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Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

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Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers have access to code repositories.

all repositories?

It doesn't require ALL repositories, just those that contribute to the mobile app. I don't know about Facebook, but where I work there are hundreds of employees who have access to the source code of our mobile app and a few tens of employees who know the deployment process well enough that they would know if other code were being added as part of the deploy process.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the nature of the article is bad but still I would not be surprised to hear that Facebook is listening to phone conversations. That's why I don't use it. :P

I work for Facebook. This does not happen. If it does, I can assure you that one of the many thousands of engineers will speak out.

What makes you so sure that many thousands of Facebook engineers would be aware of it?

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#103
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if good E2E encryption of the WhatsApp message rules out the app sending, in parallel, an indexed list of juicy keywords (encrypted or not) to FB servers for the purpose of targeting ads.

So you're saying the client indexes your words locally and then e2e encrypts and sends to the person whom you're conversing with? Is that feasible client-side without burning all your battery?

The cpu is not the most power-consuming component of your device: the radio and display both consume more power than the processor. According to [1], the cpu typically accounts for only 10%-20% of power usage.

However, a secondary stream from the app to a different endpoint would be detectable, so there are other practical challenges to the GP's scenario.

[1] https://www.usenix.org/event/usenix10/tech/full_papers/Carro...

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the nature of the article is bad but still I would not be surprised to hear that Facebook is listening to phone conversations. That's why I don't use it. :P

I work for Facebook. This does not happen. If it does, I can assure you that one of the many thousands of engineers will speak out.

If something like this is going on, only a few select employees know about it. Facebook is not dumb.

When it comes to "speaking out"... NSA started surveillance projects long before Edward Snowden was employed. There will always be people who will develop things like this and who will not speak out. It's just a matter of correctly selecting these few people.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#105
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be rigorously studied. A group of people could attempt to plant false advertising opportunities in their speech and then measure the frequency at which related ads/posts arrive in their feed. I would trust something like this more than an assertion by FB that this is not happening.

I think that if Facebook was caught doing this after they specifically denied it, then executives would probably be going to jail. I think if Facebook say they aren't doing this, then they aren't doing it.

Even IF this was true, do you really think the executives on their meetings go like: "Okay, if we deny this, we will go to jail. So let's tell everyone that we are spying on them!"

No. Denying is the only smart move here.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#106
post #92
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what they say. One of the urban legends was also that USA government agencies don't collect data at bulk and they were lying about it. We know the truth now. Facebook has been caught with the hand in the cookie jar too many times already and got away with it. Fuck Facebook.

And every time they say "Whoopsie, it was just a bug - we'll fix it!". And then they don't. Or they come back 3 years later and say "Hey everyone, remember that 'bug' you caught earlier? We're going to make it into a beautiful feature now!".

Do you have an example where that hapend?

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#108
Can't speak for Android, but on iOS it is not possible for an app to "listen" to your microphone unless it is in the foreground, and you have explicitly given the app permission to do this (the first time the app attempts to do so). It can also be revoked at any time without removing the app.

The only way around this restriction would be using a private API Apple could have provided. Given that Apple has even integrated some aspects of Facebook into iOS, this is not totally impossible, but it's hard to imagine Apple having an incentive in allowing Facebook to passively record and transmit all user audio. To date, Apple actually seem to be pretty good at protecting user's privacy.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#109
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I work for Facebook. This doesn't happen.

Heh that's a funny thing to say. I remember when one of the first Snowdens revelations came up, Larry Page wrote a blog post on official Google blog: https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/what.html saying they don't cooparate with NSA. The same week we were provided documents signed by NSA/CIA officials claiming that Google is not even forced to do it, they provided extra interface for NSA so they can grab data w…

Hmm, but Larry Page is specifically addressing PRISM. And your Wired link agrees with him. And from what I remember, it wasn't so much "documents signed by NSA/CIA officials" as "an internal powerpoint slide".

Didn't the NSA hack Google's own internal fiber? Why would they need to do that if they had the keys to the kingdom anyway?

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#110
post #62
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook are spying on you and how their apps have all these permissions to use your camera and phone audio. And it's not just the Facebook apps. The Facebook SDK is widely embedded into many other apps Facebook SDK (it's the most popular SDK on iOS for example, according to data published from Cocoapods - https://gist.github.com/ryanolsonk/e33bf9e89677da9fe8ce ). It's so popular because Facebook is basically the m…

Facebook is you spying on yourself, by posting it all that info.

I'm not deliberately live streaming every conversation I have all day onto my feed.
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