Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#161

Post by rocqua » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #133

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #14

This will make keeping your social media private during recruiting much much harder because rather than trying to search for your name on FB or your email, an interviewer can just search your listed contact number. Names are often not unique but phone numbers are. This matters because creating a new email account for recruiting is trivial, yet creating a new phone number for recruiting is not. Most phones are not dua…

You use your real phone number on FB? MY no on there is a fake (but real number in my area code). And I don't put my Mobile number on FB at all.

Might it be possible to compromise your account by getting control of that phone number?

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#162

Post by rocqua » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #74

This is surely a breach of GDRP. One of the principles is that data must only be used for the purpose for which it was collected. Taking a number provided explicitly for 2FA and using it for search certainly sounds like a breach.

They might get around this by not doing it with numbers provided after the GDPR penalties came into effect.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#163

Post by maehwasu » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

Out of all possible choices, you can be sure FB will choose the worst one.

I was a user since 2004, deleted last year, and never looked back.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#164

Post by IanSanders » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #155

tobr wrote: post #82

If you are a Facebook employee, or are close to one, please help me understand. How does it feel to see reports like this being released almost weekly? I realize people are very good at dealing with moral dissonance when their paycheck depends on it, but surely you must be thinking, talking to your colleagues, about what your personal responsibility in this is?

Overall, the vast majority of similar reports are completely irrelevant, partial or non-sensical. Happy to give details but the most common pattern is the same person demanding that Facebook regulate speech in one sentence and being outraged that Facebook feels allowed to regulate speech before that sentence is over. Most journalists who write about Facebook are deemed as “having no idea what they are talking about”.…

This post might as well have been written by a third party to discredit facebook.

To summarize:

1) "As long as there's someone worse we don't have to worry"

2) "working for Facebook feels like you are dealing with making profit, pleasing management, pleasing partners, progressing your career and going home early at the same time — and the public only seems to care about privacy violations."

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#165

Post by scottlocklin » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #150

ahelwer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't care. A job at Facebook is still considered prestigious by a large part of the tech community. They're starting to be grouped more with Palantir than Google, though.

> They're starting to be grouped more with Palantir than Google, though. That's confusing. Is Palantir regarded as better or worse than Google?

I think most people consider google more prestigious. While they'll try to convince you otherwise, it's mostly because google pays better.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#166

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #118

Teever wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the complete lack of respect that Facebook has for individual privacy and the wellbeing of our society in general why should anyone believe this?

If you think that of FB, why would you be applying to work there?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#167

Post by naveen99 » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

vowelless wrote: post #145

naveen99 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second phone numbers aren’t that hard or expensive. you don’t need a second sim, just an app. There is a yc startup providing them: openphone

They are rarely usable on web sites for 2fa as they disallow voip numbers. In fact, many websites don’t allow google voice numbers for the same reason.

Is it easy to distinguish voip numbers ?

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#168

Post by annadane » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

jamisteven wrote: post #138

Been warning people about this for years. Every major social media company has been pushing this shit as "security", when in reality its whats known in intelligence circles as "linkability". The more points of verification, the better a profile can be built to associate an actual identity with an email address, screen name, username, alias, etc. Snowden warned everyone about this, nobody listened.

How many other social media companies? Curious.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#169

Post by CamelCaseName » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

I'm a bit confused at the alarmist title.

I just checked my FB settings, and the article is correct, the best you can restrict your phone number is to just friends.

Why then are the top comments about the inescapablility of employers looking you up by phone number?

Unless you have your employer as a friend on Facebook, just change the setting to friends only.

My understanding is that on this setting, Facebook only allows someone to find your Facebook profile if they:

1. are your friend on FB and

2. have your phone number.

That seems quite reasonable to me.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#170

Post by hopler » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

CamelCaseName wrote: post #169

I'm a bit confused at the alarmist title. I just checked my FB settings, and the article is correct, the best you can restrict your phone number is to just friends. Why then are the top comments about the inescapablility of employers looking you up by phone number? Unless you have your employer as a friend on Facebook, just change the setting to friends only. My understanding is that on this setting, Facebook only al…

The article disagrees with your understanding. "Facebook’s default setting allows everyone — with or without an account — to look up a user profile based off the same phone number "

For the vast majority of people who aren't on TC/HN, it's a surprise. Once info is leaked, it doesn't get unleaked. It's not just this once incident, it's a pattern of Facebook abusing user trust and chronically launching new features that leak private or semiprivate information by default and destroying the culture of security industry wide by showing users that account recovery phone numbers are not safe to use.