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You do realize that facebook will share user's private information with any random web browser that the user enters her credentials in, right? Is that "ridiculo

You do realize that facebook will share user's private information with any random web browser that the user enters her credentials in, right? Is that "ridiculous"?

criley2 8y ago
If a friend of one of my friends, who I am not connected with, can acces my private data despite my settings being clearly limited, with API access disabled, "friends of my friends" settings disabled, as was reported is possible, then yes that is ridiculous. However your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. It's not the fact that I type in a user/password and get my data, it's that, I type in my user/password and Facebook authorizes access to as many as 10,000 to 100,000 other accounts data, based on proximity to my account.
- cjhopman 8y ago
  > your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. That's because you're just making up a problem that doesn't exist. The replies are all talking about what is actually happening, not your fantasy world. As the article states: " friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends".
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    I understand why my iPhone needs access to my Facebook friends' info, in order to display it to me. I don't understand why Apple Inc. needs access and permission to download and store my friends' data on Apple Inc. servers. That is what the NY Times reported, and Facebook has not directly denied it here. Edit to be clear: I'm just using Apple as an example company.
    - doctorsher 8y ago
      Unfortunately, the NYT article is vague on how each of the approved device makers were using the data -- they only say "some partners" stored the data. But it doesn't seem like Apple in particular used the API in that capacity. From the article: "An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September."
    - cjhopman 8y ago
      Do you know about the Amazon Silk web browser? If you log in to facebook in that browser, Amazon may download and store your friends' data on Amazon's servers. And that's even without any agreement with facebook. I can think of a handful of Facebook-like experiences that would require an OS/device provider to store data on their servers, especially considering the constraints imposed on some devices (particularly older ones) and some OSes (particularly older ones and iOS). Let's take a concrete example. Let's say that Apple wants to support contact syncing across devices. It also wants to support contact importing through fb's device integrated api. Now, let's say that Apple actually implements that in such a way that it's encrypted end-to-end. Even in that case, Apple may have needed permission to store that data on their servers under whatever agreement the companies had and the Times could have written their story. But I feel like that case isn't that interesting. Let's consider the case where your contacts are stored unencrypted on Apple's servers, but only for 3 hours while actually syncing to a new device (kind of a silly approach to the contact syncing case, but is likely more reasonable for other things). There may be a reasonable argument against that, but I think that most people wouldn't agree with it. Also, that argument would apply much more strongly to Android's contacts permissions (which don't require any sort of contract around how developers use/store that data).
      - snowwrestler 8y ago
        I run websites that get traffic from Amazon Silk browsers. I've never signed a data sharing agreement with Amazon. There's more going on in this story than a simple browsing proxy.
        cjhopman 8y ago
        > I run websites that get traffic from Amazon Silk browsers. I've never signed a data sharing agreement with Amazon. Of course not. Because the fact that a user agent like this has widespread access to the data that the user has access to is expected. The OS itself also has at least that same level of access (as it has control over the behavior of the user agent). We just all seem to assume that we can trust those entities to not misuse the data (in some cases the particular software we run may have privacy policies that cover how they use that data that we necessarily give them access to). > There's more going on in this story than a simple browsing proxy. There's nothing in the report that indicates that. In fact, most "simple browsing prox[ies]" have no data sharing agreement limiting how they use the information from your browsing, in the cases in this story they were all limited to "signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences." and even further "our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built". In addition, it sounds like in most of these instances, no data was even accessed or stored off the device (i.e. they had much less access than a proxy).
    - nemothekid 8y ago
      On my iPhone, I enabled a feature that would sync my contacts with my address book. My blackberry did this as well way back in the day. My iPhone is also syncing with iCloud. Now my friends “private information” are on Apple’s serves via my iCloud backup.
- spankalee 8y ago
  I find it equally ridiculous that Hotmail can access my private emails that I send to a Hotmail user. Which is to say not at all.

You do realize that facebook will share user's private information with any random web browser that the user enters her credentials in, right? Is that "ridiculous"?

criley2 8y ago

If a friend of one of my friends, who I am not connected with, can acces my private data despite my settings being clearly limited, with API access disabled, "friends of my friends" settings disabled, as was reported is possible, then yes that is ridiculous. However your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. It's not the fact that I type in a user/password and get my data, it's that, I type in my user/password and Facebook authorizes access to as many as 10,000 to 100,000 other accounts data, based on proximity to my account.

cjhopman 8y ago
> your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. That's because you're just making up a problem that doesn't exist. The replies are all talking about what is actually happening, not your fantasy world. As the article states: " friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends".
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  I understand why my iPhone needs access to my Facebook friends' info, in order to display it to me. I don't understand why Apple Inc. needs access and permission to download and store my friends' data on Apple Inc. servers. That is what the NY Times reported, and Facebook has not directly denied it here. Edit to be clear: I'm just using Apple as an example company.
  - doctorsher 8y ago
    Unfortunately, the NYT article is vague on how each of the approved device makers were using the data -- they only say "some partners" stored the data. But it doesn't seem like Apple in particular used the API in that capacity. From the article: "An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September."
  - cjhopman 8y ago
    Do you know about the Amazon Silk web browser? If you log in to facebook in that browser, Amazon may download and store your friends' data on Amazon's servers. And that's even without any agreement with facebook. I can think of a handful of Facebook-like experiences that would require an OS/device provider to store data on their servers, especially considering the constraints imposed on some devices (particularly older ones) and some OSes (particularly older ones and iOS). Let's take a concrete example. Let's say that Apple wants to support contact syncing across devices. It also wants to support contact importing through fb's device integrated api. Now, let's say that Apple actually implements that in such a way that it's encrypted end-to-end. Even in that case, Apple may have needed permission to store that data on their servers under whatever agreement the companies had and the Times could have written their story. But I feel like that case isn't that interesting. Let's consider the case where your contacts are stored unencrypted on Apple's servers, but only for 3 hours while actually syncing to a new device (kind of a silly approach to the contact syncing case, but is likely more reasonable for other things). There may be a reasonable argument against that, but I think that most people wouldn't agree with it. Also, that argument would apply much more strongly to Android's contacts permissions (which don't require any sort of contract around how developers use/store that data).
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      I run websites that get traffic from Amazon Silk browsers. I've never signed a data sharing agreement with Amazon. There's more going on in this story than a simple browsing proxy.
      - cjhopman 8y ago
        > I run websites that get traffic from Amazon Silk browsers. I've never signed a data sharing agreement with Amazon. Of course not. Because the fact that a user agent like this has widespread access to the data that the user has access to is expected. The OS itself also has at least that same level of access (as it has control over the behavior of the user agent). We just all seem to assume that we can trust those entities to not misuse the data (in some cases the particular software we run may have privacy policies that cover how they use that data that we necessarily give them access to). > There's more going on in this story than a simple browsing proxy. There's nothing in the report that indicates that. In fact, most "simple browsing prox[ies]" have no data sharing agreement limiting how they use the information from your browsing, in the cases in this story they were all limited to "signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences." and even further "our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built". In addition, it sounds like in most of these instances, no data was even accessed or stored off the device (i.e. they had much less access than a proxy).
  - nemothekid 8y ago
    On my iPhone, I enabled a feature that would sync my contacts with my address book. My blackberry did this as well way back in the day. My iPhone is also syncing with iCloud. Now my friends “private information” are on Apple’s serves via my iCloud backup.
spankalee 8y ago
I find it equally ridiculous that Hotmail can access my private emails that I send to a Hotmail user. Which is to say not at all.