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Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

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Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#41

Post by throwanem »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #31
throwanem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you see that helping.

The main issue, which you and I both see, is the sheer asymmetry of the whole thing. We are in this weird situation where the individual, the typical cognitive miser who even on his/her best day cannot possibly take all the preventive actions, is up against tireless machines with perfect memory and ability to generate extraordinary pattern recognition working all day to mine just that little bit more information to t…

I would like to have more constructive suggestions to offer, too. It's not a simple problem, though, and it will not be quickly solved. Threatening Facebook employees (doxing people is a threat) does not seem likely to make anything better.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#42

Post by ilitirit »

dunkelheit wrote: post #15

The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a phonebook is a privacy disaster.

I absolutely detest Facebook for:

1. Sharing my mobile number via the Facebook app without my explicit consent or knowledge

2. Using my Whatsapp contact list to recommend people I might know

And now, I've recently started getting all sorts of arbitrary notifications even though I've stated several times I don't want to be notified of anything.

The only reason I still have a facebook account is so that I don't have to share stuff like my email address and phone number with people. But at this point it doesn't seem worth it any more.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#43

Post by thr0waway1239 »

mrweasel wrote: post #37
nroets wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend that we all add the office number of a health care professional we don't need to our phone book. It will muddy the water just a little bit.

It would be better if Facebook didn't hoover up data not explicitly entered into their app or website. In fact I think that should be the basis of privacy laws everywhere: You can only use data that the user personally entered into your application or website. Data should only be available across your different "properties" it they are branded as being part of a single platform. It would be much more in tune with the…

Your suggestion might actually lead to something very interesting.

Once a day when someone logs into FB, they should be presented with a word problem asking if the data they have thus far submitted to Facebook can be used to mine such-and-such fact about them.

If they cannot answer correctly, FB should not do said type of mining. As their understanding of the potential for mining info increases, FB is also allowed to add that type of mining.

This would be a win-win. People would actually understand what is going on, and FB itself has something to fall back on when the day comes when people turn this into an inquest (more a question of when than if in my view).

And I wish all the big tech companies would do something like that.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#45

Post by mrweasel »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #43
mrweasel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better if Facebook didn't hoover up data not explicitly entered into their app or website. In fact I think that should be the basis of privacy laws everywhere: You can only use data that the user personally entered into your application or website. Data should only be available across your different "properties" it they are branded as being part of a single platform. It would be much more in tune with the…

Your suggestion might actually lead to something very interesting. Once a day when someone logs into FB, they should be presented with a word problem asking if the data they have thus far submitted to Facebook can be used to mine such-and-such fact about them. If they cannot answer correctly, FB should not do said type of mining. As their understanding of the potential for mining info increases, FB is also allowed to…

>People would actually understand what is going on

I don't think that's in the interest of companies like Facebook or Google. If people understood how their data can be used, many would close their accounts immediately. Data mining companies, and their customers are best served by keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. Revealing how much they actually know about us would cause trouble, if nothing else then simply because it's creepy as hell to many of us.

The funny thing is that while I think all this data mining is creepy, I also believe it's useless in most cases. The only thing I've seen work well over time is Amazons recommendation of books.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#46

Post by wtbob »

laktak wrote: post #39
wtbob wrote: post #33

Note that everyone's favourite privacy-respecting app (mine too!), Signal, also does contacts-sharing, although it doesn't do friends discovery (so the server knows one's contacts, but one's contacts don't). If Open Whisper Systems wanted to be evil, though, they could do this form of analysis. Back in March I laid out how they could use a private set intersection protocol to enable any pair of users to privately sha…

> I think it's something they care about so did you get a reply?

> so did you get a reply?

No, I've not. If I wanted to brush up on my Java, I'd take a look at submitting a PR. But Java is the opposite of fun.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#47

Post by thr0waway1239 »

mrweasel wrote: post #45
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion might actually lead to something very interesting. Once a day when someone logs into FB, they should be presented with a word problem asking if the data they have thus far submitted to Facebook can be used to mine such-and-such fact about them. If they cannot answer correctly, FB should not do said type of mining. As their understanding of the potential for mining info increases, FB is also allowed to…

>People would actually understand what is going on I don't think that's in the interest of companies like Facebook or Google. If people understood how their data can be used, many would close their accounts immediately. Data mining companies, and their customers are best served by keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. Revealing how much they actually know about us would cause trouble, if nothing else th…

Its also not in my interest to reduce my net worth by paying taxes. But it happens promptly each year. Maybe its time we demanded this from the companies.

Also, I would argue it is indirectly in the interest of said companies and their employees if they prefer that their legacy is to avoid being referred to in the same bracket as the Enrons and the Arthur Andersens of the world.

The trouble is, they are also too big to fail now. The thing that petrifies me more than a thriving Facebook is a Facebook on the brink of collapse and which has nothing to lose.

Re: Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other

#50

Post by drdeca »

Fuxy wrote: post #21
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9

TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommendi…

So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so complacent with companies doing these kinds of things. If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they would change their behaviour really quic…

Facebook comes preinstalled on some phones unfortunately.
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