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533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

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Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#131
I mean, at this point I think everyone should just accept that at the very least their name, age, address(es), email(s), phone number(s) and screen name(s) have been fully leaked if you have ever had any kind of online presence. Not saying that's right or good, but at this point it's just a fact.

So if that's the case, I think we should move beyond really even trying to think of this info as private or a marker of identity, and we need to move everyone to more secure forms of identity verification.

As has been pointed out on HN before, "identity theft" is a made-up concept to make it seem as if you had something stolen from you, when the real problem is banks and other service providers do an absolute shit job of identity verification. They're the ones at fault, and they try to shift the onus onto you to fix things when they screw up.

Indeed, a social security number is pretty much the only additional piece of data to the stuff above that one would need to open up a bank account in someone else's name, and those have been leaked plenty of times too.

The government needs to make harsher penalties for banks and others that can ruin your credit, etc. because they accept all this leaked info as "proof" of identity.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put a monetary cost of holding user data, and a steep monetary cost on losing user data. Ex, pay x amount per month in perpetuity for each piece of information about a user your keep. And have to pay the "net present value" of those payments if you lose the data. Having to pay for hoarding user personal data changes the incentives from gobble up as much as possible, to instead only pay for a users data that is worth…

Who would get this money? I agree that it needs to be some solution involving a cost, given that most of these companies have shown multiple times that profit isn’t just their main concern, it’s the only concern.

Think of it like a class action lawsuit on behalf of investors. Instead of entrusting their savings to a company, people are entrusting them with their personal information. If there is gross negligence on part of the company leading to that data being leaked then all of the people whose data was stolen should be able to claim monetary damages. If a legal precedent is established so that these claims can be pursued whenever this happens it should provide enough motivation for these companies to take preventative measures.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#134
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people in my social circles ... I just hope this will become increasingly frequent and painful experience for them. Very strange to wish harm upon your friends with the hope that that will convince them to join your side in a political fight! I would suggest instead that you only wish that if it becomes a painful experience, they would realize why and renegotiate their relationship with FB. Typically wishing pain o…

Not that strange. The whole "rock bottom" concept for addicts is similar, right? Sometimes you have to see a friend or family member truly experience real pain to get them to want to change. People are like that.

The sad fact is that as much as I wanted to believe that positive reinforcement was "better" for me because it was supposedly "better" for people in general, in practice it's only ever been negative reinforcement that has enacted any change in my life. Trying to deny that fact for so long only accomplished setting my life back by several years. Even the simplest things like dental hygiene only became habits because I suffered catastrophic losses from neglecting them.

I think it's because my imagination of the failing scenario will never compare to the experience of the failure itself. Whereas if there's no singular point at which the failure becomes obvious and decidedly life-changing, then...

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#135

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

What's being sold as convenience is really just creepy spying

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#136
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could store a salted hash instead for almost everything except using the number as actual phone number (call/SMS)

You need to do a bit more than that; a one-way transform with no secrets isn't good enough for easily brute-forceable data like phone numbers, SSNs, passport numbers, credit card numbers etc. There's just not enough entropy in the data. There are ways to do these things though so the spirit of your comment is correct.

What are some of the ways?

I’d assume encryption wouldn’t help much since wouldn’t the key most likely be available if the database was compromised?

I would have thought hashing would work if it’s made more expensive such as by choosing an expensive hash function and increasing the number of rounds.

Edit: Would first encrypting the value with the salt and then hashing the encrypted value and salt add more entropy and make hash collisions less revealing?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#137

I mean, at this point I think everyone should just accept that at the very least their name, age, address(es), email(s), phone number(s) and screen name(s) have been fully leaked if you have ever had any kind of online presence. Not saying that's right or good, but at this point it's just a fact. So if that's the case, I think we should move beyond really even trying to think of this info as private or a marker of id…

Like really? Don't you have to walk to a bank or show some ID?

I live in the EU and I do operate under the assumption that banks take reasonable measures to ensure an account is linked to a legal identity.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#138

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

Once people accept that there’s no such thing as a free (as in beer) app or service. In addition to there needs to be serious laws put in place that gives users control of their data. And they should be getting paid for facebooks profits—not the share holders.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#139
post #101

Is it possible to download this without giving money to criminals? (The article says free, but my 2 minutes of googling hasn't found it, somewhat unsurprisingly). Is doing so legal? If the answer to both of those questions are yes... I'd like to take a peak. Mostly to check whether or not some numbers I know haven't been directly give to fb are there.

I'm also wondering if number I asked them to delete 5 years ago is in this 2019 leak. :)
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