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People Renting Out Their Facebook Accounts for Cash and Free Laptops
- calgoo 8y agoSo is this a good way to delete your Facebook account and get payed doing it? I wonder if the banned accounts content gets deleted or the login is just blocked.
- vlunkr 8y agoWhen you delete intentionally they claim they delete your data. I have no idea how or why you could get paid for that.
- xfitm3 8y agoI think the distinction is that accounts deleted for abuse may actually be removed. Where accounts voluntarily deleted may just become hidden.
- ryanlol 8y agoAccounts banned for abuse are definitely just banned, and not deleted.
- beatgammit 8y agoMan, I should've abused my account before deleting it. Oops.
- _underfl0w_ 8y agoHuh. Not a bad way to look at it. Run the Chrome extension within a VM or keep whatever laptop/RPi they give you on its own vlan. Might not be too dangerous. Food for thought.
- mehrdadn 8y agoYou'd probably want to get rid of all your Facebook activity first? Otherwise they'd see everything you've ever said or done on Facebook.
- dragonbonheur 8y agoIt's cool that such opportunities exist - basic capitalism. I always thought that Facebook should ether hare revenue for great content with its users (who they like to call their "community" but apparently their door swings only one way) or that companies should emerge that pay users to share ads to their followers as predicted by Bill Gates in "The Road Ahead" and "Business at the Speed of Thought".
- zilian 8y agoSuch as instagram ? «Influencers» paid to post photos with native ads (products).
- dragonbonheur 8y agoAs an option for everyone, not just a select few influencers. You're more likely to buy a Lenovo Carbon laptop if one of your friends post an ad about it than if Kylie Jenner posted about it.
- ryanlol 8y ago>One person who said they analyzed what the Pi was doing found it was buying ads on Facebook as well as connecting to a botnet Why does Buzzfeed assign any credibility to the analysis by a person who claims the raspi "records EVERY KEYSTROKE sent of the network, even SSL connection"? It's really obvious that this guy is completely clueless, he can't even spell "botnet". https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2vd1g8/scam_rentyouraccountdotcom/cq9840d/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2vd1g8/scam_rentyour... Props to buzzfeed for finding some really funny reddit posts though, like this one where the guy goes on a paranoid fit and cancels his bank cards(???) after finding his roommates raspi https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9ixdh9/found_hooked_up_to_my_router/e6nh61r/ https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9ixdh9/fou...
- 1337biz 8y agoIt is buzzfeed after all. They are just living up to their reputation.
- mtnGoat 8y agoFacebook has done a good job of choking this practice. I think this article had a lot of fear mongering and speculation in it, doesn't appear that he spoke to anyone on the other side of this. It's profitable, but I wouldn't say wildly successful. On the flip side, I'm not sure how important choking it off completely really is to facebook, why get rid of ad revenue if you can pretend to chase the bad guys and keep everyone happy?
- mic47 8y ago> On the flip side, I'm not sure how important choking it off completely really is to facebook, why get rid of ad revenue if you can pretend to chase the bad guys and keep everyone happy? It's pretty important. In short, there is no incentive for FB to really keep "bad" ads, "fake" accounts, "spammy" pages and so on, as it creates crappy experience for user. If Facebook would be full of fake accounts, the there would be less people using it, and ads would be less effective (that means less money for FB). If there would be shitty ads, people would use more ad-blockers... Disclaimer: I worked in Facebook's anti-spam team for couple of years.
- mtnGoat 8y agoI guess this makes sense in the light that fb claims to have a shortage of inventory, so maybe they don't need the money and they are trying harder then it appears. That said there are some obvious and simple ways to kill this at the root that fb seems to have been ignoring for years. Maybe they are just obvious from the outside looking in when you know how the black hats operate these endeavors.
- mic47 8y ago> Maybe they are just obvious from the outside looking in when you know how the black hats operate these endeavors. Or, they are just obvious from the outside when you haven't actually tried to solve that problem, but that solution actually don't work. I've seen a lot of "why don't you just do X" in my career questions, where X is something that looks good on first attempt, but in fact is really easy to circumvent by any blackhat (or it was even tried and it didn't work). I am not saying that your solution don't work, but without you saying which it is, it's impossible to judge.
- stevespang 8y agoWow, but if users have already decided to quit Facebook - - what a great way to make money of Zuckerberg, for all the money he's made of selling your private data ? Is that a huge sucking sound I here ?
- lelandgaunt 8y agoIf you can’t delete, rent it out for abuse. Data will become so unreliable it should hurt their advertising business models. Similar to “social cooling”.
- lphnull 8y agoI wholeheartedly agree with this comment. I recently had my facebook account "accidentally reactivated" against my will after I had deactivated it on facebook. I deactivated it a second time, and am currently hoping that it doesn't "come back to life" again for one reason or another. The last time it happened, it was because I was right in the middle of a big california fire and I think facebook was trying to be "helpful" or something by giving me the option of alerting family members that I was okay. I wouldn't mind deleting everything, loading up facebook onto a VPN-facing VM and selling it for cash and watching it burn. Maybe my old account would become so cluttered with garbage, that they'll be forced to finally let me open up a blank new account with nothing on it that I'll park and forget the password to one day. Only then will the illusion of privacy finally be complete.
- the_duke 8y agoThen just permanently delete your account instead of deactivating it?
- scottlocklin 8y agoFWIIW it doesn't really delete the data here either. Citation: I deleted my account, asked friends if my side of old conversations was still there. It is.
- the_duke 8y agoThat would be a big violation of EU laws. Maybe it depends on jurisdiction.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
- smelendez 8y agoI'm curious whether this is actually as dangerous as the article implies for the people participating. Obviously for most people on HN installing random software and turning over the keys to a social media account is a bad idea. But I know people who have mostly quit Facebook and have an old laptop lying around they never really use with nothing particularly sensitive on it. Now morally it sounds like this is a bad idea, since the ads are promoting sketchy drugs and gambling. But as far as computer security risk? I'm not sure.
- ryanlol 8y ago>I'm curious whether this is actually as dangerous as the article implies for the people participating. It almost certainly is not. There's no reason these guys would be significantly more likely to screw you over than literally any software vendor. Lots of weird scaremongering in the article: >“They can easily install a backdoor or steal your personal files including but not limited to personal photos, electronic tax records, banking information, etc,” he said. ... Yeah? It's perfectly normal for people to pay money for software capable of doing all these things. On the other hand, these account rental people are actually compensating you. I wonder how this guy would feel about Steam for example, millions of people paying for videogames that can easily install a backdoor or steal your personal files.
- mehrdadn 8y ago> There's no reason these guys would be significantly more likely to screw you over than literally any software vendor. No reason? Compared to literally any software vendor? The fact that their entire business model revolves around shady if not illegal practices designed to circumvent others' terms of service isn't a reason?
- ryanlol 8y agoWhy would that be a reason? Why would they want to harm their existing business by acting like that? How would they benefit anyway? Installs aren't worth shit. They'd be better off going to a forum and buying thousands of installs for their malware if they wanted to spy on people, the kinds of people renting out their facebook accounts certainly won't be particularly interesting targets. If someone wanted to "install a backdoor or steal your personal files including but not limited to personal photos, electronic tax records, banking information, etc," this would be the worst imaginable way of achieving that.
- aboutruby 8y agoWhen will people rent Hacker News accounts?
- ams6110 8y agoWho says that isn't already happening?
- devereaux 8y agoFB may not like it, but I just see that as the free market correcting the inadequate price of FB ads. The marginal cost of a FB ad is about 0. If the price charged differs too much from that, resourceful companies will move in to fix that situation! Anyway, people can (and do) post stupid stuff that litters other people feed. If companies move in and arbitrage, giving money to people and reducing the cost of FB ads for companies, I see that as brilliant! Besides the difference of intent, it is in practice no different than this weird family member we all have who's spreading questionable content. At least they'll get something out of it!
- EasyTiger_ 8y ago'Buzzfeed News' are completely unreliable, why are they being posted here?
- 14 8y agoCould facebook not easily destroy these companies? I mean facebook could sign up for literally thousands of these accounts and the article even lists many of the sites that will buy accounts. Then after receiving payment let the guys run the ads so you can get a sense of their campaign and just shadow ban anything they do. The companies would be paying for useless accounts and eventually lose all their money. Is there a reason facebook would not do this?
- toufiqbarhamov 8y agoIs there any reason FaceBook would want to crack down this? It doesn’t hurt their metrics of “Daily Active Users” or cut into their as revenue. It’s not as though they care about integrity after all!
- bpicolo 8y agoIf Facebook wanted these parties to buy ads, they wouldn't have to pay users to hijack their facebook accounts in order to do it.
- sokoloff 8y agoI tend to agree with you, but it wouldn't be the first time that a company came out with a policy to block some action with a super-obvious (and likely intended) workaround or loophole that they have no inclination to close.
- toss1 8y agoThis is yet another reason that FB should be transparent about adverts run on their system. In other media, all adverts are visible to all. FB should publish a searchable DB of every advert live, with parameters used and general info about purchaser. They would then effectively crowdsource the policing of the ad network. The Russian dezinformatsiya & influence campaign that they missed in 2015-16 would have been quickly flagged, to all of our benefit. Also scams -- all it would take is one motivated person with decent search skills to track it down. As it is today, a total black box, thousands of ads can run that nobody notices, and do real harm, and it's directed at the FB user base.
- lclarkmichalek 8y agoI think https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/ might do what you want. You can also view the ads that individual pages run if you go to their pages (it's under the 'Info and Ads' tab) (I work for FB)
- toss1 8y agoCool, looks like a good start! Can it be accessed via an API so that journalists can monitor activities of various groups? Any reason it is restricted to just political topics, and how do you expand or limit that inclusion?
- b_tterc_p 8y agoI assumed these were scams to get unique combinations of emails and passwords. Surprised they’re real. What’s to stop people from generating new accounts and signing them up?