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Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

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Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#61

Post by anonymouz »

swalsh wrote: post #25
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You really don't want to mess with the Facebook police. They'll delete your life. I wish I had something more substantive to say here, but the problem is that we give Facebook an extraordinarily huge power in our personal lives. It's not just some random web service.

This makes me remember a thought I was having a while ago. I'm not a fan of regulation on the internet, but there's some regulations i'd really like to see for the purpose of creating a more competitive atmosphere. They're probably too extreme today, but in the future I can see them being necessary as our lives increasingly become more digital. One of them is that all data I create, which is stored, I should have acc…

In the European Union the Data Protection Directive (implemented by member states in national law) goes into that direction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive).

It does not guarantee any kind of automated access (and in fact, only at least once per year do you have free access), but in theory lets you retrieve all data associated to your person from any company (and allows you to correct wrong information, respectively require deletion of data that is no longer needed).

If you try to apply it to Facebook, they'll however just redirect you to their data download tool (which only gives you access to a a limited subset of the data). It lacks some enforcement, unfortunately.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#62

Post by anonymouz »

dclusin wrote: post #37
DanBC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can get more data by making a request under data protection laws.

My understanding was that this is only applicable if you are domiciled in the applicable area. Is this not correct? Has anybody tried this?

I tried it (I'm within the EU), but only got lots of boilerplate and got pointed towards their data download which is very limited in scope.

As far as I understand, the first few people to try it got more complete responses, but the data was still incomplete.

So, while technically it is your right, good luck getting anything more than you can already download.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#64

Post by potatolicious »

loopdoend wrote: post #27
short_circut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how using facebook to reconnect with disconnected friends is what is wrong with facebook. As a tool that is exactly what it is for.

Did you not read the part about padding his friend list with strangers at the end there?

What's wrong with wanting to interact with strangers? We've built entire startups around that - Meetup, GrubWithUs, Couchsurfing, etc, all come to mind.

God didn't come down and carve the Approved And Valid Contexts of Facebook Friending on a piece of rock.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#65

Post by at-fates-hands »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14
csmattryder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years old. No Facebook account. I 'deleted my life', and y'know what? Nothing changed. I still have the same friends I talked to before Facebook, still meet up for drinks on their birthdays, still arrange nights out, and still share what's going on in my life. The best thing about no Facebook? I know what information is out there, and nothing personal that Advertising Inc. can buy.

You have a much easier story. I'm 47. Because of the network effect, using Facebook I've connected with people I knew and cared about that I haven't seen in 30 years. Dozens of them. I barely remembered person A and B, found them and became friends. Then they knew person C and D. E and F were close behind. Pretty soon I have 200 friends from places scattered all over the world. Life sneaks up on you, and people stop…

>>Life sneaks up on you, and people stop having the same phone, email, or street address. You wake up one day wondering what happened to Bob, then slowly realize that you'll never see him again. It's a weird feeling.

Unless you're older, you have no idea how true this is. So many people I knew in college and this happened so frequently once I got out college. I suddenly realized people at that age are so nomadic. They move frequently, change addresses and numbers and unless you're best friends with them, you'll never know what happened to them.

Scary and yes, very weird to have known someone one day and then a few days later, they're a ghost to you.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#66

Post by uxp »

randallu wrote: post #10
tlrobinson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI Facebook has two-factor auth as well: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150172618258920 .

I wonder how frequently used the accounts which are used for fraud are? But I guess it's tricky -- maybe I'm signing in from a remote location after many months of inactivity to post some vacation photos, and can't receive texts on my phone because it doesn't work in whatever country I'm in...

And the fact that you have to give up more privacy to increase security. I'd rather Facebook not know my phone number (though it's stupid to think they don't already have it due to any one of my friends syncing their contact information).

It's the little things like this that put me off to Facebook. It feels like every attempt to make the site "better" is just another attempt to get more information from a user.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#67

Post by samstave »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You really don't want to mess with the Facebook police. They'll delete your life. I wish I had something more substantive to say here, but the problem is that we give Facebook an extraordinarily huge power in our personal lives. It's not just some random web service.

I'd actually pay for the Facebook team to delete my online life!

REALLY

This needs to be a service...

The problem is that its just like credit reporting: the data can be obfuscated from you - but not from everyone else who wants the data that is a part of "the system".

Facebook is perm - thus I have never had an account and never will.

Users can benefit from having a photo repos and a wall etc... but users suffer from corp and gov data mining of said data. fark that

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#68

Post by macchina »

DanBC wrote: post #42
dclusin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that this is only applicable if you are domiciled in the applicable area. Is this not correct? Has anybody tried this?

I'd be great if the US implemented some sensible privacy laws. I'm in the UK, and Europe has a nice set of data protection laws. Enforcing those laws is sub-optimal.

It's bound to happen, if not soon, at least once we start electing legislators who have grown up using these services.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#69

Post by law »

philip1209 wrote: post #46

I know someone who generated thousands of links to facebook profiles, including non-linked ones. They crawled for images with facebook meta data, pulled the facebook IDs, and used those to generate the profile links.

I'm not able to verify this right now, but facebook stores user identification information using EXIF in JPEGs? If so, I wonder whether image hosts delete this info before hosting your file.
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