wells Fargo continue to exist. I am in awe of the fact that anyone continues to bank with them.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#233
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a distributed system help? Being on a distributed system wouldn't keep hackers from taking control of your self hosted page and hosing it.

You're correct that by itself distributed systems - like the fediverse - do not automatically prevent hacks/security events. Although diversity of nodes (and decentralization of nodes too) does help because if one node is struck, then others can still operate; not foolproof but does offer some level of resilience. Also, to clarify, my proposal was more about sovereignty and added control of one's comunity and by exte…

Hm I see - but in the case of bad actors hacking accounts, being on the fediverse seems neutral (relative to being on facebook) to worse? At least with (some) centralized systems there is an authority that can be appealed to (not FB obviously).

> Certainly, if the relevant community lived on the fediverse, perhaps there could have been more that might have been done to continue even after some hack...maybe.

As far as I can tell, the community members of this page still exists, the page itself is just gone? Not sure there is an advantage either way.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#235
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but someone from Meta reached out I hate that justice is a PR battle.

Does that stand for "Popularity Ratio"?

Public Relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#236
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that by itself distributed systems - like the fediverse - do not automatically prevent hacks/security events. Although diversity of nodes (and decentralization of nodes too) does help because if one node is struck, then others can still operate; not foolproof but does offer some level of resilience. Also, to clarify, my proposal was more about sovereignty and added control of one's comunity and by exte…

Hm I see - but in the case of bad actors hacking accounts, being on the fediverse seems neutral (relative to being on facebook) to worse? At least with (some) centralized systems there is an authority that can be appealed to (not FB obviously). > Certainly, if the relevant community lived on the fediverse, perhaps there could have been more that might have been done to continue even after some hack...maybe. As far as…

> ...At least with (some) centralized systems there is an authority that can be appealed to (not FB obviously)...

Yes, but...and, mind you, this gets a bit philosophical and scenario-specific...but, if we trace the incentives all the way through, some central authorities will only help if your/your community's goals are aligned, right? FB has a goal of creating just enough of a community to get paid by someone, and sadly not by community members but by ad buyers. In the fediverse - which let me clarify is far from perfect - it really is as close to you/someone setting up their own stuff and yelling into the void just because they want to...and it happens that others might want to join in without a similar agenda to FB, etc.

> ...the community members of this page still exists, the page itself is just gone...

Agreed...but in a scenario where such a meeting place ("This page") is not centrally controlled, access to it or its existence or its members can not so easily be controlled by a single entity - be they benevalent or indifferent or malevalent. The fediverse is not perfect, and may not be perfect for the relevant community or its members or even the OP here...i merely offered it as a possible suggestion...my proposal may not be suited to everyone; and that's ok.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original quote was: > The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe. You then said > Only because of the communist past How is that not saying that it is only due to a communist past that there were state run telcos that were producing yellow pages? Tbf I didn’t mention each and every name of the yellow pages equivalent (because time) but I think th…

What I meant was that it was "all over Europe" only because a half of it was communist, not that only communist states had public telecoms and/or the entire Europe was communist. I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.

> I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.

What do you base that on? Pretty much every western European country had state owned telcos. As far as I am aware, prior to the 90s, private telcos seem to the exception rather than the rule across the world. It seems mainly to be a specifically north American thing to have private telcos prior to that. Looking at the countries surrounding the former soviet states going from north to south:

Finland (originally a cooperative now owned by Norwegian state telco): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Oyj

Sweden (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televerket_(Sweden)

Germany (originally state-owned): link above

Austria (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Telekom_Austria_Group

Italy (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_TIM

Turkey (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrk_Telekom

Looking east:

Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Telegraph_and_Telephone

Malaysia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekom_Malaysia

South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KT_Corporation

Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra

India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Sanchar_Nigam_Limited#H...

Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_Indonesia#Early_years

And a couple of others:

Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisscom

South Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_(South_Africa)

Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telebr%C3%A1s

I mean that's pretty much every major economy on the planet (with north America being the exception).

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the history, but you're missing the context of today. Many "unbanked" americans are immigrants voluntarily trying to avoid reporting and stay off the grid. The solution lay in busting bias and fixing immigration laws though, not banking.

I take it you didn’t go to the rural Walmart on a Friday. Otherwise you’d know that isn’t anywhere near true.

This is prejudicial. Help me understand - how exactly do you know all the people at WalMart on Fridays are illegal immigrants?

I grew up in rural america and worked part-time alongside illegal immigrants, so yeah, it is true even if we're using anecdotal evidence. Your Walmart anecdote is an example of survivor bias.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you didn’t go to the rural Walmart on a Friday. Otherwise you’d know that isn’t anywhere near true.

This is prejudicial. Help me understand - how exactly do you know all the people at WalMart on Fridays are illegal immigrants? I grew up in rural america and worked part-time alongside illegal immigrants, so yeah, it is true even if we're using anecdotal evidence. Your Walmart anecdote is an example of survivor bias.

I’m saying that most unbanked Americans aren’t immigrants. You’re the one who said they were mostly illegal immigrants.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker claimed ownership and then deleted my Facebook Page of 50k users

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is prejudicial. Help me understand - how exactly do you know all the people at WalMart on Fridays are illegal immigrants? I grew up in rural america and worked part-time alongside illegal immigrants, so yeah, it is true even if we're using anecdotal evidence. Your Walmart anecdote is an example of survivor bias.

I’m saying that most unbanked Americans aren’t immigrants. You’re the one who said they were mostly illegal immigrants.

>You’re the one who said they were mostly illegal immigrants.

Please point out where I said this.

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