Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 221 posts

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#111

Post by jddj »

nrclark wrote: post #109

Where does this $5B go, exactly? Into the general fund? If it goes into the FTC's budget, then something is very wrong. This money came from our citizenry, and should be restored to us through something meaningful.

To the US treasury, for general use.

Most (all?) federal fines are this way, although if they specified that some of the total were to be used for direct compensation to victims, then that could be included in the total as reported by the media but obviously wouldn't be spendable by Congress.

I can't point to a case where that's ever happened, though, so the answer in practice is "the US treasury".

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#112

Post by elliekelly »

indiandragon wrote: post #64
jawns wrote: post #8

A lot of the terms of the settlement deal with organizational changes, but when you look at the very specific privacy restrictions that Facebook agreed to, it's really, really problematic stuff: * Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising; * Facebook must provide clear and conspicuous notice of its use of facial recognit…

> prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising Facebook is not alone in misuse or wrongful use of phone number given for 2FA. LinkedIn explicitly requires phone number to be added on the profile to enable 2FA and makes the phone number visible by default to all the contacts, if you don't want your phone number visible; you'll have to l…

Yesterday I went to set up 2FA for MongoDB and entered my phone number in the form but then realized I could use Authy so I never hit save/submit. I’ve already gotten two text messages from them even though my account shows my phone number as “Not Set.”

It really made me wonder what other shady stuff they might be doing with my and my customer’s data.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#113

Post by Diederich »

nappy-doo wrote: post #67
annadane wrote: post #63

I still find Facebook has one of the most toxic cultures of any company out there. All they've ever done during their history is betray user trust, but it's ok as long as they keep 'apologizing' and then doing nothing to fix it

Did you work there? I worked there for 2 years (it was a mistake), and found that the culture wasn't toxic, just obtuse. They never questioned what they did, or thought about the implications. They focused on "move fast," without really thinking through implications of things.

If you have a few minutes, I wonder if you can expand on that? Does "it was a mistake" stem primarily from '"move fast," without really thinking through implications'? Thanks!

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#115

Post by [deleted] »

jawns wrote: post #8

A lot of the terms of the settlement deal with organizational changes, but when you look at the very specific privacy restrictions that Facebook agreed to, it's really, really problematic stuff: * Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising; * Facebook must provide clear and conspicuous notice of its use of facial recognit…

[deleted]

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#116

Post by quazeekotl »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #70

Does it bother anyone else that Facebook is being fined $5 billion while Equifax, a company with a history of anti-consumer activity and privacy violations going back decades, the company that congress was forced to enact the Fair Credit Reporting Act to contain, and who gave away all the personal information for over a hundred million people through its own negligence, was fined a mere $650 million? Do you get the i…

The fine is 5 billion dollars because Facebook flagrantly violated the 2011 agreement with the FTC, as bad as Equifax is they haven't essentially gone "so what are you gonna do about it" to the regulators.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#117

Post by jddj »

SilasX wrote: post #9
soulofmischief wrote: post #4

Can anyone with a firmer understanding of the issue tell me if this is an appropriate penalty or not? Should we expect to see some of these prohibitions generalized to more companies? * Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising * Facebook must encrypt user passwords and regularly scan to detect whether any passwords are…

>Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising Yeah, I'm honestly surprised that one wasn't already illegal.

An appropriate excerpt from Matt Levine's column (the gist is that relying on the FTC, rather than Congress, is backwards):

"Americans are biased toward thinking of bad things as being already illegal, always illegal, illegal by definition and by nature and in themselves. If the thing that Facebook did was so bad, then it must have been illegal, so there is no need for a new law against it. At most we need a settlement with Facebook clarifying exactly which things it did were illegal and specifying that it won’t do them again."

Before Mark Zuckerberg (and possibly now Google), we didn't really have anyone abusing personal data to such an extent that what they are doing is clearly, to the average person, wrong. Dumping toxic waste into waterways/letting it reach the groundwater is probably a similar example.

Every now and again an individual, company or industry comes along who is callous enough to make money off the things that surely must be illegal before and until they actually are.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#118

Post by tssva »

jawns wrote: post #8

A lot of the terms of the settlement deal with organizational changes, but when you look at the very specific privacy restrictions that Facebook agreed to, it's really, really problematic stuff: * Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising; * Facebook must provide clear and conspicuous notice of its use of facial recognit…

The main goal of the settlement is to limit future egregious acts by the organizational changes and not by specific prohibitions. The FTC knows that specific prohibitions will never cover all past and possible future acts.

The only reasons these specific prohibitions are spelled out is because Facebook is known to have specifically performed these acts in the past.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#119

Post by tzs »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #70

Does it bother anyone else that Facebook is being fined $5 billion while Equifax, a company with a history of anti-consumer activity and privacy violations going back decades, the company that congress was forced to enact the Fair Credit Reporting Act to contain, and who gave away all the personal information for over a hundred million people through its own negligence, was fined a mere $650 million? Do you get the i…

One involved mishandling of user data, the other involved misuse of user data.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#120

Post by tssva »

watwatinthewat wrote: post #26

I don't think I agree with Facebook getting a bigger fine than Equifax. I put my own information on FB. Equifax compiled information on me without my explicit consent. Both sets of data got into hands they shouldn't. I realize that misses FB willfully doing what they did and Equifax not intending to be hacked, but for me my consent is equal or more important than what the holders of the data did after they had it. Le…

All credit agreements I have read contain sections specifically allowing reporting of information to credit agencies, so you have in fact explicitly allowed collection of your information.
Post reply on HN