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Did you read the article? "For 14 million people, the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profile

Did you read the article? "For 14 million people, the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profiles. This included username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches. " The attackers accessed different info for different groups of people.

Joe-Z 8y ago
FYI people will downvote you for suggesting someone hasn't read the post. (And I don't think it was necessary to make your point.) HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.
- deleted 8y ago
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- delecti 8y ago
  Hm, that's a bit of a silly rule. This isn't the best example, but there are certainly instances where someone is arguing from a point of complete ignorance about details in the article. Even the rule's preferred example of "The article mentions that." still seems to me to insinuate someone hasn't read the article.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    I think it is just more polite to cite the article than make an accusation. There is no real benefit in accusing someone of not reading the article. This seems like a case of fostering civil discussion without losing any clarity. Since "you must not have read the article." or "did you even read the article?" adds nothing to the discussion.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    People have pride. publicly claiming they messed up is a direct challenge , and it will hurt that pride. regardless of whether or not they did. When you hurt that pride, conversations go sour. And, in all fairness, do we expect someone to say “well, gosh, you’re right; I did indeed mess up. Sorry!” You can probably imagine that’s not how people work. It’s a rule because of the effect it has on the conversation that follows, not because it is Just or Unjust. In that sense, HN is not like a court. As much as people, at times, seem to think it is :p
yashap 8y ago
On top of people wanting privacy about that stuff, there’s also probably enough there to get through a lot of “password recovery questions”, for sites that have those. Especially if they can get similar info about your family (through the same FB breach). Too often an email address plus correct answers to questions like “what’s your mother’s birthplace?”, “what’s your fathers middle name?”, “what’s your favourite hockey team” are used to prove identity online, and these types of questions could be very answerable from this breach.
jjeaff 8y ago
Can you have that information entered into Facebook without then showing to anyone but yourself? If so, why would you have the info in there? If not, and as is common, you allow friends to see it, then that information is basically public anyway unless you are very, very selective in who you accept as a friend. Even when being selective, there is no identity verification, so it is common for spammers or data collectors to simply make an account using the name and profile pic of any of your friends and requesting to be your friend.
- barkingcat 8y ago
  yes facebook forces you to put in phone number for example, for "backup authentication" "verification" purposes, and if you don't want to show that to your friends or the public you must set it to private. The default is something like "show to all friends" There are many preferences in facebook that are like that - unavoidable/impassible fields that ask for info, and then you set it to "private/only yourself" to prevent information leakage, but are set default to world or friend visible. It's a dark pattern that's all over facebook - you will see it if you install the facebook mobile apps - you can't proceed to surf your timeline without clicking through and answering questions sometimes - best thing is to fill in blank/gibberish info, but sometimes phone numbers, etc can't be avoided.

Joe-Z 8y ago

FYI people will downvote you for suggesting someone hasn't read the post. (And I don't think it was necessary to make your point.) HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.

deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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delecti 8y ago
Hm, that's a bit of a silly rule. This isn't the best example, but there are certainly instances where someone is arguing from a point of complete ignorance about details in the article. Even the rule's preferred example of "The article mentions that." still seems to me to insinuate someone hasn't read the article.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  I think it is just more polite to cite the article than make an accusation. There is no real benefit in accusing someone of not reading the article. This seems like a case of fostering civil discussion without losing any clarity. Since "you must not have read the article." or "did you even read the article?" adds nothing to the discussion.
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  People have pride. publicly claiming they messed up is a direct challenge , and it will hurt that pride. regardless of whether or not they did. When you hurt that pride, conversations go sour. And, in all fairness, do we expect someone to say “well, gosh, you’re right; I did indeed mess up. Sorry!” You can probably imagine that’s not how people work. It’s a rule because of the effect it has on the conversation that follows, not because it is Just or Unjust. In that sense, HN is not like a court. As much as people, at times, seem to think it is :p

yashap 8y ago

On top of people wanting privacy about that stuff, there’s also probably enough there to get through a lot of “password recovery questions”, for sites that have those. Especially if they can get similar info about your family (through the same FB breach). Too often an email address plus correct answers to questions like “what’s your mother’s birthplace?”, “what’s your fathers middle name?”, “what’s your favourite hockey team” are used to prove identity online, and these types of questions could be very answerable from this breach.

jjeaff 8y ago

Can you have that information entered into Facebook without then showing to anyone but yourself? If so, why would you have the info in there? If not, and as is common, you allow friends to see it, then that information is basically public anyway unless you are very, very selective in who you accept as a friend. Even when being selective, there is no identity verification, so it is common for spammers or data collectors to simply make an account using the name and profile pic of any of your friends and requesting to be your friend.

barkingcat 8y ago
yes facebook forces you to put in phone number for example, for "backup authentication" "verification" purposes, and if you don't want to show that to your friends or the public you must set it to private. The default is something like "show to all friends" There are many preferences in facebook that are like that - unavoidable/impassible fields that ask for info, and then you set it to "private/only yourself" to prevent information leakage, but are set default to world or friend visible. It's a dark pattern that's all over facebook - you will see it if you install the facebook mobile apps - you can't proceed to surf your timeline without clicking through and answering questions sometimes - best thing is to fill in blank/gibberish info, but sometimes phone numbers, etc can't be avoided.