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Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

alexmuir.com

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Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#101

Post by lawnchair_larry »

feral wrote: post #89
JonnieCache wrote: post #43

I can confirm that the "security check" thing is related to having a fake name, or perhaps an empty profile. Both of those apply to my primary account and I'm prompted to enter a phone number every time I log in. It doesn't seem to be required, I've always just dismissed those "security" prompts by clicking the FB logo in the top left, which forwards me to the homepage just fine. The chances of facebook getting my mo…

Couldn't they just get your mobile number, from one of your friends iPhones? Even if you had a fake name on your profile, I would assume its still fairly straightforward to identify you purely from the network structure. I've no idea if they are doing this, but I wouldn't put the possibility in moon/willpower territory.

Man, that is annoying. "Don't like it, don't use it" they say. I don't use facebook. I blacklist any requests to their domain ("Like" button etc). As you have pointed out, but I did not previously realize, they surely have my name and number in all of my friends' social graph, because they snarfed it from their iPhones or other mobile device.

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#102

Post by mkopinsky »

mkopinsky wrote: post #88
AlexMuir wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jackpot - the name is the trigger, possibly combined with an own-domain email address.

I created an account with a fake name and mailinator email (after several tries where it rejected mailinator domains, it finally worked with bobmail.info). It asked me for my cell phone number to confirm, and when I entered the code it had quite a large number of "John Doe is someone you may know". These people are not all people who I'd expect to have my phone number saved in their phones. My phone number is linked…

Two addenda:

1) Apparently my cell phone number used to be registered to my primary account. When I created the fake account, it removed my number from my primary account and assigned it to the fake account. So what happened there was they suggested friends from the account that used to have the same phone number assigned to it. The creepy thing here is that it also suggested people that I had recently defriended.

2) I did the same thing, using my Google voice number which had not previously been registered to any FB account, and was suggested three friends who apparently have me saved in their address books.

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#103

Post by pokoleo »

I was able to trigger it, despite the fact that they didn't ask for my phone number.

- Signup. (ignore that you need to confirm your email)

- Go to your account settings>mobile

- Go to mobile.

- Add a mobile phone.

- Enter your password

- Click "Add your phone number here."

- Verify your phone number via text.

- Click the facebook logo.

You should be able to see recommendations based on your phone number.

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#104

Post by samgro »

It is terrible that your friends' privacy was violated, and I apologize for this comment being off topic, but I feel compelled to address the specific personal circumstances that Alex has uncovered.

Alex: as a gay man who came out as an adult, I urge you to reach out to your closeted friend. Let him know that Facebook violated his privacy and you accidentally and unexpectedly came across his secret. Reassure him that you care about him as a friend and that his sexuality makes no difference to you.

Unless he is in physical or serious financial risk from coming out, his life will be unimaginably better if he comes out. If he's going to lose his job or be disowned by his parents, at least having one friend to share his secret with may make a world of difference.

If he has a girlfriend or wife, for her sake, you need to reach out to him. It's an incredibly awkward situation, but think about what an enormous positive difference you can make in one or two people's lives.

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#106

Post by iamleppert »

They also have another "feature" that works the exact same way when you sign-up with an e-mail address that someone had in their address book and used the "Import contacts from feature". You can try this with a fresh account. I'll be writing a blog post about it, as well, soon.

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#108

Post by sandee »

muyuu wrote: post #105

Google also asks me repeatedly for my phone "so I can recover my account" and for security reasons. I'd rather lose my google accounts altogether than link any of my main phones to my gmail account.

That is only for sending the SMS of secret passcode for account security, right ?

(Yes if they scrap someone's else phone and your phone number happens to be there then ya there is some issue. Is there any precedent of google scraping phones through any means ?)

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#109

Post by usedtolurk »

orijing wrote: post #82
ma2rten wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what I am wondering is: is this actually an unintended consequence or a conscious choice that has been made?

A company doesn't have a single conscience. It may have been a conscious choice by an engineer, or it may have been an unintended consequence of some other code change. Either way, I highly doubt it involved the check-off from a director-level employee. If every decision had to get approval from the management team, then progress would grind to a halt, and Facebook would end up like Microsoft.

or Apple?

Re: Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phone

#110

Post by lars »

coulditbe wrote: post #49

I think I've found another troublesome method that Facebook is using to suggest new friends. A few years ago, I created a Google profile with a vanity URL [1] and a Facebook account with the same Gmail address. I never linked those two accounts, used third-party apps or imported contacts into Facebook. I recently created a Google+ profile and publicly circled some users when I suddenly noticed that those circled user…

Could it be that you are in their Gmail contact list? I don't have a public Google profile, and never gave Facebook my Gmail password, yet I get suggestions for people I have emailed once years ago. The only explanation I can think of is that I'm in their email contact list, or that they've searched for my name on Facebook at some point.
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