Facebook - The beginning of the end...

[DB008]

I guess the general public is starting to wake up to how Facebook tracks you and saves a lot more of your personal data than first thought. It has come to light that Facebook has been logging all of your phone calls + sms (history), your contacts list and how Facebook has written secret scripts to track you on the internet.

The biggest draw card for Facebook is that it has made it convenient for people to connect and keep in touch with each other. However, it looks like the tide is starting to turn. Facebook have stepped over the line and Mark Zuckerberg's reply last week was, "well, you said we could, it's in the T & C's ".

It will be interesting to see what happens to Facebook in the future....


This is a brilliant article - a must read

INSIDE THE TWO YEARS THAT SHOOK FACEBOOK—AND THE WORLD
​

This is the story of those two years, as they played out inside and around the company. WIRED spoke with 51 current or former Facebook employees for this article, many of whom did not want their names used, for reasons anyone familiar with the story of Fearnow and Villarreal would surely understand. (One current employee asked that a WIRED reporter turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking whether it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook.)​

The stories varied, but most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege. Of a series of external threats, defensive internal calculations, and false starts that delayed Facebook’s reckoning with its impact on global affairs and its users’ minds. And—in the tale’s final chapters—of the company’s earnest attempt to redeem itself.

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/​

And now the ABC is also publishing this article....

Facebook's business model is incompatible
with human rights
​

Facebook has had a bad few weeks. The social media giant had to apologise for failing to protect the personal data of millions of users from being accessed by data mining company Cambridge Analytica. Outrage is brewing over its admission to spying on people via their Android phones. Its stock price plummeted, while millions deleted their accounts in disgust.

Facebook has also faced scrutiny over its failure to prevent the spread of "fake news" on its platforms, including via an apparent orchestrated Russian propaganda effort to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook's actions — or inactions — facilitated breaches of privacy and human rights associated with democratic governance. But it might be that its business model — and those of its social media peers generally — is simply incompatible with human rights.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/facebook-business-model-human-rights-privacy/9605346



Facebook collected call and text data
from Android phones for years
​

This comes courtesy of Twitter user and developer Dylan McKay. McKay, like many of us following the revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, downloaded his entire Facebook archive to see what data the social media giant held on him. Amongst a record of all his posts, friends, and advertising data, McKay found entire call and SMS records from his connected Android smartphone.

The data contains dates of when calls and texts were made, whom they were addressed to, whether they were incoming or outgoing, and how long calls lasted. Further investigation by Ars Technica revealed other users who found their call and text metadata within their Facebook data archives, as well as within the reporter’s own archives.

So far, Digital Trends has not discovered call and text data within a Facebook archive, but it is important to note that the only Facebook archive we have accessed so far is based in the U.K., so geographical location may play a part in the data collection. McKay himself is based in New Zealand, and has set up a Google poll to gather evidence on which users have been affected.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/facebook-call-data-android-phones/

+

Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/information...t-message-data-for-years-from-android-phones/​

 

[DB008]

I should have also included the Cambridge Analytica data breach....


Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British political consulting firm which combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process.[5][6] It was started in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group.[7] The company is partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes.[7][8] The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C.[9].

CEO Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 US political races in 2014.[10] In 2015, it performed data analysis services for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.[8] In 2016, CA worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign[11] as well as the Leave.EU-campaign for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries.[12][13][14] Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.[15][16]

In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices. The New York Times and The Observer reported on the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data breach, in which the company used for political purposes personal information acquired about Facebook users, by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. Shortly afterwards, Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery sting operations, and honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign". In response to the media reports, the Information Commissioner of the UK pursued a warrant to search the company's servers.[17][18] Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform, saying that it had been deceived.[19][20] On March 23, 2018, the British High Court granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices.[21]

The data about the 50 million Facebook users were acquired from 270,000 Facebook users who shared the data with the app "thisisyourdigitallife". By giving this third-party app permission to acquire their data, back in 2015, this also gave the app information about the friend network of those people, which resulted in information about 50 million users. The app developer breached Facebook's terms of service by giving the data to Cambridge Analytica.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica​

Your own devices will give the next Cambridge Analytica far more power to influence your vote

​

As the scale and scope of the Facebook personal data scandal grows, there are questions galore: why Facebook took so long to act, whether the company should be held liable, and just how much trouble the executives at Cambridge Analytica are in, across multiple jurisdictions. The FTC has opened an official investigation into Facebook; Palantir, billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel’s data company, has been implicated in the scandal; and so has Trump’s new national security advisor, John Bolton.

But what’s most important are the implications for the future.

Though it’s not clear if Cambridge Analytica’s behavioral profiling and microtargeting had any measurable effect on the 2016 US election, these technologies are advancing quickly—faster than academics can study their effects and certainly faster than policymakers can respond. The next generation of such firms will almost certainly deliver on the promise.

Research points to where the field is headed. At an event that NYC Media Lab hosted in 2015, Alexander Tuzhilin, professor of information systems at the NYU Stern School of Business, pointed out that most of the targeting applications we see today represent the second generation of these technologies. The data employed includes context awareness, spatiotemporal and mobile data, multi-criteria ratings, social-media data, conversational recommendations, and more. These are standard tools of the trade used in targeting by internet marketers, as well as by Cambridge Analytica in 2016.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...e-analytica-far-more-power-to-influence-your/​

 

[Zero Sum Game]

I hope something changes. My wife has been addicted to it for years. Im not on facebook, hard to get through to her sometimes.

 

[DB008]

I hope something changes. My wife has been addicted to it for years. Im not on facebook, hard to get through to her sometimes.

I hope so too. But, l don't think it will. Social media is here to stay.

There are few glimmers of hope in the pipeline though....

Persona - https://persona.im/

Enigma - https://enigma.co/

And, if users get paid like they do on the blogging site Steemit, in either Steemit or EOS coins/tokens, by the advertisers, it could mean people leaving Facebook and using another platform where they get paid for the content that they consume....

How Blockchain could help us take back control of our privacy​

The Cambridge Analytica breaches show the dangers of leaking personal, sensitive data online – but there’s a way to avoid this

The Cambridge Analytica scandal poses some serious questions about the integrity of democracies in the information age. From Trump to Brexit, the dirty tricks apparently offered by CA’s top executives should cause concern everywhere that elections happen. But the episode is also worrying because of its specific focus: data. We create reams of data every day – every time we open a browser window and every time we make a contactless payment. We do this without thinking. The Cambridge Analytica news demonstrates the power that this data can have when we lose control of it.

Facebook isn’t the only huge data company to have suffered a major breach in recent years. In September it was revealed that 143 million Americans and 44 million Britons had sensitive information stolen from Equifax, the credit rating firm, including home addresses and social security numbers. The kicker in this case was that many of those affected had no idea the company was holding that information in the first place – such is the staggering growth of data creation and collection, and the lack of controls enjoyed by consumers over who gets to keep it.

But there’s a major problem with the application of blockchain technology in this way: privacy. If our data is stored everywhere, how can it be private? This is being tackled by researchers at MIT through their Enigma project, which is a protocol that sits on top of existing blockchains. Enigma promises “secret contracts”, as opposed to existing “smart contracts”, with nodes on the blockchain able to compute data without ever “seeing” it. The researchers say this will allow users to maintain control over personal data, particularly through preventing its monetisation or analysis by platforms. They also claim that it could unlock a new system of lending, in which prospective borrowers can establish their trustworthiness without having to give individual lenders access to their specific personal data.

Blockchain techniques are already being adopted at local and national levels. Estonia, which has emerged as one of the most forward-thinking, digital-first economies, has gradually moved all of its citizen data onto a distributed ledger system. Illinois is testing a number of blockchain-based systems, including a birth registry. And Singapore is considering moving towards a blockchain system to allow citizens to interact seamlessly with government services. There is significant work being done to shift the focus of blockchain technology away from pure currency speculation towards real world applications – especially around privacy and storage.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...n-privacy-data-protection-cambridge-analytica​

 

[SirRumpole]

What exactly is "blockchain" ?

 

[moXJO]

People are too self absorbed for facebook to disappear. They would give up their pin number, if it meant posting one more pic of their amazing fake life.

They are also adding enough features to keep people hooked.
Social media laid waste to the rest of the net.

 

[Humid]

People go out with their friends and ignore them so they can interact with other’s on Facebook
Figure that out

 

[Porper]

People go out with their friends and ignore them so they can interact with other’s on Facebook
Figure that out

See it all the time. People in cafes meeting for a catchup, sitting in silence whilst they add more highly uninteresting pictures of themselves on Facebook...or texting which is equally ignorant. I am sure people only press the "like" button because they want more "likes" themselves. It is sad that people live life through social media...and not just the youngsters either.

 

[Smurf1976]

Facebook was a great idea that had got way out of hand.

Good points - ability to find and reconnect with people you haven’t seen since high school. Etc.

Bad points - most of the rest especially issues relating to privacy and the fake nature of a lot of it all.

 

[Wolfofwilliamst]

Advertising revenue and FB's amazing targeted adverts are now very profitable for them....a hard one to crack to really hurt the company.
I do know a few people who have left, but it wont be more than tje growth of the population that then joins up. FB needs another big scandle to in another nail.
The coffin has been built though!
Biggest danger = the next best social media platform.

 

[DB008]

Your Facebook data is creepy as hell
… and why you should really have a look at it.

​

Since 2010, Facebook allows you to download an archive file of all your interactions with the network. It’s a 5-click easy process that your grandmother can do (more details below).

Inside the .zip, lies an ‘index.html’ page that acts as a portal to your personal data. Visually, it looks like an ad-free stripped down version of Facebook that’s actually quite relaxing.

As I’m trying to reduce my exposure to social networks, I decided to take a look at this info. By extrapolating the data of a single individual (me), I might be able to better apprehend the capabilities of the beast. In the end, it all comes down to what is tracked and what can be deduced from that.

Quite simply, Facebook never deletes anything. Unfriended friends, past relationships, former employers, previous names, address book: you name it.

I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007 at 10:59am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analysed.

https://hackernoon.com/your-facebook-data-is-creepy-as-hell-319ae47117e6​

 

[qldfrog]

I also want to add that FB in a technical way is abysmal, data greedy, multiple notifications, and with messenger added, becomes a nightmare;
as I work on the other side of the chinese internet wall, I also use Wechat which is at least technically better and less bloated...but same s.it in term of addiction, privacy etc..
I am afraid until we have real issues (aka hunger) social media is here to stay, and has replaced TV as the opium of the people.

 

[wayneL]

Look up Simon Sinek on YooToob, he has some great videos on Facebook and internet addiction

 

[Joe Blow]

Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. I think people are just beginning to realise how much Facebook knows about them and how much of their personal information is being leaked and compromised.

You don't even need to use your real name to participate on a forum, and while I can't speak for all forums, I can say with absolute certainty that the very small amount of personal information that ASF has access to (i.e. registration info and IP address) has never been shared with anyone and never will. Not on my watch anyway.

 

[basilio]

Good points Joe. I'm not on Facebook but I can see it's value for keeping contact with friends and relations around the world.

I can also see the careful management of personal image and the exceptionally creative way Facebook uses peoples likes and looks to incorporate ads and paid stories. It is becoming more and more difficult to separate a "real"story (whatever that is..) from a "fake one" ie a construction intended to sell a product , a policy or a point of view. In my view it's just crazy.

By the way Joe I can appreciate your good will in saying posters information will never be shared by you. The issue however is not necessarily your ethics. Hacking into data bases, websites etc is now big business. This is a risk we all run when we give our information to you, banks, clubs whatever.

 

[Humid]

I get the impression when someone non famous breaks the law or does something really dumb journos and the media search through Facebook to use your public photos to give their story a bit of beef.

 

[wayneL]

Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. .

God I hope so.

I use FaceAche for business and CPD, but jeez it's toxic.

 

[Joe Blow]

By the way Joe I can appreciate your good will in saying posters information will never be shared by you. The issue however is not necessarily your ethics. Hacking into data bases, websites etc is now big business. This is a risk we all run when we give our information to you, banks, clubs whatever.

Agreed. The problem is that no system is free from risk of being hacked or compromised in a malicious or criminal way. Big or small, all databases can be hacked. The real threat is where it is being done by the government or large corporations and nobody is aware that it is happening and it is ongoing. You can always get a credit card re-issued, but long term, persistent leaking and compromising of personal information for the purposes of data mining, surveillance or corporate profit is far more insidious in my view. And much harder to detect or do anything about.

 

[DB008]

Good points Joe. I'm not on Facebook but I can see it's value for keeping contact with friends and relations around the world.

basillio - even though you haven't signed up to Facebook, they have probably created a ghost profile of you already. Have you ever been in a group photo which has more than likely been uploaded to Facebook? Well, you now have a ghost profile. Nothing you can do about it.

https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-profile-of-you-that-you-never-created/

Facebook admits Zuckerberg wiped his old messages—which you can’t do
​

Facebook has been quietly deleting old messages from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg out of their recipients' Facebook Messenger inboxes, the company has acknowledged. This isn't an option available to ordinary users. Users can delete their own copy of a Messenger conversation, but if they do the other party will retain his or her own copy.

"Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspicuously remain," Techcrunch's Josh Constine wrote.

Facebook argues that it has done nothing wrong.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...erg-wiped-his-old-messages-which-you-cant-do/​

 

[Gringotts Bank]

When advanced AI kicks into gear, there's no stopping it. 'They' (the owners of big data) will know everything. The manipulator's main tool is fear. If you know that, you can to some extent be free of their control tactics.

Sales of 1984 have been steadily rising.