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

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

#221

Post by jimsmart »

Stubb wrote: post #196

Who in their right mind would give Facebook their phone number in the first place? Seriously…did people not expect Facebook to sell it to anyone with two pennies to rub together?

I'm pretty sure initially they said the number was only used for two-factor authentication.

Who in their right mind wouldn't want two-factor authentication?

Particularly as other sites were offering it (and haven't changed their terms), and a significant portion of the tech press were saying it's a good idea — and it plainly is a good idea, of course.

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

#222

Post by TheKarateKid »

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?

Palantir is known to do lots of government contracting for US defense/anti-terrorism intelligence, so working there is viewed much like working for Lockheed Martin/Boeing/etc. where it is known the work you are doing could very well be involved in wars/military agendas.

Your role in your job there could cross the line of what some people would as ethical to some people, and Facebook's malicious behavior is making employees who work there to be viewed in a similar light.

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

#223

Post by TheKarateKid »

Lewton wrote: post #209
swsieber wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... your phone knows your number, so they might not have gotten it from somewhere else.

With the permissions in iOS they’re not supposed to have access to my phone number, but I do remember something about them having access to a “special api”, so I figure that’s exactly what happened

Could the "special api" be the built-in iOS Facebook sign-in?

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

#224

Post by jzl »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #89
jzl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you apply to work at Facebook do they look at non-public content in your Facebook account? Let's assume you're not even keeping your Facebook profile a secret.

No. This would be a violation of our data privacy policies and would result in immediate termination of all employees involved.

I figured that was the answer for the hiring manager and all regular employees in the hiring chain, and wasn't implying that anyone might go digging in violation of the rules. (At least not since the early days where stories like that abound.) Wondering more about the HR department doing it under direct authorization of senior management. I assume that Facebook like most companies runs background checks on prospective employees. They must at least be tempted to include their own vast database as part of that background check. I could imagine an automated "security check" process that could be run on a profile without actually seeing that profile, and if it turned up red flags (keywords, high number of reported posts, etc.) HR goes digging further. Maybe not, but certainly wouldn't surprise me.

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

#225

Post by malka »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #89
jzl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you apply to work at Facebook do they look at non-public content in your Facebook account? Let's assume you're not even keeping your Facebook profile a secret.

No. This would be a violation of our data privacy policies and would result in immediate termination of all employees involved.

Sorry, but i cannot see any good reason to trust the word of anyone from Facebook. This company has shown that it is routinely deceptive and lying. Why woud this be an exception ?

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

#226

Post by kpcyrd »

annadane wrote: post #168
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.

twitter also aggressively collects your phonenumber.

Telegram is so aggressively anti privacy that I tried around 5 numbers I own and only 2 of them worked.

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

#227

Post by StudentStuff »

sokoloff wrote: post #188
_rs wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share some places you use to buy numbers like that? Do you just set them up to forward, or do you have more control than that? I've always been interested in this, but apart from Google Voice, I haven't found a good way to get started.

Twilio is the easiest by far, IMO.

Twilio is also one of the most expensive providers, and if you don't need E911 you can easily get numbers for less than half that price.

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

#228

Post by StudentStuff »

davegardner wrote: post #160
StudentStuff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was fairly US-centric, as we don't have GDPR. In the EU that'd be much more useful, as the cost of phone numbers in Europe and calling rates vary wildly, and can be quite exorbitant in some countries.

Facebook still operates as a business in the EU and can therefore be fined there. As a similar example, Google was fined €50 million earlier this year as a result of a GDPR violation.

Can Facebook be fined by the EU for actions outside the EU that only affect users outside the EU? Sure, but it would likely create political waves and I'd doubt it'd happen. Global enforcement of GDPR isn't realistic, as the EU doesn't have worldwide jurisdiction.

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

#229

Post by StudentStuff »

disiplus wrote: post #137
sokoloff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I pay $1/mo for phone numbers, which is quite close to what I pay for most of my domains.

phone numbers cost close to nothing to operators, but running a voip infrastructure hast its costs, and a lot of those costs come from protecting it from hacking attempts. They love open pbx boxes where they can generate a significant cost, or use to spam others. also compassion with domain is not exactly fair in this case, it would make more sense to compare it to ip address.

Fail2ban, not using IP based auth, and mandatory TLS/SRTP will generally cover your bases (ofc, Fail2ban should be banning any IPs attempting TCP/UDP registration or calling without SRTP).

Not really rocket science, but the VOIP industry is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to security practices related to their core offering. Its a terrible state of affairs!

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

#230

Post by poppy_h »

In 2013 (or 2014?) facebook had my cleaning lady's husband in my friend suggestions. I had never met the guy IRL, no friends in common, and had only spoken to him over text (from what I remember there was something about her not speaking English well so I'd coordinate with him instead). I remember being surprised at the time, but thinking, ok, so they are using phone numbers to link people. All that to say, doesn't sound like a new thing to me.
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