Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#2Silly Facebook...
what surprises me is that people are shocked. The bug its self is shocking but the fact Facebook is harvesting information... are people really that surprised? I wouldnt be surprised if Facebook knows more about us than our governments (except the american government... I doubt facebook listens to our phone conversations :P)
Data is power these days and facebook is just going to keep on harvesting that sweet, sweet personal information.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#3Silly Facebook... what surprises me is that people are shocked. The bug its self is shocking but the fact Facebook is harvesting information... are people really that surprised? I wouldnt be surprised if Facebook knows more about us than our governments (except the american government... I doubt facebook listens to our phone conversations :P) Data is power these days and facebook is just going to keep on harvesting t…
Most people aren't tech, media or social savvy in any meaningful measure. Most people still use their birthdays for passwords, include a phone number in a social website if they keep pestering them for it and disregard the same caution they would show when a stranger shows at their front door on a friendly-looking website.
This will not change
The sooner the tech savvy crowd learns to accept this, the better it is for everyone.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#4So you are friends with a person on Facebook, and this bug allowed them to see your private email address?
I don't see what people are so outraged by. If you're friends with someone on Facebook, why is your email address so private? And what will these Facebook friends DO know that they know your email address?!?
If I was snarky, I would say if you can't share your email address with a friend, choose better friends. But I won't say that. But still. Not worth so much outrage over.
Hey, the government is reading your emails even though they know you're an American just in case there is evidence of some crime in there. Be angry over that.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#5So you are friends with a person on Facebook, and this bug allowed them to see your private email address? I don't see what people are so outraged by. If you're friends with someone on Facebook, why is your email address so private? And what will these Facebook friends DO know that they know your email address?!? If I was snarky, I would say if you can't share your email address with a friend, choose better friends.…
As far as I understood it's not friends, but friends of friends (i.e could be anyone), provided they downloaded their profile. Furthermore this is data from the shadow profile, ie. data users not even knowingly gave to Facebook, much less their friends on facebook, much less friends of friends on Facebook. It's not just emails either, but also telephone numbers.
So, no.
Hey, the government is reading your emails even though they know you're an American just in case there is evidence of some crime in there. Be angry over that.
One doesn't exclude the other.
It's also very similar, the way Facebook (and surely other companies as well) just sucks everything up it can get a hold of, in the case it might be useful some day, i.e. they might be able to squeeze the fraction of a penny from it.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#6So you are friends with a person on Facebook, and this bug allowed them to see your private email address? I don't see what people are so outraged by. If you're friends with someone on Facebook, why is your email address so private? And what will these Facebook friends DO know that they know your email address?!? If I was snarky, I would say if you can't share your email address with a friend, choose better friends.…
No, this is more like you are friends with your conservative Republican boss on facebook, but you are also a member of an abortion rights activist group.
You've never disclosed that activity to Facebook, but they harvested your data via one of those sleazy commercial personal information brokers and added it to your 'shadow profile' without your knowledge.
Then one day your boss downloads his data using that feature, and he suddenly sees that you are unreal37@abortionrights.org and your phone number there.
He then calls you to tell you that not only are you fired, but your wedding to his daughter is canceled.
This is a truly egregious bug (although I think it is probably true that few of the potential 6 million victims have actually had their info leak in this way).
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#7So you are friends with a person on Facebook, and this bug allowed them to see your private email address? I don't see what people are so outraged by. If you're friends with someone on Facebook, why is your email address so private? And what will these Facebook friends DO know that they know your email address?!? If I was snarky, I would say if you can't share your email address with a friend, choose better friends.…
No, this is more like you are friends with your conservative Republican boss on facebook, but you are also a member of an abortion rights activist group. You've never disclosed that activity to Facebook, but they harvested your data via one of those sleazy commercial personal information brokers and added it to your 'shadow profile' without your knowledge. Then one day your boss downloads his data using that feature,…
How would the unreal37 email get linked to your Facebook profile? I'm not understanding that part of it.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, this is more like you are friends with your conservative Republican boss on facebook, but you are also a member of an abortion rights activist group. You've never disclosed that activity to Facebook, but they harvested your data via one of those sleazy commercial personal information brokers and added it to your 'shadow profile' without your knowledge. Then one day your boss downloads his data using that feature,…
How would the unreal37 email get linked to your Facebook profile? I'm not understanding that part of it.
AFAICT, they haven't told anybody exactly where they get the data about you that you don't give them. Presumably, they buy it from one of the commercial personal information brokers that maintain dossiers on consumers and sell that info. Or they might enter into information-trading arrangements; I don't know.
The article only says that they 'harvest' information about you from external non-facebook sources and then add that to the secret internal profile that they maintain about you.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, this is more like you are friends with your conservative Republican boss on facebook, but you are also a member of an abortion rights activist group. You've never disclosed that activity to Facebook, but they harvested your data via one of those sleazy commercial personal information brokers and added it to your 'shadow profile' without your knowledge. Then one day your boss downloads his data using that feature,…
How would the unreal37 email get linked to your Facebook profile? I'm not understanding that part of it.
As I understand it:
1) Another friend had your name and your phone number or email address in a contact list.
2) Facebook got access to that contact list.
3) Facebook matched your entry in your friend's contact list to your Facebook account.
4) Facebook added any new numbers or email addresses of yours that your friend had (but that Facebook didn't) to your profile, but not anywhere you could ever see them.
I imagine two major sources of this contact data are 1) Facebook phone apps that access user contact lists, and 2) the functionality in which you give Facebook your email address and email password and Facebook logs in and scours your email for the addresses of your contacts.
Re: Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug
#10I got a mail from FB with the exact same message saying they had screwd up. The most wtf moment of the email was when they had my contact number listed in the email, I have never uploaded my contact number on my fb profile.