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> I tried explaining my 20 year old cousin about FB. Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB". She checks in on FB everywhere she goes.

> I tried explaining my 20 year old cousin about FB. Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB". She checks in on FB everywhere she goes. Posts her pics all the time. I could not instill any sense of concern for privacy. If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? Maybe she does fully understand the implications but has a different value system to you? I feel that when people on this site are talking about Facebook, there's this assumption their friends using Facebook are failing to understand what Facebook does in the background and if they could somehow get them to understand their friends would all leave. People can be fully aware of what Facebook is and simply choose a different balance between privacy and convenience to what you prefer.

herbst 9y ago
Usually when I creep these people out by confronting them with personal details of their life (which I simply snapped of public Facebook data) they actually are creeped out. So while yours is a interesting thought I highly doubt a lot of people Actually understand the full issue.
- xiphias 9y ago
  It sounds interesting, can you give a concrete example?
  - herbst 9y ago
    I am thinking things like Wechat, Telegram (also Whatsapp to some degree but that's behind in functionality) but also things like discord and slack. So without a direct social graph, specialised interest groups, more direct connections, more 'privacy' at least in terms of how public the data is available.
    - xiphias 9y ago
      Ah, I was referring to how you're creeping people out using their Facebook :) Sounds like a fun thing to do
    - herbst 9y ago
      Shit wrong comment. Sorry
  - mayniac 9y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but I had a boss at an old job who liked to make "your mum" jokes as often as humanly possible. It got annoying. Since we worked in forensics and did a lot of OSINT I decided to stop it using Facebook. Found his Facebook. He didn't have any family listed, for privacy. Friends list wasn't visible either. However his dad and sister, both easily identifiable as such, I found since they had both liked the same profile picture a few years ago, and I could view their relationship (handy trick, go to someones user account, add ?and= followed by the user ID of another user and you can view relationships between anyone). Saw that they had a few mutual friends, <10. Found two which fit the criteria for possibly being my boss's mum. Searched both names in the electoral register and got rough locations. One of them lived in the same city my boss had listed as his birthplace, and co-habited with the person I previously identified as his dad. She was using her maiden name on Facebook (there goes security questions). I paid £1-2 for the full address. For the next week or so I sent him random bits of information about his mum whenever he made a bad "your mum" joke at me (if it was good I didn't particularly care). Previous addresses, streetview screenshot of her house etc. Despite streetview blurring her car's license plate, I could see what make/model/colour it was, which was enough to find the license plate by skimming through photos posted on various sites which let you search by location. So I sent him MOT and road tax reminders too. It was fairly easy to find what schools she had gone to, previous marriages, a company she had started etc. He stopped making "your mum" jokes after a week. Bear in mind: this was someone who worked in computer security and was actively privacy conscious, and within an hour I had enough information that I could have probably stolen his identity.
  - sf_rob 9y ago
    While I don't approve of some (most?) of their antics, Phone Losers of America did a series where they "prank called" users of Foursquare and started reading off details about their personal lives. Pretty scary stuff that puts things in perspective.
  - herbst 9y ago
    I like to do it passively if the person doesn't already expect it. Like asking overly specific questions about past events they posted. 'how was dj dickhead in January?' 'the girl you were with didn't she go to (put school I surely shouldn't know anything about here)' just making random creeper comments and getting worse until I explain my intention. For the best effect stretch this process over a evening or more. We had a overly 'social' secretary which didn't understand privacy implications until she met our team :) we pointed out every joint, cheap vodka bottle, or even slightly awkward things found in mirror selfies until she started to really rethink her privacy. Or there is a old social network many people in my country kept for the email. They encouraged to write or at least post poems. Lot of awkward lines to be found there to make some heads red.
quanticle 9y ago
>If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? The problem is that it's not just her privacy she's violating, but the privacy of everyone else, including OP, whose photos get shared by said cousin. When I got back from a trip I took abroad with my family earlier this year, my friends mentioned that they'd seen the photos that "I" had posted to Facebook. Except... I hadn't posted any photos to Facebook. I have a Facebook account, but I deliberately have a very minimal presence on it. What my friends were seeing was the photos that my mother had posted, and which I had been tagged in. My privacy was violated by someone else's inability to understand Facebook's privacy settings.
- blanche_ 9y ago
  You can enable to only tag photos after your approval.
  - a012 9y ago
    You can add a filter on your profile but the other people did post a photo which include yourself on their wall. So mutual friends still see the post no matter your security settings.
- auxbuss 9y ago
  This is a key point that folk are genuinely surprised by when I explain it to them. It's kind of a reverse herd immunity. (I'm sure there's a better analogy.)
  - keketi 9y ago
    > reverse herd immunity (I'm sure there's a better analogy.) Asymptomatic carrier.
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      > Asymptomatic carrier. An asymptomatic carrier is one who exhibits no symptoms of the illness but is carrier who can infect others. I don't believe that is the right analogy here. With herd immunity you have a group with a large rate of participation, which effectively immunizes those that haven't been. Facebook is the opposite in that you may not be "infected" but if everyone around you is "infected" you might as well be, because Facebook will piece together your information based on what your friends make available. Plague almost starts to sound like a better analogy...
sidcool 9y ago
It's that she's unaware of the negative consequences of hyper social media presence. She seems to have become addicted to the 'likes' of FB. Unless there is a cancer like warning for social media, she's unlikely to give it up. The lure of being more famous than her friends is too much to resist. Not sure if wrong or right. I would like being famous on HN, StackOverflow, tech blogs etc. Perhaps it's similar.

herbst 9y ago

Usually when I creep these people out by confronting them with personal details of their life (which I simply snapped of public Facebook data) they actually are creeped out. So while yours is a interesting thought I highly doubt a lot of people Actually understand the full issue.

xiphias 9y ago
It sounds interesting, can you give a concrete example?
- herbst 9y ago
  I am thinking things like Wechat, Telegram (also Whatsapp to some degree but that's behind in functionality) but also things like discord and slack. So without a direct social graph, specialised interest groups, more direct connections, more 'privacy' at least in terms of how public the data is available.
  - xiphias 9y ago
    Ah, I was referring to how you're creeping people out using their Facebook :) Sounds like a fun thing to do
  - herbst 9y ago
    Shit wrong comment. Sorry
- mayniac 9y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but I had a boss at an old job who liked to make "your mum" jokes as often as humanly possible. It got annoying. Since we worked in forensics and did a lot of OSINT I decided to stop it using Facebook. Found his Facebook. He didn't have any family listed, for privacy. Friends list wasn't visible either. However his dad and sister, both easily identifiable as such, I found since they had both liked the same profile picture a few years ago, and I could view their relationship (handy trick, go to someones user account, add ?and= followed by the user ID of another user and you can view relationships between anyone). Saw that they had a few mutual friends, <10. Found two which fit the criteria for possibly being my boss's mum. Searched both names in the electoral register and got rough locations. One of them lived in the same city my boss had listed as his birthplace, and co-habited with the person I previously identified as his dad. She was using her maiden name on Facebook (there goes security questions). I paid £1-2 for the full address. For the next week or so I sent him random bits of information about his mum whenever he made a bad "your mum" joke at me (if it was good I didn't particularly care). Previous addresses, streetview screenshot of her house etc. Despite streetview blurring her car's license plate, I could see what make/model/colour it was, which was enough to find the license plate by skimming through photos posted on various sites which let you search by location. So I sent him MOT and road tax reminders too. It was fairly easy to find what schools she had gone to, previous marriages, a company she had started etc. He stopped making "your mum" jokes after a week. Bear in mind: this was someone who worked in computer security and was actively privacy conscious, and within an hour I had enough information that I could have probably stolen his identity.
- sf_rob 9y ago
  While I don't approve of some (most?) of their antics, Phone Losers of America did a series where they "prank called" users of Foursquare and started reading off details about their personal lives. Pretty scary stuff that puts things in perspective.
- herbst 9y ago
  I like to do it passively if the person doesn't already expect it. Like asking overly specific questions about past events they posted. 'how was dj dickhead in January?' 'the girl you were with didn't she go to (put school I surely shouldn't know anything about here)' just making random creeper comments and getting worse until I explain my intention. For the best effect stretch this process over a evening or more. We had a overly 'social' secretary which didn't understand privacy implications until she met our team :) we pointed out every joint, cheap vodka bottle, or even slightly awkward things found in mirror selfies until she started to really rethink her privacy. Or there is a old social network many people in my country kept for the email. They encouraged to write or at least post poems. Lot of awkward lines to be found there to make some heads red.

quanticle 9y ago

>If she's happy with this level of privacy though, what's the problem? The problem is that it's not just her privacy she's violating, but the privacy of everyone else, including OP, whose photos get shared by said cousin. When I got back from a trip I took abroad with my family earlier this year, my friends mentioned that they'd seen the photos that "I" had posted to Facebook. Except... I hadn't posted any photos to Facebook. I have a Facebook account, but I deliberately have a very minimal presence on it. What my friends were seeing was the photos that my mother had posted, and which I had been tagged in. My privacy was violated by someone else's inability to understand Facebook's privacy settings.

blanche_ 9y ago
You can enable to only tag photos after your approval.
- a012 9y ago
  You can add a filter on your profile but the other people did post a photo which include yourself on their wall. So mutual friends still see the post no matter your security settings.
auxbuss 9y ago
This is a key point that folk are genuinely surprised by when I explain it to them. It's kind of a reverse herd immunity. (I'm sure there's a better analogy.)
- keketi 9y ago
  > reverse herd immunity (I'm sure there's a better analogy.) Asymptomatic carrier.
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    > Asymptomatic carrier. An asymptomatic carrier is one who exhibits no symptoms of the illness but is carrier who can infect others. I don't believe that is the right analogy here. With herd immunity you have a group with a large rate of participation, which effectively immunizes those that haven't been. Facebook is the opposite in that you may not be "infected" but if everyone around you is "infected" you might as well be, because Facebook will piece together your information based on what your friends make available. Plague almost starts to sound like a better analogy...

sidcool 9y ago

It's that she's unaware of the negative consequences of hyper social media presence. She seems to have become addicted to the 'likes' of FB. Unless there is a cancer like warning for social media, she's unlikely to give it up. The lure of being more famous than her friends is too much to resist. Not sure if wrong or right. I would like being famous on HN, StackOverflow, tech blogs etc. Perhaps it's similar.