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I have two fake Facebook accounts that I use to sign in to services. I even have a good rep on Quora using a completely fake name. Forcing Facebook because you

by bl4k 16y ago

I have two fake Facebook accounts that I use to sign in to services. I even have a good rep on Quora using a completely fake name. Forcing Facebook because you think it will give you real people and verified accounts is wrong.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
portman 16y ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not saying that forcing Facebook will 100% eliminate fraud. But forcing Facebook can reduce fraud, by several orders of magnitude. Authentication isn't -- and shouldn't be -- a one-size-fits-all problem. For us, Facebook has worked extremely well. (We originally supported Twitter and OpenID but dropped them when it turned out that 100% of our fraud incidents had authenticated with one of those two.) That said, I'd love to know if our FB heuristics would "catch" you or not. Email me your fake FBUIDs and I'll publicly post their score. We can all learn something! portman.wills[at]gmail.com
- kenjackson 16y ago
  This is exactly why I wouldn't join your site. I don't want you crawling my list of friends, likes/dislikes, etc... to determine if I should be able to buy a T-Shirt (or whatever product it is that you sell). With that said, my Facebook account probably wouldn't pass your test as I recently removed all my pictures, and removed all my likes disklikes, and most of my "friends". And have virtually no activity on it.
- bl4k 16y ago
  The accounts have nothing in common - not IP address, nor cookies nor names nor friends or anything. With the fake accounts I just added fake friends (Facebook was so kind to suggest them) and they approved me. I even wrote 'whats up' on some peoples walls and they replied. No idea who they are, seems people just need somebody to talk to. I am a bit of a privacy nut (multiple browsers, incognito, proxy servers, VPN's, multiple accounts online (including this site)) and I intentionally keep my person, work, online life etc. completely separate. So as interesting as it would be for you to test my accounts, it means I would have to kill you :)
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    > So as interesting as it would be for you to test my accounts, it means I would have to kill you :) There needs to be a term for that level of secrecy/strictness when it comes to online identity/authentication. A level so strict that if an identity gets exposed or authentication mechanism is bypassed that somebody, somewhere, will have to be killed. Now I await eagerly for an HN reader from a three-letter organization to chime in. ;)
joshhart 16y ago
They might know that it's you, actually. I spoke with a facebook employee recently and they apparently spend quite a bit of effort identifying likely duplicate accounts. Usually people make several accounts to have more farmville neighbors, so you may not get lumped in this category, but who knows. Google does the same thing - I believe there was a post here recently about an interview where an employee said their was a console matching accounts and likely duplicate accounts the person has.

by bl4k 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

portman 16y ago

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not saying that forcing Facebook will 100% eliminate fraud. But forcing Facebook can reduce fraud, by several orders of magnitude. Authentication isn't -- and shouldn't be -- a one-size-fits-all problem. For us, Facebook has worked extremely well. (We originally supported Twitter and OpenID but dropped them when it turned out that 100% of our fraud incidents had authenticated with one of those two.) That said, I'd love to know if our FB heuristics would "catch" you or not. Email me your fake FBUIDs and I'll publicly post their score. We can all learn something! portman.wills[at]gmail.com

kenjackson 16y ago
This is exactly why I wouldn't join your site. I don't want you crawling my list of friends, likes/dislikes, etc... to determine if I should be able to buy a T-Shirt (or whatever product it is that you sell). With that said, my Facebook account probably wouldn't pass your test as I recently removed all my pictures, and removed all my likes disklikes, and most of my "friends". And have virtually no activity on it.
bl4k 16y ago
The accounts have nothing in common - not IP address, nor cookies nor names nor friends or anything. With the fake accounts I just added fake friends (Facebook was so kind to suggest them) and they approved me. I even wrote 'whats up' on some peoples walls and they replied. No idea who they are, seems people just need somebody to talk to. I am a bit of a privacy nut (multiple browsers, incognito, proxy servers, VPN's, multiple accounts online (including this site)) and I intentionally keep my person, work, online life etc. completely separate. So as interesting as it would be for you to test my accounts, it means I would have to kill you :)
- mkramlich 16y ago
  > So as interesting as it would be for you to test my accounts, it means I would have to kill you :) There needs to be a term for that level of secrecy/strictness when it comes to online identity/authentication. A level so strict that if an identity gets exposed or authentication mechanism is bypassed that somebody, somewhere, will have to be killed. Now I await eagerly for an HN reader from a three-letter organization to chime in. ;)

joshhart 16y ago

They might know that it's you, actually. I spoke with a facebook employee recently and they apparently spend quite a bit of effort identifying likely duplicate accounts. Usually people make several accounts to have more farmville neighbors, so you may not get lumped in this category, but who knows. Google does the same thing - I believe there was a post here recently about an interview where an employee said their was a console matching accounts and likely duplicate accounts the person has.