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Facebook confirms data sharing with Chinese companies
- Proven 8y agoNice.
- mtgx 8y ago> “Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get-go — and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built.” They're going to be sorry for admitting to that when we discover that Huawei or Lenovo had been harvesting that data for other purposes.
- alter_eco123 8y agoWhat other purposes and how is it FB's problem?
- ptero 8y agoThey might be sorry for admitting this, but they have no choice -- once the clear question gets asked FB cannot hide the answer. It can lie, but it would be worse, as the lie will come out quickly and they would be in much hotter water: not only for doing something bad, but also for lying about it (effectively admitting they saw it as a bad practice). Pretending that what they did is not bad is their best option. And of course Huawei and Lenovo will use data for other purposes -- they operate under different jurisdictions than FB. They also likely cannot keep ignore data requests for "national interests" even if they wanted to. And national interests include economic interests for sure.
- cygned 8y agoHow annoying Reuters included ads that redirect on mobile to pages informing me about viruses on my iPhone and an incredible huge lottery win. Too bad, it’s impossible to read the article on my phone. edit: mobile
- fps_doug 8y agoThat's why ad blockers are absolutely necessary. Not to scam companies out of their revenue, but because you cannot trust them in running clean ads. Fake virus alerts even are the lesser evil, delivering browser exploits or draining the battery by running crypto-miners are much worse. You read about such incidents every couple weeks...
- cygned 8y agoOn desktop, I use uBlock and Privacy Badger, but on my iPhone there doesn’t seem to be an option.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Retric 8y agoThere are a few Add block options on iPhone what are they missing?
- cygned 8y agoI am just not aware of them, I guess. Never looked into them to be honest.
- innagadadavida 8y agoiOS has Adblock that comes with a DNS proxy using local VPN. Earlier it used to use the VPN to divert traffic to their app, but Apple banned that practice.
- pmlnr 8y agoFirefox on mobile can also use uBlock on android, I wonder if the iOS version can do it as well.
- LadyNike 8y agoOne can use Firefox Focus in place of AdGuard on iOS and it will perform the content filtering. :)
- hmhrex 8y ago> “Every piece of content that you share on Facebook, you own and you have complete control over who sees it and how you share it, and you can remove it at any time,” This sentence has been bothering me because it feels like his lawyers wrote it. It's specifically worded to not include issues like this one. Ref: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/article/Zuckerberg-hearings-shed-little-light-on-12827039.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/article/Zuckerbe...
- paulie_a 8y agoExcept for the data they seem so eager to give to others.
- bogomipz 8y agoHow is it specifically worded to not include the issue? I just see that sentence as an outright lie. I thought it was notable for its lack of "weasel words" and disingenuousness that are the hallmarks of Mark Zuckerberg's speech. From the NYTimes article: >"But the BlackBerry app had access to all of the reporter’s Facebook friends and, for most of them, returned information such as user ID, birthday, work and education history and whether they were currently online." [1] Birthday, work and education history are all things that user's "share" on FB no? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...
- mercer 8y agoCould Zuckerberg argue that this is not what he meant with 'piece of content that you share'? I imagine not, but just wondering.
- rosser 8y ago"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is." — Bill Clinton This is weasel language, used to avoid saying anything you can be held to having said, when that becomes inconvenient.
- IcceFogHackers 8y agoHacking is made easy with Alex. Charges are afordable, time is very fast and the job is always on point. Should you want to hack a Whatsapp account, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Viber and so on, you want to edit your school grades, you want to clear a criminal record, just contact my hacker through (icehackerzz@gmail.com) or via Whatsapp +1347-443-9188 and get our job done asap.
- jlebrech 8y agoThis will be the downfall of Facebook, every country wants them to give them data while at the same time wanting to protect their citizen from data being given to other countries. and countries wanting data about their citizens probably contravenes human rights.
- waydowntogo 8y agoIt's classic. Only one thing can destroy big company / country etc - inside job. In my point of view this is beginning of FB's end.
- waydowntogo 8y ago1 minute and -1 points already - truth hurts
- sharemywin 8y agoI pretty much disagree. how exactly would that work? more regulation? so people just click though more yep, it's creepy but I don't care buttons. charge them as a monopoly? when you have google and apple?
- waydowntogo 8y agoPeople won't share their data / thoughts etc. No users / data = no ads. No ads, no cash. No cash means no FB. Btw Fb's losing users in big already.
- mkirklions 8y agoI just dont use FB anymore. I get FB messages, but I dont check my feed. Occasionally I get event invites, but I check that every few weeks or month. I dont want to act like I'm 'cutting edge', but was on gamefaqs when it was cool, FB in 2009, reddit in 2010. I dont use facebook anymore, we moved to snapchat and niche fourms.
- skinnymuch 8y agoYou said you don’t want to act like you’re cutting edge which is probably good, but the years you listed for Facebook and Reddit aren’t that early for those platforms.
- mkirklions 8y agoI was on reddit back when people were liberal on the website.
- adas17 8y agoCan someone explain to me a mechanism for having JSON data describing a user and all their information downloaded and then displayed on the screen of either an Android or iOS phone without the app or OS involved then having the ability to send that data to a server later on? The sentence “only available on the device” makes no sense to me as an engineer. What? Did Facebook code review every app and OS they gave this access to? Even then, would they be able to garauntee that an update couldn’t be made to the app or some library it relied on to prevent it from harvesting the data? If that data was encrypted, how did it get displayed on a screen without being unencrypted first and this made vulnerable to scraping? I was an iOS and Android applications developer and I can’t think of any way to do it (at least on iOS) short of (a) keeping it completely encrypted the entire time (b) only allowing an application signed by Facebook and belonging to Facebook and controlled by Facebook completely (in iOS, at least) to get this data since iOS apps are well sandboxed from one another or (c) relying vaguely on a legal agreement that the other party not be naughty with the data contractually which means jack shit to the Chinese. On Android - Jesus, forget about it.
- bo1024 8y agoExactly. All the issues these reporters are up in arms about would still be a problem if Facebook gave these companies access to their regular API instead of a specialized one. In the end, a user is responsible for whom they give their username and password to. That includes typing it into an app. I hope we can redirect the publicity around this issue to scrutinizing the security of software, operating systems, and hardware. And promoting open source!
- majjam 8y agoI understood that facebook shares a persons data if a friend of theirs has given permission to an app. Thus a person can be vigilant about their own account, and still have their data compromised.
- mkirklions 8y ago>a user is responsible for whom they give their username and password to. In 2009, when I signed up for facebook, I was signing up for facebook. Not sharing with political groups and enterprises. No one reads ToS and at that point, it should be nullified. Everyone loses their FB accounts because YOU didnt read the ToS. Facebook loses their business because they lied about people reading and accepting their ToS. Its important to be reasonable, FB definitely went full corruption and blaming the billions of customers is laughable.
- aaavl2821 8y agoI am not familiar with the terms of these kinds of data sharing agreements, but I know most US confidentiality agreements include a term that enables companies to share confidential data with governments if required by law. Most agreements if not all also contain a clause that companies take reasonable best efforts to try to resist or narrow such requests. I believe I've heard that tech companies can successfully do this on occassion So even confidential company info can be taken by the government. In the US I think there are practical limits on this and companies have some ability and willingness to resist. From my limited experience the latter is not always the case in china, and I'd imagine the former is less true as well
- shashanoid 8y agoThe first thing that comes in my mind: https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjHCWdU7F4hkcudy/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEjHCWdU7F4hkcudy/giphy.gif
- nraynaud 8y agolet's try to replace one word: "Facebook confirms data sharing with Jewish companies". You see what kind of ideology this is spreading? Being Chinese is bad?
- deft 8y agoanti-chinese sentiment is very common on hackernews. Goes into pure racism a lot of the time.
- fhood 8y agoHang on though. Lets not conflate China the country, with Chinese the inhabitants. I can be highly suspicious of China and Russia the countries without feeling any animosity towards the people who are from there.
- swebs 8y agoI'm sure it has nothing to do with the Chinese government's authoritarian censorship policies or great firewall.
- throwaway59928 8y agoI’d call it anti-China sentiment, which isn’t racism at all. There’s plenty to dislike about the Chinese government and Chinese nationalism.
- beart 8y agoA closer analogy is "Facebook confirms data sharing with Israeli companies", which seems slightly less inflammatory.
- cheeze 8y agoI still think people would be unhappy about this, but Isreali Companies aren't as big of threats to national security, or at least that is what I've been led to beliee.
- RaleyField 8y ago
- anonu 8y agoI'm kinda thinking of Chipotle's pr nightmare over food safety. This is similar. Facebook isn't going to die but people will be far less enamored by it going forward. Usage metrics have already been ticking down.
- nisten 8y agoThis is horrible, how do I know a random chinese business won't sell it for a good markup to a russian agency or Egypt who've used it to prosecute non religious people and gays. This whole interoperability push is getting ignorant and lethal
- smallnamespace 8y agoYou don't. The simple consequence of globalization and economic integration is that what everyone does affects everyone else, and the networks of flow in information, energy, and physical commodities are so dense that it becomes very difficult to attribute cause and effect (and therefore moral responsibility) to any one actor. If it wasn't Facebook, it would've been someone else. That's not to absolve Facebook of its behavior, just noting that there are strong incentives in place that encourage interoperability and therefore efficiency that resulted in its actions, and these incentives affect every organization worldwide. The only way to prevent this is to build barriers to control the flow and pay the very high price of loss in efficiency. China is way ahead of things in that sense.
- binnesjohn 8y agoFacebook liar liar liar. Thats what you all google, twitter and facebook are.
- g0dg0d 8y agoSo in other words, Zuckerberg lied.