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On a technical level how could Facebook use millions of Gmail passwords?
I don't get how Facebook was able to access millions of GMail accounts using their passwords. It's one thing if the users added some kind of browser app or something like Writely...but how can you access more than a handful of GMail accounts sequencially, from IP's that those users don't use? (Without setting off intrusion captcha's).
Was it done by impersonating the users from their Facebook apps on their phones? (I assume that apps can make HTTP requests).
I'm referring to this story:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19688460
I find it very hard to believe that Google just lets a single IP range sequentially access millions of GMail accounts in a way that doesn't match the users at all, and without getting any suspicious signin messages sent to the users.
What was Facebook's technical scraping means here?
- sarcasmatwork 8y agoI think where you may be confused is the point that people installed the FB app, gave FB access to their contacts and then thus FB has everyone's contacts and uploaded that data. You can ignore or deny the access but most people dont. That's how I understood it. Facebook has multiple IP ranges btw...
- logicallee 8y agoWhy would that require asking for the user's GMail password? (Which is what this outrage was over.) I thought Facebook used the passwords to access GMail?