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Perhaps the Republican Party should declare itself a religion and Trump their profit. Then anyone knocking it will be banned from FB for religious intolerance.
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Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to
wiretap Messenger - sources
wiretap Messenger - sources
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc (FB.O) to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance.
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Facebook-Owned Security App Caught Snooping on iPhones
Facebook is facing another embarrassment for once again violating user privacy, this time from one of its apps being sold on the Apple App Store.
Apple officials confronted Facebook last week for violating the company’s regulations about apps collecting user data. The app owned by Facebook, Onavo Protect, was acquired when they bought the Israeli security app developer Onavo in 2013. It provides a VPN (virtual private network), a technology that is supposed to provide privacy protection while browsing and downloading apps. Instead of providing privacy, the app was collecting lists of apps that users had installed on their phone, learning how they were being used, and sending the information to Facebook.
An Apple spokesman said in an email to CNBC, "We work hard to protect user privacy and data security throughout the Apple ecosystem. With the latest update to our guidelines, we made it explicitly clear that apps should not collect information about which other apps are installed on a user's device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing and must make it clear what user data will be collected and how it will be used."
Facebook has been offering the app without clearly disclosing that it is the owner. Facebook had earlier told Congress that it does not use Onavo data for Facebook product uses or to collect information about individuals. But it admitted that it uses Onavo to collect a wide range of information about the apps and how they are used in order to improve its own products.
Facebook responded to the ban: "We've always been clear when people download Onavo about the information that is collected and how it is used. As a developer on Apple's platform, we follow the rules they've put in place."
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Another reason to delete facebook....
Facebook Confirms Giving Advertisers Access to
User Phone Numbers
Facebook confirmed a Wednesday report claiming it gave advertisers access to user phone numbers and contact lists. “We use the information people provide to offer a better, more personalized experience on Facebook, including ads,” a Facebook spokeswoman told AFP. “We are clear about how we use the information we collect, including the contact information that people upload or add to their own accounts.” In a Gizmodo report published Wednesday, two studies found that the social network was giving advertisers access to data sources that users did not explicitly permit could be used. For example, the studies found user phone numbers given to the social network to enable two-factor authentication were being targeted in advertisements. The studies also found that user contact lists that were uploaded to the site could be “mined for personal information,” meaning that data from friends of the user could also be available to advertisers.User Phone Numbers
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Facebook’s confusion about its Portal camera is concerning
If execs aren't sure about how the company could use data
from the device, why should we trust it?
If execs aren't sure about how the company could use data
from the device, why should we trust it?
Facebook couldn't have picked a worse time to introduce Portal, a camera-equipped smart display designed to make video chatting in your home easier. And, if the rumors are true, the company is reportedly also preparing to launch a video chat camera for your TV, based on the same system as Portal. Not only does news of this hardware come at a time when when Facebook is under major scrutiny after suffering a massive data breach in September, which exposed private information of 29 million users, including usernames, birth date, gender, location, religion and the devices used to browse the site. But the most concerning part about Portal, is that Facebook's own executives don't seem to have a basic understanding of what types of data the company will be collecting or what it will be using it for.
As Recode reports, during the announcement of Portal, Facebook execs said no data collected through the hardware, such as call logs or third-party app usage, would be used to serve users targeted ads on Facebook. But, over a week later, Facebook (which has not replied to our request for comment) told the publication that this information was actually wrong.
As Recode reports, during the announcement of Portal, Facebook execs said no data collected through the hardware, such as call logs or third-party app usage, would be used to serve users targeted ads on Facebook. But, over a week later, Facebook (which has not replied to our request for comment) told the publication that this information was actually wrong.
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Facebook, Google Hit With Lawsuits for
‘Secret’ Location Tracking
‘Secret’ Location Tracking
Tech giants filed location histories, even when users opted out of the feature, lawsuits claim
Facebook and Google have both been hit with lawsuits claiming that the Silicon Valley giants secretly track their users’ locations against their will and use the information to pad its advertising business.
The class action complaint against Facebook, which was filed by Brett Heeger last Friday in San Francisco federal court, said the social network tracks its users even after they’ve opted out of its “Location History” feature.
“Facebook secretly tracks, logs, and stores location data for all of its users–including those who have sought to limit the information about their locations that Facebook may store in its servers by choosing to turn Location History off,” the suit said. “Because Facebook misleads users and engages in this deceptive practice, collecting and storing private location data against users’ expressed choice, Plaintiff brings this class action on behalf of himself and similarly situated Facebook users.”
Heeger said users aren’t aware of Facebook’s “secret tracking” unless they download their data from the company and search “multiple levels of obscure folders.” He claimed he set up his privacy settings to stop Facebook from tracking his location, but the company continued to do so. Facebook used “estimated locations,” using his IP address and WiFi data, to continue tracking his location, Heeger claimed. The action violated federal and state wiretapping laws, according to the suit.
Facebook benefited from tracking Heeger, the suit claimed, because the company makes money off location-based advertisements. The complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages.
Facebook, in a statement to TheWrap, pushed back against the lawsuit, saying its location tracking policy has always been transparent.
“Our Data Policy and related disclosures explain our practices relating to location data and provide information about the privacy settings we make available,” a Facebook spokesperson told TheWrap. “This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
The lawsuit follows a similar complaint against Google, which was filed on Oct. 12. in San Francisco federal court. The suit claims that Google “intentionally provided inaccurate instructions” for its users to turn off its own “Location History” feature.
“Google explicitly represented that its users could prevent Google from tracking their location data by disabling a feature called ‘Location History’ on their devices. Google stated: ‘With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.’ This statement is false,” the lawsuit claimed. “Turning off the ‘Location History’ setting merely stops Google from adding new locations to the ‘timeline’ accessible by users. In secret, Google was still tracking, storing, and monetizing all the same information.”
Instead, users have to navigate a labyrinth to reach the correct “Web & Activity” page to turn off location tracking — a page “Google’s instructions intentionally omit all references to,” according to the class action complaint. The suit points to an Aug. 13 report from the Associated Press that brought Google’s tracking policies into question.
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Facebook accused of striking 'secret deals over user data'
Emails written by Facebook's chief and his deputies show the firm struck secret deals to give some developers special access to user data while refusing others, according to MPs.
A cache of internal documents has been published online by a parliamentary committee.
It said the files also showed Facebook had deliberately made it "as hard as possible" for users to be aware of privacy changes to its Android app.
Facebook had objected to their release.
It said that the documents had been presented in a "very misleading manner" and required additional context.
The emails were obtained from the chief of Six4Three - a software firm that is suing the tech giant - and were disclosed by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee as part of its inquiry into fake news.
About 250 pages have been published, some of which are marked "highly confidential".
Damian Collins MP, the chair of the committee, highlighted several "key issues" in an introductory note.
He wrote that:
- Facebook allowed some companies to maintain "full access" to users' friends data even after announcing changes to its platform in 2014/2015 to limit what developers' could see. "It is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted," Mr Collins wrote
- Facebook had been aware that an update to its Android app that let it collect records of users' calls and texts would be controversial. "To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard as possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features," Mr Collins wrote
- Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat
- there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail
- there had been much discussion of the financial value of providing access to friends' data
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Gee, the Australian Govt sounds a lot like facebook right now.
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Check out these idiots....
As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.
The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices. They also underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.
The exchange was intended to benefit everyone. Pushing for explosive growth, Facebook got more users, lifting its advertising revenue. Partner companies acquired features to make their products more attractive. Facebook users connected with friends across different devices and websites. But Facebook also assumed extraordinary power over the personal information of its 2.2 billion users — control it has wielded with little transparency or outside oversight.
Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.
improperly used Facebook data to build tools that aided President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook.
But the documents, as well as interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its corporate partners, reveal that Facebook allowed certain companies access to data despite those protections. They also raise questions about whether Facebook ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that barred the social network from sharing user data without explicit permission.
In all, the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year.
In an interview, Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said none of the partnerships violated users’ privacy or the F.T.C. agreement. Contracts required the companies to abide by Facebook policies, he added.
Still, Facebook executives have acknowledged missteps over the past year. “We know we’ve got work to do to regain people’s trust,” Mr. Satterfield said. “Protecting people’s information requires stronger teams, better technology and clearer policies, and that’s where we’ve been focused for most of 2018.” He said that the partnerships were “one area of focus” and that Facebook was in the process of winding many of them down.
Facebook has found no evidence of abuse by its partners, a spokeswoman said. Some of the largest partners, including Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, said they had used the data appropriately, but declined to discuss the sharing deals in detail. Facebook did say that it had mismanaged some of its partnerships, allowing certain companies’ access to continue long after they had shut down the features that required the data.
The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices. They also underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.
The exchange was intended to benefit everyone. Pushing for explosive growth, Facebook got more users, lifting its advertising revenue. Partner companies acquired features to make their products more attractive. Facebook users connected with friends across different devices and websites. But Facebook also assumed extraordinary power over the personal information of its 2.2 billion users — control it has wielded with little transparency or outside oversight.
Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.
improperly used Facebook data to build tools that aided President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook.
But the documents, as well as interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its corporate partners, reveal that Facebook allowed certain companies access to data despite those protections. They also raise questions about whether Facebook ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that barred the social network from sharing user data without explicit permission.
In all, the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year.
In an interview, Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said none of the partnerships violated users’ privacy or the F.T.C. agreement. Contracts required the companies to abide by Facebook policies, he added.
Still, Facebook executives have acknowledged missteps over the past year. “We know we’ve got work to do to regain people’s trust,” Mr. Satterfield said. “Protecting people’s information requires stronger teams, better technology and clearer policies, and that’s where we’ve been focused for most of 2018.” He said that the partnerships were “one area of focus” and that Facebook was in the process of winding many of them down.
Facebook has found no evidence of abuse by its partners, a spokeswoman said. Some of the largest partners, including Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, said they had used the data appropriately, but declined to discuss the sharing deals in detail. Facebook did say that it had mismanaged some of its partnerships, allowing certain companies’ access to continue long after they had shut down the features that required the data.
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For the life of me, I can't understand why people use facebook, especially now when there are so many ways to contact people privately. Why do it all in public?
It appears as though everyone now, needs constant affirmation, to support their fragile personalities.
It appears as though everyone now, needs constant affirmation, to support their fragile personalities.
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I am well aware of the privacy issues, but FB to me has a lot of value. Perhaps because I am now settled in Australia but came from Ireland originally. FB keeps me in touch with the happenings in my home town, but also lets me know what my friends of earlier years are up to. These are past friends that I no longer have or want to have a one-to-one relationship with, but would still like to know how they are doing. For me it's a way to keep in touch with your roots in a semi-anonymous way.
I use messenger without Facebook it’s a very easy way to get in touch with friends
wayneL
VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO!
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It's great for my business..
...and trolling SJWs
...and trolling SJWs
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I think if it used correctly it would be great, the problem is, it isn't.
Rather than a medium for doing or advertising business, using it to message people, keep in contact with distant relatives, from what I've heard from friends it ends up being a medium for mindless dribble from all and sundry.
People who use the platform, also appear to think they are in a cone of silence or a vacuum where no laws can reach them, where they are free to make outlandish statements with no regard for recourse.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/how...ech-in-the-lucky-country-20181219-p50n4p.html
Obviously the papers are becoming nervous, as most should be, I think they are lucky Abbott hasn't had a piece of them.lol
Rather than a medium for doing or advertising business, using it to message people, keep in contact with distant relatives, from what I've heard from friends it ends up being a medium for mindless dribble from all and sundry.
People who use the platform, also appear to think they are in a cone of silence or a vacuum where no laws can reach them, where they are free to make outlandish statements with no regard for recourse.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/how...ech-in-the-lucky-country-20181219-p50n4p.html
Obviously the papers are becoming nervous, as most should be, I think they are lucky Abbott hasn't had a piece of them.lol
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WOW
Total invasion of privacy....
Facebook’s stock price fell steadily Wednesday amid a flurry of bad news for the social media giant. According to a new report from The New York Times, Facebook allegedly was giving tech giants like Spotify and Netflix access to private Facebook Messenger messages.
Documents obtained by the Times showed that "Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages."
The report also alleges that Facebook allowed Amazon to get usernames and contact information and Yahoo to view friends' posts. Facebook put out a statement defending the practice, saying none of the information it gave to its partners was given without people’s permission.
“To put it simply, this work was about helping people do two things. First, people could access their Facebook accounts or specific Facebook features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry and Yahoo,” Facebook said. “Second, people could have more social experiences—like seeing recommendations from their Facebook friends—on other popular apps and websites, like Netflix, The New York Times, Pandora and Spotify.”
Facebook said most of the practices and features listed in the report are now gone.
Total invasion of privacy....
FB STOCK PRICE FALLS AFTER FACEBOOK REPORTEDLY SHARED YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES WITH NETFLIX, SPOTIFY
Facebook’s stock price fell steadily Wednesday amid a flurry of bad news for the social media giant. According to a new report from The New York Times, Facebook allegedly was giving tech giants like Spotify and Netflix access to private Facebook Messenger messages.
Documents obtained by the Times showed that "Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages."
The report also alleges that Facebook allowed Amazon to get usernames and contact information and Yahoo to view friends' posts. Facebook put out a statement defending the practice, saying none of the information it gave to its partners was given without people’s permission.
“To put it simply, this work was about helping people do two things. First, people could access their Facebook accounts or specific Facebook features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry and Yahoo,” Facebook said. “Second, people could have more social experiences—like seeing recommendations from their Facebook friends—on other popular apps and websites, like Netflix, The New York Times, Pandora and Spotify.”
Facebook said most of the practices and features listed in the report are now gone.
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EU data watchdog raises concerns over Facebook integration
Facebook’s plan to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger could raise significant data protection concerns, according to the Irish commission that regulates the social network in the EU.
The Data Protection Commission has asked for an urgent briefing with Facebook Ireland so it can assess the proposals, it said in a statement. “The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies.
“Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal. It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR.”
Facebook’s only previous attempt to merge WhatsApp with its wider business was shot down in the European Union due to data protection concerns. In March 2018, the UK information commissioner (ICO) ruled it would be illegal for the company to carry out a plan, paused in 2016, to share personal data between the two services in order to improve targeted advertising on Facebook.
The ICO’s investigation found “WhatsApp has not identified a lawful basis of processing for any such sharing of personal data” and that “if they had shared the data, they would have been in contravention of the first and second data protection principles of the Data Protection Act”.
Following that ruling, WhatsApp entered a voluntary commitment that, if it did decide to share data, it would only do so in accordance with the requirements of GDPR, the pan-European data regulation, and working with the Irish data protection commissioner.
Under GDPR, a company may designate one national regulator as its “lead supervisory authority”, to prevent it having to deal with 28 separate regulators; for Facebook, Ireland’s DPC takes that role.
Facebook has not given a timescale on its plans to merge the three networks, but has confirmed it is “considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks”. The plans, first reported by the New York Times, would see the three apps continuing to operate independently, but with a merged back-end that would allow messages to be sent between users of different services.
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If facebook starts cross sharing details with Whats app, I will be dumping Whats app.
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Setup any computer with an intentionally slow internet connection so you can see what's going on.
Have a look and most likely even your online banking is "waiting on Facebook" as the reason you're looking at a blank screen as you wait for the site to load via your slow connection.
However entrenched you think it is, it has gone way beyond that.
Have a look and most likely even your online banking is "waiting on Facebook" as the reason you're looking at a blank screen as you wait for the site to load via your slow connection.
However entrenched you think it is, it has gone way beyond that.
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