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Some friends and I have been talking and we think the better choice would be to write something that would flood your profile with data. Your stuff may still b

Some friends and I have been talking and we think the better choice would be to write something that would flood your profile with data. Your stuff may still be there but with that much noise it would make the data useless.

Blackstone4 9y ago
I love this idea. Maybe someone could set up a service where you enter your fb password or upload your fb cookie. Then it would just destroy your profile with data. How would it handle historical data? I don't think you can backdate messages and photos.
- slig 9y ago
  It'd look like automated spam, and they'd block/flag it on the spot.
  - Blackstone4 9y ago
    What would happen to your fb account? Do they only block the account or the spam? Also could you use ML to be more discrete to avoid the spam flag?
    - slig 9y ago
      Not sure about ML, but there're several problems to solve before that. The service would need IP address that aren't from known cloud provier, otherwise it's trivial for them to notice and block. Also it'd have to look like a real user, so a full browser (posting directly to their endpoints will get you flagged). Then, each user can't post too much and the IP would need to be recycled as well. Too much trouble to even start that.
      - JetSpiegel 9y ago
        You can rent a botnet of desktops from residential IP. For example, the Hola "unblocker" C&C people have this service. https://luminati.io/ https://luminati.io/
- r00fus 9y ago
  A service that continually updates your profile data (well the non-invariant type), adds/removes random "friends" and the like would be interesting. Do it progressively enough, and when would FB know the difference?
itake 9y ago
Maybe? But with the influx of new activity, it would be reasonably easy to see the line of real activity vs fake activity is on a timeline.
kosmet 9y ago
What you suggest is the only thing that will succeed in preserving privacy. You cannot hide your data as they can still track you even if you do not have an account. We have to lie plausibly to contaminate the data. The important thing is that the data should be carefully generated not to be flagged as synthetic.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Ublock + NoScript + self-destructing cookies makes one much less convenient to track. Your IP and browser headers are all that's left.
  - kosmet 9y ago
    You are right but the problem is this: I would like to use Google maps but I do not want Google to have a perfect profile of me so I try to add plausible false data.
matte_black 9y ago
You'd be wasting your time. Your data is versioned. People smarter than you have long thought about this.
- hitch_42_hiker 9y ago
  Hilariously true
- gaius 9y ago
  It doesn’t matter. This information has a half-life. What I “liked” diminishes in value over time. What advertisers care what I clicked on 1, 5, 10 years ago?
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Imagine that at different points in time, the confidence in your persona can be quantified. Say at some point in time last year they were 89% confident of the type of person you were, but today after months of using a ton of random fake likes and clicks they are only 16% sure. They could choose to ignore low confidence measurements and still assume you are the same person from that point in time last year. Given that they can measure the standard rate of change in people’s interests (per interest even), and how quickly interests fall out of style, they can then extrapolate how relevant certain ads might be for you today based on your old data. Imagine that. They don’t just own your data today, they own all the forecasts of your data for years to come. Go home and sleep on it.
    - gaius 9y ago
      What if the person who gleefully shared everything on social media, and the person who hides their trail actually are different? People change their beliefs and spending habits all the time. It why we look back on our own writing from years ago and cringe.
    - Slansitartop 9y ago
      But do they actually do that? It seems like a lot of effort to market to someone who's less likely to be successfully marketed to.
ThoAppelsin 9y ago
It is a great idea, and I think it can be pulled off without being (easily) detected as decoy activity by making occasional submissions, than like 20 submissions a minute. A very simple way to do it on top of my head: - Seed a crawler with your own profile (or any other). Make it find 50~100 public contacts with public timeline in your network. Scrape their shares along with their timestamp deltas to their corresponding previous shares. Omit the very first, for that it lacks a proper timestamp delta. Put them all in a collection. - Pick any one by random, post it all the same, after the same amount of delay as the original share against its previous share. Repeat. You may shuffle the sentences whenever there are more than just one sentence, to obfuscate things a little.
CiaranR 9y ago
Something like this? - https://likenoise.com/ https://likenoise.com/

Blackstone4 9y ago

I love this idea. Maybe someone could set up a service where you enter your fb password or upload your fb cookie. Then it would just destroy your profile with data. How would it handle historical data? I don't think you can backdate messages and photos.

slig 9y ago
It'd look like automated spam, and they'd block/flag it on the spot.
- Blackstone4 9y ago
  What would happen to your fb account? Do they only block the account or the spam? Also could you use ML to be more discrete to avoid the spam flag?
  - slig 9y ago
    Not sure about ML, but there're several problems to solve before that. The service would need IP address that aren't from known cloud provier, otherwise it's trivial for them to notice and block. Also it'd have to look like a real user, so a full browser (posting directly to their endpoints will get you flagged). Then, each user can't post too much and the IP would need to be recycled as well. Too much trouble to even start that.
    - JetSpiegel 9y ago
      You can rent a botnet of desktops from residential IP. For example, the Hola "unblocker" C&C people have this service. https://luminati.io/ https://luminati.io/
r00fus 9y ago
A service that continually updates your profile data (well the non-invariant type), adds/removes random "friends" and the like would be interesting. Do it progressively enough, and when would FB know the difference?

itake 9y ago

Maybe? But with the influx of new activity, it would be reasonably easy to see the line of real activity vs fake activity is on a timeline.

kosmet 9y ago

What you suggest is the only thing that will succeed in preserving privacy. You cannot hide your data as they can still track you even if you do not have an account. We have to lie plausibly to contaminate the data. The important thing is that the data should be carefully generated not to be flagged as synthetic.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Ublock + NoScript + self-destructing cookies makes one much less convenient to track. Your IP and browser headers are all that's left.
- kosmet 9y ago
  You are right but the problem is this: I would like to use Google maps but I do not want Google to have a perfect profile of me so I try to add plausible false data.

matte_black 9y ago

You'd be wasting your time. Your data is versioned. People smarter than you have long thought about this.

hitch_42_hiker 9y ago
Hilariously true
gaius 9y ago
It doesn’t matter. This information has a half-life. What I “liked” diminishes in value over time. What advertisers care what I clicked on 1, 5, 10 years ago?
- matte_black 9y ago
  Imagine that at different points in time, the confidence in your persona can be quantified. Say at some point in time last year they were 89% confident of the type of person you were, but today after months of using a ton of random fake likes and clicks they are only 16% sure. They could choose to ignore low confidence measurements and still assume you are the same person from that point in time last year. Given that they can measure the standard rate of change in people’s interests (per interest even), and how quickly interests fall out of style, they can then extrapolate how relevant certain ads might be for you today based on your old data. Imagine that. They don’t just own your data today, they own all the forecasts of your data for years to come. Go home and sleep on it.
  - gaius 9y ago
    What if the person who gleefully shared everything on social media, and the person who hides their trail actually are different? People change their beliefs and spending habits all the time. It why we look back on our own writing from years ago and cringe.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    But do they actually do that? It seems like a lot of effort to market to someone who's less likely to be successfully marketed to.

ThoAppelsin 9y ago

It is a great idea, and I think it can be pulled off without being (easily) detected as decoy activity by making occasional submissions, than like 20 submissions a minute. A very simple way to do it on top of my head: - Seed a crawler with your own profile (or any other). Make it find 50~100 public contacts with public timeline in your network. Scrape their shares along with their timestamp deltas to their corresponding previous shares. Omit the very first, for that it lacks a proper timestamp delta. Put them all in a collection. - Pick any one by random, post it all the same, after the same amount of delay as the original share against its previous share. Repeat. You may shuffle the sentences whenever there are more than just one sentence, to obfuscate things a little.

CiaranR 9y ago

Something like this? - https://likenoise.com/ https://likenoise.com/