50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach • Hacker News Board

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#41

Post by dreta » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #30

anonymouz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically perhaps correct, but for the victims it seems rather irrelevant to me. In a data breach, someone would have used a technical vulnerability or some other (e.g. social engineering) vulnerability of Facebook to get illegitimate access to the data. In this case Facebook simply gave them access to the data and took their word that they won't misuse it. Now maybe the latter situation might not be a data breach…

Facebook isn't the victim here, it's voters who may have been specifically targeted at a "physchographic" level and had their opinions unduly influenced. Further, every person who's a member of a democracy that was targeted by Cambridge Anayltica and is now being run by corrupted politicians (or in the case of Brexit by misinformed voters) is a victim.

Nobody’s saying FB’s the victim. It’s their fault, if anything. People are „unduly” influenced all the time, and by everybody. Saying CA somehow worse than anybody else just because they worked for people you don’t like is disingenuous. It’s FB that should be held accountable here; they gave away people’s personal data to a third party.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#42

Post by urlwolf » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

OK, this feels like it will bring about the end. Of something. Facebook? Massive use of data for political campaigns? Anything?

If we keep consuming news like this, and do nothing, it's going to scalate massively. Same way as when Snowden told people they were spyed on and they collectively shrugged and continued with their lives as if nothing had happened.

We, people in tech, have a massive moral burden to educate 'normals' on the meaning of news like this!

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#43

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #24

734786710934 wrote: post #2

This wasn't a data breach, it was a misuse of data by a third party.

Every single definition I find classifies this as a data breach. > A data breach is a security incident in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so.

[deleted]

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#44

Post by olivermarks » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

My problem with this 'outing' of CA is that Facebook explicitly commercially exists to harvest user data for Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity etc etc so they can profile us. A million dollars is chump change in the crazy US election game. This all seems overly selective - it's ok for some people to profile but not for others. I'm not in favor of any of it to be clear but there is a definite political bias going on here. Let's not forget FB itself has a formal political unit that exists to push propaganda in foreign elections, 'stifling opposition and stoking extremism'

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-21/inside-th...

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#45

Post by yeldarb » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

goldenkey wrote: post #6

734786710934 wrote: post #2

This wasn't a data breach, it was a misuse of data by a third party.

Right. They basically just made an app on FB then had users accept the permissions. The horribly beautiful thing about FB permissions is that almost every single app will request EVERYTHING, and if you deny even a single permission that the app doesn't even seem to need, then the app will break or won't let you use it. So every user is indoctrinated into just clicking accept regardless of the supposed "granular" perm…

As of 4 years ago every app needs to be whitelisted by Facebook for every permission they want to request: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/review/w...

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#46

Post by 616c » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

tobilg wrote: post #31

patja wrote: post #28

I was curious how the figure leaped from the 270k cited in the Facebook press release to this 50M figure. It sounds like they never had full access to the Facebook profiles beyond the 270k who installed the app, but just harvested the friend lists of those 270k. This doesn't give the app developer full access to the friends' profile data, but I guess once you have the network of friend connections you can use other p…

You could get access to the full friends‘ user profile data in Graph API earlier than v2.0. If you had 500 friends, and granted friends_* OAuth permissions to an app, the app had access to 501 user profiles.

You know where you read this?

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#47

Post by dreta » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

Why bother protecting any data, if you can put a footnote in your ToS.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#48

Post by yeldarb » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #13

ceejayoz wrote: post #7

I wonder how many of the "see what you'll look like when you're 80" and "find out how you'll die" quiz apps are doing this behind the scenes.

All of them. That's the only reason the apps exist.

That’s a ridiculous statement.

I still run several games on Facebook platform. It’s much easier to acquire and retain users than on mobile and it’s much more profitable because there seems to be a higher propensity for users to pay.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#49

Post by nemothekid » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

734786710934 wrote: post #2

This wasn't a data breach, it was a misuse of data by a third party.

It’s a data breach in the same way “social engineering” can still be considered hacking

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#50

Post by yeldarb » Sat, Mar 17, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #11

> Facebook denies that the harvesting of tens of millions of profiles by GSR and Cambridge Analytica was a data breach. It said in a statement that Kogan “gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels” but “did not subsequently abide by our rules” because he passed the information on to third parties. This is exactly how Facebook was designed. You get a stupid quiz or photo fra…

As of ~4 years ago when graph api 2.0 was released that’s not true.

The /friends endpoint only returns friends of the user who have also already installed your application.