I'm not particularly worried, Google and Facebook have two of the best security teams in the world and spend an amazing amount of money to protect customer data. The amount of convenience I get from Facebook and Google outweigh the risk I'm exposed to in my opinion. If Governments want to create data protection regulations I'll save my opinion until I see whatever regulation is proposed but I think it'll be difficult…
You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.
Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
11–20 of 119 posts
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.
As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're a little foolish to believe that some sensitive data within Google/Facebook/XYZ does not get shared outside with FVEY countries and intelligence agencies.
As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.
That's a pretty significant hedge.
Also, how effective are Google's processes against dishonest employees? It would not be hard for, say, the Chinese government to plant a mole in Google's security team. (Actually, the real nightmare scenario is a Chinese mole in Intel or Apple's hardware team.)
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.
Do you have the "pay grade" to be able to make this assertion credibly? One cannot, in general, see the forest for the trees. This adage is not merely a put-down.
It's also an open question how much data Google is compelled to share by law in the age of NSLs.
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#15Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.
I'm not worried out Facebook getting hacked and someone getting 10 years worth of photos, shopping data, or browsing history. Even credit cards have better protection than what Equifax has for SSNs.
And again, the consumers who shoulder the burden of this catastrophic data breech had absolutely no say in who brokered the SSNs.
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#16Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.
30 mil US accounts on FB were scraped using Mechanical Turk in an ingenious way. No hacking was required. I don't think that for many it matters if their data was obtained through hacking or through legal means. https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/facebook-failed-to-prote...
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#17Yes they have immense amounts of personal data and that is worrying. It is worrying they share this data with government agencies, marketing agencies etc. BUT, unlike Equifax they haven't been completely compromised by hackers. Equifax is unique it's level of incompetence. I'm surprised the equity is holding up as well as it is. The company is grossly negligent.
Facebook and Google are marketing/advertising agencies.
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.
> unless compelled to do so by law That's a pretty significant hedge. Also, how effective are Google's processes against dishonest employees? It would not be hard for, say, the Chinese government to plant a mole in Google's security team. (Actually, the real nightmare scenario is a Chinese mole in Intel or Apple's hardware team.)
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has worked for a five eyes intelligence agency and at Google I can tell you that Google does not share sensitive data with the Government unless compelled to do so by law.
Do you have the "pay grade" to be able to make this assertion credibly? One cannot, in general, see the forest for the trees. This adage is not merely a put-down.
However, I was an Assistant Director (which is a senior tech / middle management kind of level) at first an intelligence agency, and then at a similar grade in a law enforcement organization and then later a security engineer at Google.
The idea that an intelligence agency (or law enforcement agency) would ask Google for help isn't far fetched, in fact when I was in law enforcement we'd ask private companies for help all the time. Some of the time they'd help, the rest of the time they tell us to come back with a warrant.
Google was famously in the second category, to the point where we'd not even bother asking. Even if we had a warrant we'd hesitate because we'd expect Google to challenge the warrant in court and it'd be a huge expensive hassle.
When I worked at Google it was the same, the idea of sharing private information with anyone was anathema. Engineers even being able to see private information without an audit trail and alarms going off was next to impossible.
The idea of a secret extra-legal conduit of information from Google to the US Government seems so far fetched to me that I have trouble even considering it. If there is a conduit for information it's there because the US Government has some legal instrument to compel Google to create it and that Google grudgingly has accepted the instrument as valid.
But what do I know, like I said, I wasn't the CEO of Google or DIRNSA. Maybe I just was never in the right rooms or policy meetings? Maybe everything I saw was staged for my benefit.
Re: Forget Equifax. Facebook and Google Have the Data That Should Worry You
#20I think that the US gov has not yet realized the full potential danger of data exposure. The best thing is to plan for these disaster scenarios like you would pandemics, wars, and natural disasters. There should be strong regulations, a set of protocols, a way to mitigate these situations. Understandably, the government is way behind on this issue, still seeing the digital information (especially on social media) as…