51–60 of 177 posts
Heads up: T-mobile will allow you to take over an account if you can guess one of the most recent phone numbers that the target account has called.
That sounds very secure indeed. Nobody would ever guess that I'd recently called my folks! /s
Heads up: when Facebook asks you to give them your phone number to "prevent you getting locked out of your account", they really just want it so they can identify your other profiles in datasets they've bought/own (e.g. WhatsApp). If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it.
> If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it. I have a feeling it's worse than that. (I haven't rigorously perused the ToS, if I'm wrong please lmk.) Let's say your friend John has an iPhone and saves your name and # in their contacts. One day John installs the Facebook app & opens it. John is not technical and when the app requests permissions he taps 'Allow'. A…
Point is, Facebook probably already have it, the Enemy probably can easily get it.
Facebook is of course evil, I don't want to diminish their scraping and also security mishaps.
If I never associated a phone number with my account am I safe, or does it also include phone numbers from contacts lists people let Facebook copy?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brings to mind a question, I've got a throwaway google voice number for precisely this reason, some services will let me use it, others (even Google-tried using a GVoice number as a recovery phone number for a gmail account for my grandmother, nothing doing) wont, few just throw back a generic error, others will say they don't allow virtual DIDs. Someone's going to say that's to cut down on fraud/increase security, r…
Real security is picking a unique password and not forgetting it. Letting someone handle your security by giving them your phone number in case you can't handle it was never a good idea. Get a password safe, and don't forget your complex passwords.
Yes, allowing someone to reset their password through a second factor is bad; but that's not 2FA, that's two independent 1FAs.
Facebook: "This dataset is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers." Not that "old." Some of those "update" dates are just a few days ago.
How many people change their phone numbers more than once a decade? How many people change their facebook accounts ever? The age of this data may be "old" by whatever definition Facebook is using, but it is still of great interest to identity thieves and ne'er-do-wells.
Heads up: when Facebook asks you to give them your phone number to "prevent you getting locked out of your account", they really just want it so they can identify your other profiles in datasets they've bought/own (e.g. WhatsApp). If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it.
> you should consider your real identity linked to it What is the point of these products if not linked to my real identity? That’s the whole idea of them. I use Facebook and WhatsApp to talk to people who know me. That’s why they want to talk to me. If they didn’t know my identity they would want to talk to me.
Edit: Unfortunately it probably is their business. A poor choice of words.
Heads up: when Facebook asks you to give them your phone number to "prevent you getting locked out of your account", they really just want it so they can identify your other profiles in datasets they've bought/own (e.g. WhatsApp). If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it.
> you should consider your real identity linked to it What is the point of these products if not linked to my real identity? That’s the whole idea of them. I use Facebook and WhatsApp to talk to people who know me. That’s why they want to talk to me. If they didn’t know my identity they would want to talk to me.
Off the top example: If four of your friends are buying gifts for your baby shower, this is a signal that your other friends have the intent to buy baby gifts and could be marketed to.
Wow, a phone book. Do HN readers know you can buy lists of millions of people's names and phone numbers from companies whose sole purpose is collecting them, like infogroup?
A major difference here is the ability - at scale - to associate people with their facebook accounts. There are people who do not want to be associated with by their facebook account, and reasonably so. Not sure why you don't think that wouldn't be a big deal.
Then rememberings this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/03/faceb...
Makes you wonder.