111–120 of 160 posts
I know everyone on HN loves to hate on Facebook, but the fact that HN's servers are getting crushed when FB is down perhaps shows a revealed preference.
I feel like we need to start differentiating between "public" personal information and more sensitive personal information (like social security numbers or other government ID numbers). The breach lists this info: Name Email Location Gender Phone number User ID So basically, everything I used to be able to get in a phone book. Honestly, at this point all of that information should just be considered public, because i…
Sounds a bit like moving the goal posts to me. You were able to opt out of phone books and they also didn't contain email and gender.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> everything I used to be able to get in a phone book Fair, although you could opt out of the phone book. (And I don't think they had location/address, though it's been so long now that I can't remember for sure.) > I think people are grappling with the fact that the Internet just makes data scraping and processing possible on a scale previously unimaginable This is it right here. The scale and ease of access are ter…
> And I don't think they had location/address, > though it's been so long now that I can't remember for sure Same here. initially i too couldn't remember for sure. Then i remembered the scene from Terminator 2 (1991) in which it looks up Sarah Connor's phone-number and home-address in a phone-book! :-)
(Name was ProPhone 1993, so not really pre 90's) https://youtu.be/yBupNdYe08g?t=1078
I feel like we need to start differentiating between "public" personal information and more sensitive personal information (like social security numbers or other government ID numbers). The breach lists this info: Name Email Location Gender Phone number User ID So basically, everything I used to be able to get in a phone book. Honestly, at this point all of that information should just be considered public, because i…
> everything I used to be able to get in a phone book Fair, although you could opt out of the phone book. (And I don't think they had location/address, though it's been so long now that I can't remember for sure.) > I think people are grappling with the fact that the Internet just makes data scraping and processing possible on a scale previously unimaginable This is it right here. The scale and ease of access are ter…
They most definitely did have addresses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just Facebook. Your phone is tattling on you 24/7. ALPRs are recording where you drive. Browser fingerprinting is creating a profile on you even if you block ads and trackers. Short of never using a computer, there is no opt out anymore.
That's a little different thought and I think you know it. There's a difference between information that government and big tech is scraping and storing, vs information that is publicly available to literally any random person online to scrape. Both are problems, but those are different discussions and we started with talking about the issue of truly publicly available information. I think that's an interesting topic…
Some might laugh this off as 'oh it's just scraping'. But I remember reading some comments in HN that there are apps that can scan faces and pull personal info including where they live, work etc. So each leak uncovers a person little by little. This vindicates the stance taken by Signal to not even collect metadata. Edit: I mean surreptitiously scan the face of a stranger you see in public and the app will tell you…
Note that these services are also powered by scraping public data.
I'm glad I never gave FB my real phone number or birthday. Nobody should. I predicted this would happen some day. It's always just a matter of probability and time.
The day Facebook locked me out and asked for photo ID to get back in, that was the last day I used FB.
I'm looking at this
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/470b/
and IANAL but it seems that possession of a fake ID of itself isn't illegal and I don't think "using Facebook" falls under the intent to defraud, i.e. "in order to cause loss or damage to a legal, financial, or property right".
I feel like we need to start differentiating between "public" personal information and more sensitive personal information (like social security numbers or other government ID numbers). The breach lists this info: Name Email Location Gender Phone number User ID So basically, everything I used to be able to get in a phone book. Honestly, at this point all of that information should just be considered public, because i…
> everything I used to be able to get in a phone book Fair, although you could opt out of the phone book. (And I don't think they had location/address, though it's been so long now that I can't remember for sure.) > I think people are grappling with the fact that the Internet just makes data scraping and processing possible on a scale previously unimaginable This is it right here. The scale and ease of access are ter…
I lived in a lot of different places in the US in the 70s and 80s. All the phone books had residential addresses listed.
This is the format and font I remember: https://groovyhistory.com/content/50602/01af8c322a21e50d0b81...
