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How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

doubleagent.net

141–150 of 222 posts

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#141

"There is a current class action lawsuit against Meta in which court documents include claims that the company had breached the Wiretap Act." This is not a wiretapping case. The claims are all for violations of the Sherman Act. Plaintiffs' attorneys _incidentally_ found evidence during discovery that Facebook may have breached the Wiretap Act. There are no wiretapping claims. It is an antitrust case.

Doesn't this violate the DMCA too? This is circumventing an encrypted system.

Does the DMCA not have enough teeth for something on this scale? Maybe an issue of standing or provable-damages? Did the plaintiffs forget about it? Curious and confused.

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people work on such projects? I mean specifically the engineers. You're still paid the same engineer salary, except now you expose yourself to criminal prosecution. The corpo is at least getting some extra returns for the risk, you as an engineer are not. So dumb.

You really think the engineers working on this will be personally liable for this? That would honestly surprise me, the worst i can imagine is punishment for the company as an entity.

Yes, we do. Just look at how the engineers get thrown under the bus in a high profile case like the VW car-emissions scandal.

Example: engineers blamed is the title in [1].

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/vw-scandal-top-u-s-ex...

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people work on such projects? I mean specifically the engineers. You're still paid the same engineer salary, except now you expose yourself to criminal prosecution. The corpo is at least getting some extra returns for the risk, you as an engineer are not. So dumb.

Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka, whose government collapsed 2 years ago and left the country in political disarray. Some people have better choices than others. Like I wouldn't work on this project, but I have US citizenship. In college I slept over at some of my Indian friends' apartments and often they had like 8-12 guys sleeping in one bedroom, it was just a bunch of matt…

I can't resist annotating the Sri Lanka comment, it was responsible for some of the most absurd headlines I've ever read; completely beyond parody. Typical example:

- Fertiliser ban decimates Sri Lankan crops as government popularity ebbs

> https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-d...

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#144

This is why we should be doing dual-server-client TLS certificate exchange before stuffing damaging info over Internet. But, alas, nooooooooo.

Any more post-relevant insights we should congratulate you for, or is it just this one?

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#145
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a combination of - they’ve had a long history of trying to undermine privacy to extend profits. From stuff like in the article, to tracking pixels, alleged ghost accounts, and fighting anything that hampers tracking. Of the companies you listed, only Google has any crossover, but doesn’t come anywhere near as close. - they’re irresponsible with the effects of their algorithm to amplify hate speech. None of y…

> - they’re irresponsible with the effects of their algorithm to amplify hate speech. None of your other companies have anything like that. Twitter is arguably worse - especially after Musk's takeover.

With what is happening outside the us and how facebook and even YouTube ie google is deplatforming people fighting and raising awareness against totalitarian regimes but twitter is not. I get you hate Musk but I don't agree Twitter is not in the same realm as Facebook.

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - they’re irresponsible with the effects of their algorithm to amplify hate speech. None of your other companies have anything like that. Twitter is arguably worse - especially after Musk's takeover.

With what is happening outside the us and how facebook and even YouTube ie google is deplatforming people fighting and raising awareness against totalitarian regimes but twitter is not. I get you hate Musk but I don't agree Twitter is not in the same realm as Facebook.

Oh and with the Trump assassination attempt who is spreading hate now is really up for debate.

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - they’re irresponsible with the effects of their algorithm to amplify hate speech. None of your other companies have anything like that. Twitter is arguably worse - especially after Musk's takeover.

With what is happening outside the us and how facebook and even YouTube ie google is deplatforming people fighting and raising awareness against totalitarian regimes but twitter is not. I get you hate Musk but I don't agree Twitter is not in the same realm as Facebook.

Twitter is deplatforming people :

https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-...

https://restofworld.org/2023/twitter-blocked-access-punjab-a...

etc.

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#148
post #88
post #4

The email snippets are impressive on multiple levels, mainly how fucking stupid/arrogant people at FB must be. Openly talking about MITM, and then getting multiple other companies to include this kit in their products as well is just beyond stupid for putting in writing. "Hey Zuck, I have an idea on your proposal. We should get together to discuss in person" would be suspect, but at least it's not incriminating. It's…

A piece of advice I've taken to heart is whenever I'm sending something in writing, to think about how I would feel if I needed to repeat the same things in court or if I found those messages in the news. Not that I've ever said anything near that egregious but it still helps.

"Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition." - Olivia Nuzzi

https://web.archive.org/web/20141214193908/https://twitter.c...

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people work on such projects? I mean specifically the engineers. You're still paid the same engineer salary, except now you expose yourself to criminal prosecution. The corpo is at least getting some extra returns for the risk, you as an engineer are not. So dumb.

Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka, whose government collapsed 2 years ago and left the country in political disarray. Some people have better choices than others. Like I wouldn't work on this project, but I have US citizenship. In college I slept over at some of my Indian friends' apartments and often they had like 8-12 guys sleeping in one bedroom, it was just a bunch of matt…

> Why do people work on such projects?

>> Maybe you're on H1B and if you get let go you have to go back to Sri Lanka...

I mean that's there too, but in this case, the guy who ran this spyware op was a former IDF turned chief of Facebook in Israel, later promoted to CISO for all of Meta.

Re: How did Facebook intercept their competitor's encrypted mobile app traffic?

#150
post #54

So just to be clear on what is being alleged, because the write-ups are omitting this detail: from what I can tell FB paid SC users to participate in “market research” and install the proxy. The way most of the writeups make it sound is that it’s some sort of hack, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. (I’d love to get more detail on exactly what the participants were told they were getting paid for, but I’d be surpr…

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