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Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

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Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#161

Post by flexie »

sithadmin wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

With that logic anyone making a quiz should be able to get data on 50M users and that’s not a problem?

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#162

Post by tango12 »

I was so terrified about how India was almost serious about letting Facebook Zero / free basics or whatever happen.

I feel extremely concerned also that new generations are growing up without knowing how the web was intended to be de-centralised and "free" and self-correcting.

Maybe that doesn't work at scale and things need regulation, but I feel like there was a chance to set culture and tone so that even when a large number of people would come on to the Internet, it would be more with a Wikipedia like attitude perhaps.

Now imagine if the first introduction to the Internet for a billion-ish people in India (current penetration is 460mil) would have been through Facebook's internet.org. Imagine if that happened in a country as large as India set that precedent for other countries with low internet penetration.

I used to scoff in university at a batchmate who told me over lunch that he doesn't use gmail because Google is too large and could become evil. I'm not scoffing anymore I guess.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#163

Post by tomc1985 »

sithadmin wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic regulation of social media.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

That sounds like the use-case for nearly everyone shady on Facebook advertising. Surely there are many other, privately-gathered troves of data that are much larger out there?

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#164

Post by cyphar »

homero wrote: post #48
ggg9990 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has already basically imported GDPR because all of the companies building GDPR tools are not going to restrict them to the EU for fear of accidentally blocking a genuine EU citizen.

Yeah like those accept cookies pop up which I despise

The cookie pop-ups are not actually the fault of regulators. The intention of the "cookie law" was to prevent tracking of users without their consent (on a much more granular level), but they neglected to include GDPR-style rules disallowing degradation of service. So companies just made all cookies technically opt-in with a single button (but where opting out means you cannot use the website), which defeats the spirit and purpose of the law.

It is my understanding that GDPR will not allow for such simple workarounds by companies to just continue doing what they were doing previously.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#165

Post by cyphar »

darawk wrote: post #144
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it’s a breach, the problem is the system by Facebook. If that’s true, then there must be a “bug” (technical or not) that Kogan exploited in the system Kogan exploited Facebook's lack of verification around restricting third parties' data access to that which users had authorized to be accessed by third parties. He should have only been able to collect a quarter of a million users' data. He was given access to mo…

> Which is why we're talking about regulation. Regulation to say what? That people can't freely give away their own data? To tell Facebook not to share people's data with other apps, even if the users themselves authorize it?

GDPR would not have permitted the disclosure of users' "facebook friends" data to a third-party automatically without explicitly asking those users first. That is an example of a relevant regulation which would've prevented this.

I don't really care if you want to give a lot of your personal data in exchange for filling out a quiz that is unrelated to what your personal data will be used for, but the network effect (combined with how many things your "facebook friends" can see) of Facebook means that other people in your social graph should care.

(FWIW, I agree that "breach" is the wrong word. It's far too soft on Facebook. "Exploitation of the soon-to-be-criminal disrespect for users' privacy" is much more accurate IMO.)

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#166

Post by TwoBit »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #12
darawk wrote: post #5

Why are people calling this a data breach? As I understand it, CA just scraped the data from users who authorized their app to do so. Am I missing something here?

Facebook did not authorize data retention. CA’s actions were therefore unauthorized use of data, which is the textbook definition of a data breach.

That's not at all what a data breach is, much less a "textbook definition" of one.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#167

Post by dragonwriter »

darawk wrote: post #17
IAmEveryone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook did not authorize data retention. CA’s actions were therefore unauthorized use of data, which is the textbook definition of a data breach.

...you mean facebook said "don't keep this" and then they kept it? And people are calling that a breach?

Well, no, the breach happened when the data was acquired under false (bogus “academic use”) pretenses and then transferred to CA, thus taking personal data contrary to both the will of the subjects and the policy of the entity through which it was taken; the “dont keep this” was a (pitiful) post-breach mitigation effort by Facebook.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#168

Post by arkh »

runeb wrote: post #75
Klathmon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If someone calls my bank and convinces customer service they are me, it would be reasonable to say the bank was breached. Not electronically. But breached nonetheless. That's a bad analogy. A more appropriate one would be if you called your bank and told them to allow a 3rd party to have access to all of your accounts, then blamed your bank when the 3rd party drained all your accounts. Facebook has no obligation to…

Agree with your general statement, but still a bad analogy. You tell your bank to release all your info to third party, then a fourth party learns all your balances. The problem seems to be that people do not realize what it means to agree to information access for a third party, and the question remains weather Facebook is to blame for it being release to a fourth party. So really the problem is that people are not…

> So really the problem is that people are not aware of the scope of the information aggregate of their actions on social media and how it is or may be used or abused.

Simple case: G-fucking-mail. Lot of people on it so even if you're not using it most of your emails end there with a free link to infos from other people's contact list (names, phone number etc.). Shadow profiles are what people will be complaining about 5 years from now if they just discovered what sharing things with 3rd parties mean.

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#169

Post by ce4 »

bogomipz wrote: post #81
sithadmin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of events is: 1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook users opt-in to share information from their profile 2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica…

>"Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was responsible for?" How about a breach of basic responsibility to inform users that their data has been used inappropriately and transferred to a third party. FB knew about this as far back as 2015[1]. Did they let users know at any point? No. Further FB's Chief Security Officers's tweets on Friday failed to show any concern for FB users who wer…

According to an NYT article [0] the tweets had been requested by FB comms:

"Over the weekend, after news broke that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data on as many as 50 million Facebook users, Facebook’s communications team encouraged Mr. Stamos to tweet in defense of the company, but only after it asked to approve Mr. Stamos’s tweets, according to two people briefed on the incident.

After the tweets set off a furious response, Mr. Stamos deleted them."

[0]: https://nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-stam...

Re: Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica

#170

Post by xg15 »

Klathmon wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really seems like Aleksandr Kogan, not Facebook, is the problem here Kogan probably breached the terms he agreed to with Facebook. But fifty million people trusted Facebook with their data and, when asked in their privacy settings, said they didn't want it shared with third parties. That information was then shared with third parties. If someone calls my bank and convinces customer service they are me, it would…

>If someone calls my bank and convinces customer service they are me, it would be reasonable to say the bank was breached. Not electronically. But breached nonetheless. That's a bad analogy. A more appropriate one would be if you called your bank and told them to allow a 3rd party to have access to all of your accounts, then blamed your bank when the 3rd party drained all your accounts. Facebook has no obligation to…

> That's a bad analogy. A more appropriate one would be if you called your bank and told them to allow a 3rd party to have access to all of your accounts, then blamed your bank when the 3rd party drained all your accounts.

...after the bank provided the infrastructure to give full control to a 3rd party, frequently encouraged me to do it and gave me the impression that I delegated access only for a specific task and a limited time - even though actually, such a limitation was impossible to implement on technical means, which the bank knew.

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