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considering that for a long time facebook didn't have "usernames" and everyone was identified by a number this doesn't seem strange (especially as my faulty mem
by compsciphd 9y ago
considering that for a long time facebook didn't have "usernames" and everyone was identified by a number this doesn't seem strange (especially as my faulty memory might mean that they created usernames post 2005)
- crowbahr 9y agoI know they exposed identifiers in friends lists as well, long into 2013 as I recall. I remember hanging out with friends and grabbing the Inspect Source HTML from their little "Friends tile" that had a ranked list of Identifiers that were based off of how much their algorithm thought we were friends. It would display a random selection from the top 50 or so but all 50 were in there and were fairly accurate as to who I interacted with most on Facebook. My friends and I would log them all then compare notes. I never had any illusions that Facebook wasn't spying on me: I just had illusions that they wouldn't be so stupid as to sell the only thing that makes them valuable in a raw format to customers. Google at least just sells you targets.
- 2aa07e2 9y agoOne can still find the id, even when a person has chosen a username that masks it. Right click the block option of a user you are not friends with, copy the link and voila, you've got the user id now. I mostly use that to see public but normally inaccessible pictures of people I am not friends with (i.e. pictures they've been tagged in). Try it yourself (for some reason this only works on desktop mode): https://www.facebook.com/search/{$PUT_THAT_ID_HERE}/photos-of https://www.facebook.com/search/{$PUT_THAT_ID_HERE}/photos-o...