3 ms·
This only applies to the leak of 84 million profiles to Cambridge Analytica. This leak was less than 4% of a much larger leak that's not getting much attention
by panarky 9y ago
This only applies to the leak of 84 million profiles to Cambridge Analytica.
This leak was less than 4% of a much larger leak that's not getting much attention.
Why doesn't Facebook alert users if their profile was leaked to "malicious actors" who collected profiles of "most of its 2 billion users worldwide".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/04/facebook-said-the-personal-data-of-most-its-2-billion-users-has-been-collected-and-shared-with-outsiders/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/04...
- StavrosK 9y agoMy question is, why do people think it's okay if Facebook has that data, but not Cambridge Analytica? Why does Facebook get a pass storing all the calls you made and all the profiles and webpages you looked at?
- laythea 9y agoI agree with your premise, but it is a bit different though. The user directly engages with Facebook (off course, having read terms and conditions etc), but not any of the companies that used to get data. This level of indirection is what is causing the outrage here. There is a distinction, although I would give none of them my data.
- StavrosK 9y agoYes, that's one consideration, but Facebook also has much more data on you than you gave informed consent for. I guess people just haven't realized yet.
- laythea 9y agoThis got me thinking whether all my comments on HN are being used by someone/something to build a profile of me? Maybe I should read the small print...
- aylmao 9y agoI think the reason this isn't being reported much on is because it wasn't a leak. It sounds like it was just a scrape of data from the site. Scraping websites to collect public information is nothing new. Malicious actors do it all the time, as do non-malicious actors too. Google literally does it. EDIT: I'm all for facebook messed up and we need more guarantees but lets be objective though. The CA issue is an issue, this 2 billion thing is just a web-crawler.
- panarky 9y agoNo, this wasn't just garden variety web crawling. Sites can control whether they get crawled or not. Facebook, for example, stops Google from crawling Facebook profiles. But Facebook allowed "malicious actors" to access to user profiles for "most of its 2 billion users worldwide". These 2 billion users didn't choose to expose their personal information to "malicious actors", Facebook did it without their consent.