4 ms·

What did people really expect would happen with Facebook? It's social media, not a file storage service - of course your data isn't going to be private. It's mo

What did people really expect would happen with Facebook? It's social media, not a file storage service - of course your data isn't going to be private. It's more or less what you should expect when signing up on any social media platform.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
It's naive of technical minded people to think the average person could imagine the types of things you can do with big data sets and algorithms.
- Mononokay 9y ago
  The average user's mindset must have changed from when I was younger - mass hysteria over what people and companies online might be doing with your personal information was standard.
  - maksimum 9y ago
    > The average user's mindset must have changed from when I was younger Yes, for a simple reasons: the average web user today is basically the average person. The average web user 20-25 years ago was a technology enthusiast.
    - Mononokay 9y ago
      I was talking moreover of the Myspace-era than the Usenet-era.
    - drak0n1c 9y ago
      My parents have very minimal technical abilities and they’ve always been paranoid about putting any personal info on a paper form and that extended to the internet when things moved online. They always left the birthdate field blank on forms. I was under the impression that most Boomers grew up being wary of privacy whether conservative or liberal, and it was GenX and Millenial who would give their data to anyone.
      - Tempest1981 9y ago
        It's good that your parents are informed, and care about privacy. Many are uninformed, so have no idea. Then, like you said, there are those who don't care about privacy, even if informed.
ggregoire 9y ago
They have names, phone numbers, locations, calls history and who-knows-what about people who have not signed on Facebook. They just take all these data from your friends' smartphones contacts list.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  When I was a kid, everybody's name, address, and phone number was published in a phone book. Why does everyone feel like that's private information today? For some special people, yes, but for just about everybody, it's fine for others to be able to contact them. If I wanted to be kept hidden, I'd have to be careful who I gave my secret information to. If I trust my friends, and they carelessly give it to Facebook, that's my fault for carelessly trusting untrustworthy friends.
  - slededit 9y ago
    Back then long distance was expensive so you didn't get scammers outside of the US calling you. Local police are currently unable to deal with the deluge of foreign scams making protecting your private information much more important.
  - e12e 9y ago
    The key difference is how easy it is to correlate different digital datasets. The phonebook gives you name, address and phone number. Call logs give you pairs of phone numbers. Together you know who knows who. Add in the yellow pages and you know who called the suicide hotline. Mix with taxi data and you know who visited who, what time. And who went to an abortion clinic. Or a place of worship. Or who knows more than ten people that regularly worship. Etc. Getting all that for everyone as opposed to a certain targeted someone is much, much easier with digital records. [ed: this is why many countries have had strict rules on digital databases of personal (not just sensitive) data a long time, well before the GDPR. The amount you can learn from "simple" correlations of even public data can be staggering.]
rickycook 9y ago
it’s partly that people didn’t even think about it rather than didn’t expect it i guess? “what did people expect” implies that they had enough of an understanding of where their data is stored, and put enough thought into it in order to form an expectation of any kind and that’s before you get to the unintentional tracking in things like like buttons, friends’ data that you have no control over, etc
e12e 9y ago
I certainly expect my phone company to not record my calls, or my isp not to mine my email. The problem isn't that fb is social media; or that Google/Gmail is an email provider - it's that both of them are ad agencies and private intelligence agencies (they gather, refine and sell information; ie intelligence). So it really is: Facebook is an intelligence agency and information broker: why would you supply information on yourself and your friends to them. And the answer is likely: I didn't know they were an intelligence company; I thought they were a (social) personal media platform. Like email or a blog, only slightly more modern. And this isn't a wild expectation. Eg the telephone providers are regulated, and can't sell the content of your calls, even if it's "just" if you're talking about a recent pregnancy, or how you're thinking about buying a car...
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Your phone company has, in all liklihood, maintained a log of all your calls, dating to the 1980s. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/atts_19trillion.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/atts_19trilli...
  - e12e 9y ago
    I'm sure Norwegian military intelligence has a semi legal access to meta data and contents of my calls: but at least it's clearly illegal for them. The largest isp/phone provider (telenor) actually fought back against the eu data collection directive because they had to store more data than they currently did (3 months). But yeah, data protection in the private sector in the US is dismal.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

It's naive of technical minded people to think the average person could imagine the types of things you can do with big data sets and algorithms.

Mononokay 9y ago
The average user's mindset must have changed from when I was younger - mass hysteria over what people and companies online might be doing with your personal information was standard.
- maksimum 9y ago
  > The average user's mindset must have changed from when I was younger Yes, for a simple reasons: the average web user today is basically the average person. The average web user 20-25 years ago was a technology enthusiast.
  - Mononokay 9y ago
    I was talking moreover of the Myspace-era than the Usenet-era.
  - drak0n1c 9y ago
    My parents have very minimal technical abilities and they’ve always been paranoid about putting any personal info on a paper form and that extended to the internet when things moved online. They always left the birthdate field blank on forms. I was under the impression that most Boomers grew up being wary of privacy whether conservative or liberal, and it was GenX and Millenial who would give their data to anyone.
    - Tempest1981 9y ago
      It's good that your parents are informed, and care about privacy. Many are uninformed, so have no idea. Then, like you said, there are those who don't care about privacy, even if informed.

ggregoire 9y ago

They have names, phone numbers, locations, calls history and who-knows-what about people who have not signed on Facebook. They just take all these data from your friends' smartphones contacts list.

lopmotr 9y ago
When I was a kid, everybody's name, address, and phone number was published in a phone book. Why does everyone feel like that's private information today? For some special people, yes, but for just about everybody, it's fine for others to be able to contact them. If I wanted to be kept hidden, I'd have to be careful who I gave my secret information to. If I trust my friends, and they carelessly give it to Facebook, that's my fault for carelessly trusting untrustworthy friends.
- slededit 9y ago
  Back then long distance was expensive so you didn't get scammers outside of the US calling you. Local police are currently unable to deal with the deluge of foreign scams making protecting your private information much more important.
- e12e 9y ago
  The key difference is how easy it is to correlate different digital datasets. The phonebook gives you name, address and phone number. Call logs give you pairs of phone numbers. Together you know who knows who. Add in the yellow pages and you know who called the suicide hotline. Mix with taxi data and you know who visited who, what time. And who went to an abortion clinic. Or a place of worship. Or who knows more than ten people that regularly worship. Etc. Getting all that for everyone as opposed to a certain targeted someone is much, much easier with digital records. [ed: this is why many countries have had strict rules on digital databases of personal (not just sensitive) data a long time, well before the GDPR. The amount you can learn from "simple" correlations of even public data can be staggering.]

rickycook 9y ago

it’s partly that people didn’t even think about it rather than didn’t expect it i guess? “what did people expect” implies that they had enough of an understanding of where their data is stored, and put enough thought into it in order to form an expectation of any kind and that’s before you get to the unintentional tracking in things like like buttons, friends’ data that you have no control over, etc

e12e 9y ago

I certainly expect my phone company to not record my calls, or my isp not to mine my email. The problem isn't that fb is social media; or that Google/Gmail is an email provider - it's that both of them are ad agencies and private intelligence agencies (they gather, refine and sell information; ie intelligence). So it really is: Facebook is an intelligence agency and information broker: why would you supply information on yourself and your friends to them. And the answer is likely: I didn't know they were an intelligence company; I thought they were a (social) personal media platform. Like email or a blog, only slightly more modern. And this isn't a wild expectation. Eg the telephone providers are regulated, and can't sell the content of your calls, even if it's "just" if you're talking about a recent pregnancy, or how you're thinking about buying a car...

dredmorbius 9y ago
Your phone company has, in all liklihood, maintained a log of all your calls, dating to the 1980s. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/atts_19trillion.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/atts_19trilli...
- e12e 9y ago
  I'm sure Norwegian military intelligence has a semi legal access to meta data and contents of my calls: but at least it's clearly illegal for them. The largest isp/phone provider (telenor) actually fought back against the eu data collection directive because they had to store more data than they currently did (3 months). But yeah, data protection in the private sector in the US is dismal.