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Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

mobile.nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#71

Post by downandout »

atwebb wrote: post #62
downandout wrote: post #27

Why is it surprising or even remotely controversial that an app that people explicitly authorized to access their messages (informed consent) then proceeded to access their messages? The app didn't have access to friends' messages, so I don't see what the issue is here, other than yet another clickbait headline.

For people I've discussed with, the surprising part is that they can do anything with it. You and I know that (currently) if someone has the data, they'll scrape/manipulate it at will. I believe, a reasonable person, would expect the limits of the access grant to end with the purpose of the app (a quiz) and not extend any further. Most contracts/agreements have limits and this one is implicit in the working of the ap…

>Yes the user agreed to grant some permissions so a quiz could be taken.

You had to authorize the messages permission separately from all other permissions. If you didn't want your messages accessed, you simply declined that permission. This one's on the user, not on anybody else.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#72

Post by downandout »

Alex3917 wrote: post #68
downandout wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? Because that means the person who received your message took it, and exposed it to others that you didn't authorize. I can tell you that at least in the US, legally, your position doesn't hold water. We're getting a little ridiculous here. There are valid complaints against Facebook in all of this - this just doesn't happen to be one of them.

> So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? The difference is that email forwarding is part of the RFCs and IETF standards that define email, e.g.: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5322.txt https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5598 http://arc-spec.org/

What do RFC's have to do with his comment that he has an expectation of privacy when he sends people messages? Regardless, at least under US law, he's way off base.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#73

Post by taneq »

downandout wrote: post #57
tzakrajs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By granting access to your messages, they are also implicitly gaining access to your friend's messages with you. All people should have an expectation of privacy that when they send a private message to someone, that someone does not have the right to disclose the conversation.

So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? Because that means the person who received your message took it, and exposed it to others that you didn't authorize. I can tell you that at least in the US, legally, your position doesn't hold water. We're getting a little ridiculous here. There are valid complaints against Facebook in all of this - this just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Email as a protocol explicitly does not come with any guarantees (of privacy, or sender's identity, or receiver's identity, or anything else as far as I can tell).

Facebook makes a lot of noise about privacy (using their own definition, naturally, being 'preventing anyone outside Facebook from seeing your data') so it's reasonable for a nontechnical user to not expect that an acquaintance installing a "what's your pirate name arrr" app should lead to their 'share with friends only' info being acquired and sold by a data broker.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#74

Post by jpambrun »

downandout wrote: post #57
tzakrajs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By granting access to your messages, they are also implicitly gaining access to your friend's messages with you. All people should have an expectation of privacy that when they send a private message to someone, that someone does not have the right to disclose the conversation.

So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? Because that means the person who received your message took it, and exposed it to others that you didn't authorize. I can tell you that at least in the US, legally, your position doesn't hold water. We're getting a little ridiculous here. There are valid complaints against Facebook in all of this - this just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Your moral compass need to be checked.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#75

Post by ImSkeptical »

ex3ndr wrote: post #70
spike021 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand it's actually a fairly reasonable API. Imagine using third-party AIM clients a decade or more ago. Same kind of thing.

They never provided ability to send messages. This is a useless thing for AIM clients.

Do you imagine an instant message client that only sends messages without receiving them?

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#76

Post by BinaryIdiot »

ProAm wrote: post #11

What's scary is that Cambridge Analytica is probably only one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of companies that had access to this type of data from Facebook. This is just the one we know about.

Agreed. I was a DoD contractor when much of the social graph stuff came out. We were all looking at it wondering why they let you access _so much data_. Our managers told us they were working on securing some contractors that would ultimately use Facebook's social graph but nothing ever came of it.

Considering we were a tiny defense contractor who didn't get a ton of contracts, I have to assume this happened in some way or form.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#77

Post by paxys »

vkou wrote: post #67
paxys wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the one who put it in their phone/inbox in the first place. You can argue about copyright laws or NDAs, but otherwise "private conversation" means nothing.

One-party recordings are illegal in many states. Just because I unicast some information something does not always give you the right to retain a record of it.

Recording laws are for phone calls. How would you even apply them to emails or texts?

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#78

Post by JetSpiegel »

paxys wrote: post #61
monochromatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it even possible for an app to request your Facebook messages though?

There are a lot of valid uses. Why would it be better for your data to be locked up and unexportable?

False equivalence. Exportable doesn't mean acessible to the world.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#79

Post by downandout »

jpambrun wrote: post #74
downandout wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? Because that means the person who received your message took it, and exposed it to others that you didn't authorize. I can tell you that at least in the US, legally, your position doesn't hold water. We're getting a little ridiculous here. There are valid complaints against Facebook in all of this - this just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Your moral compass need to be checked.

And when I’m done doing that, I should probably check my sanity, because I have to be imagining this thread. It’s absurd that someone thinks that they have an expectation of privacy when they voluntarily choose to send a message to someone else. I know you can’t satisfy everyone all the people all the time, but this idea is just bonkers.

Re: Facebook Data Collected by Quiz App Included Private Messages

#80

Post by Alex3917 »

downandout wrote: post #72
Alex3917 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you would also like to impose a ban on email forwarding then right? The difference is that email forwarding is part of the RFCs and IETF standards that define email, e.g.: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5322.txt https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5598 http://arc-spec.org/

What do RFC's have to do with his comment that he has an expectation of privacy when he sends people messages? Regardless, at least under US law, he's way off base.

If two or more parties are communicating via a standardized protocol, then using that standard constitutes an implied agreement between the parties communicating.

Whereas with Facebook, while one or more parties might be bound by some agreement with the company, that doesn't create any clear agreement between users.

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