26 ms·

Who is Facebook's mysterious “Lan Tim 2”?

657 points by edent 7y ago

peter_retief 7y ago
A good reason not to have facebook on your phone or create a facebook account linked to you cell number.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  One of many good reasons.
- zeveb 7y ago
  Interesting … it occurs to me that Signal ties everything to phone numbers, and is presumably able to see which phone numbers are communicating with one another (since they route messages between accounts and don't use private information retrieval). I wonder if they resell any of that information.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Signal doesn't know who sent most messages between friends. Signal users have a "profile" which is encrypted, and their device can give the keys to other people. By default it'll give keys to Contacts you message on Signal, and this encrypted profile has more keys and tokens inside it that people can use to send you stuff. So when you send a Signal message to your friend Alice, what Signal sees is that somebody sent this encrypted message, which comes with a token proving Alice authorised somebody to send her a message. Alice's device decrypts the message, and in doing so it decrypts a MAC which it can then examine to prove that this is a message from zeveb (or Alice has faked a message to herself but like, why?). Signal never learns who you were in this process. So, if you use Signal to communicate with strangers and they haven't overridden the defaults (you can say you love strangers and don't mind spam, in which case this Sealed Sender technology works for anybody sending you messages) they would if they wanted to be able to figure out this relationship, and then monetize it. They explicitly promise not to, but I guess if you want to you could believe that Signal is the problem and we shouldn't worry about Facebook. I definitely have a bridge for sale you should enquire about, also that big iron tower in France? I can get you a good deal on the scrap.
    - zeveb 7y ago
      > Signal doesn't know who sent most messages between friends. Why not? They know which device sent the message (because Signal were sent it) and they know which device received it (because Signal sent it). I know that they have some really clever ways to forget the sender information and still route the messages, but we really don't know that they actually do forget it. > They explicitly promise not to, but I guess if you want to you could believe that Signal is the problem and we shouldn't worry about Facebook. I think Facebook is a far greater problem, but I also worry that Signal is a problem too. It's not either/or but both/and.
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        > They know which device sent the message (because Signal were sent it) "Which device" here meaning they have an origin IP address for the traffic? Is that what you think most people mean by "sender" ? Like, who sent this postcard "A pillar box in Westminster, London" ? If your quibble was that this isn't technically completely anonymous I'm down with that. But the original claim was that Signal can tie this to a phone number, and "We could tell the IP address of the sending device" isn't that at all. If you are worried about IP addresses then just as with literally everything else the only effective way to hide your IP is Tor. But then why bring Signal into this?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bayareabronco 7y ago
"This is a summary of the 931 apps and websites that have shared your activity." And "Some of your activity may not appear here." Holy cow!
- XCSme 7y ago
  "This is a summary of the 285 apps and websites that have shared your activity." hmmm, that's more than I expected. A lot of them are from sites which probably had a Facebook pixel on them.
- fullstop 7y ago
  "This is a summary of the 16 apps and websites that have shared your activity." Not bad!
- blackearl 7y ago
  Only 4 for me, woot!
- code_duck 7y ago
  I only had half a dozen, all from the last month. This is pretty surprising. I use Instagram regularly, though I only sign into Facebook occasionally. All of the activity I had was from games that I casually installed and then deleted in the past month. These are games that I signed into with Google Play, which displayed advertisements primarily for Facebook. Speaking of which, some of Facebook's advertisements are absurd. https://i.redd.it/czyfotsak2l41.jpg https://i.redd.it/czyfotsak2l41.jpg "Start Reacting Today".
  - danlugo92 7y ago
    AI-made ad?
- zhte415 7y ago
  Delete Facebook. I did so years ago. Get out of their web.
  - 7y ago
saagarjha 7y ago
> It goes to show, Facebook's level of transparency of data isn't good enough. I'm actually quite (pleasantly) surprised that Facebook provides this information, and somewhat curious why the author is angry at them rather than "Lan Tim 2".
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  Maybe because Facebook doesn't tell you anything past "Lan Tim 2" so how do you know who to be angry with? Who is "Lan Tim 2"? What business or what transaction is behind that entry?
  - pbalau 7y ago
    Maybe facebook doesn't know who is behind Lan Tim 2.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      If Facebook doesn't know this, then things are far worse with Facebook than I thought. At a minimum, they should know who is feeding them data just as much as they should know who they're giving data to.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- edent 7y ago
  I'm not angry, just disappointed... The problem is, they don't give me any meaningful data other than a code name and an incorrect date. If they'd said "This is from Company X on or around date Y regarding action Z" that would be more transparent, and more useful.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Fair, but they might not always have that data. As the other examples show, they do provide human-facing company names; perhaps in this case there was none and/or "Lan Tim 2" are the ones that handle all this without Facebook knowing what's going on behind them.
s3r3nity 7y ago
As anyone who is, or has, worked in ad-tech would tell you, this is pretty _tame_ in terms of the "offline conversion problem." When there are $billions$ of dollars at stake for this type of information, you can guarantee there will be many companies attacking this problem. Therefore, not to be a pessimist, but if you think that 1) using a fake cell number on Facebook is going to help or that 2) there aren't services like Google doing this already, potentially with just as good match rates as Facebook, or 3) that using Firefox + adblock is all you need, then you're going to be constantly plugging holes in a leaking boat.
- dangerface 7y ago
  Working in ad-tech I know these problems are ubiquitous but apart from trying to patch these issues when we notice them in whatever in significant ways we can what else can you do?
  - numpad0 7y ago
    Spinning it in a way that doing it becomes a threat to business continuity? If they’re deducted $0.15 from income, paid to you, on spot each time they query that information, or if it adds 0.015% to probability of their stock crashing in that quarter quantifiably, then I’d expect it’ll be gone forever before any of their C-class stands up for some coffee next time. The reality is roughly reverse of that.
    - dangero 7y ago
      Interesting point. Can you imagine how the attitude around facebook would change instantly if they started profit sharing with their users?
      - mokus 7y ago
        Paying facebook’s users for facebook’s spy network isn’t quite the right [dis]incentive though. I don’t use Facebook but they still pay others to spy on me. Those others should have to pay me for the spying they do on me.
scottmcleod 7y ago
This is seriously just a purchase event for a t-shirt that OP got. There is no mysterious Lan Tim 2 its just a random app for a random merchant that uses FB Ads and uses offline conversion / uploads.
- jstanley 7y ago
  Why do Facebook get that information though? It's fine that OP bought a t-shirt, not fine that that is somehow reported to Facebook.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Quite simply so that "lan tim 2" can track their customer acquisition, they give the data to FB, FB correlate it with "did the customer see ads on our network, which ones, how often, etc." and give that back to the supplier.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Hello stasi
    - jiofih 7y ago
      Which means they are sharing their entire customer activity, everyone, including personal data you never forfeited for this purpose (like the phone number / address used for shipping).
      - Biganon 7y ago
        Yeah, I'm not sure I understood OP's innuendo at the end, but this is totally against GDPR right?
        kuu 7y ago
        GDPR only applies in EU
notyourday 7y ago
Camera! My bloody camera application that came with a phone pushes activity to facebook! Google Chromecast shares activity with facebook!
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Makes me wonder how much Samsung is paid to have fb spyware shipped in their phones
- jeroenhd 7y ago
  Based on some of the network analysis I did on my phone, I think this is related to Facebook's analytics engine. Most apps I've seen communicate with graph.facebook.com to send telemetry (when which screen was opened etc.). It wouldn't be beyond Facebook to immediately connect that telemetry to your user profile, making these apps show up in your profile.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    Why would Google send anything to Facebook from its Home app ( the one used to control Chromecasts )? It's beyond short sighted to feed data to a competitor.
    - teejmya 7y ago
      In what world are these two competitors? Would people "quit" Facebook to "join" Google? You are the product in both of these companies, why wouldn't they work together? Ethics, sure, but that won't stop them.
      - notyourday 7y ago
        They have the same customers and customers have a finite advertising budgets. When Facebook gets more Google data it benefits the "result" of the ads on facebook which in turn over time gets more $$ shifted there.
awinder 7y ago
This seems like a decent level of effort to build out especially if it’s to become an effective thing. What’s driving it, is it to show that facebook ads are delivering a total value in excess of the online conversions? Is this being done because there’s questions over Facebook ads value return? Are we sure that Facebook ads even do deliver good value prop, like is this program showing successful linkage / is that linkage ad-related or organic?
tim_sw 7y ago
Facebook also tracks your location via phones and has your location history - not sure if this is surfaced in this latest attempt at transparency https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/understanding-updates-to-your-devices-location-settings/ https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/understanding-updates-to-y...
- wil421 7y ago
  If you don’t have the app does the website track your location on mobile or desktop?
  - edent 7y ago
    If you have given the FB website permission to use your browser's location, then it could track you. If you haven't, the best it can do is IP location. For example, if you try to login from an unknown computer, you'll get an email asking if it was you - that usually contains a rough location based on IP.
  - tim_sw 7y ago
    I am not sure because they could still potentially get it via their SDKs.
hadrien01 7y ago
This is in blatant violation of GDPR. At what moment did you as a user authorize Spreadshirt to communicate your private information to its partner "Lan Tim 2", and how does "Lan Tim 2" assume it can transfer your data to Facebook?
- ajross 7y ago
  Lan Tim 2 was a subcontractor for the merchandise, and probably shipped it themselves. I'm no expert on the GDPR but I'm sure it has some kind of carve out for this kind of (very traditional, very routine) business arrangement. The sharing with Facebook seems presumptively illegal. But I'm guessing the author isn't in Europe.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Nope, GDPR (and similar legislation before it) is explicit, you (even an individual "Sole Trader" in the course of business) need to explicitly get permission to store or process people's personal information and you need to explain what will get done with it. You can't say "Eh, you know, stuff" and you aren't allowed to change your mind without requesting fresh permission (which obviously most users won't grant). You also need to make it possible for anybody to see what you've stored about them, and ensure you fix any mistakes promptly. You might get away with being somewhat vague about who needs it, e.g. maybe you can say "Our delivery contractors need to know your address" and not spell out which companies you've contracted with for delivery. But it's on you, the outfit the user gave their personal information to, to enforce that e.g. "This phone number is for calling our recipient about the delivery, you can't keep it after the delivery is successful and you can't give it to anybody else" through contractual arrangements or whatever other reasonable legal steps. I am in Europe (though it's England, so eventually no longer subject to EU regulations sadly but it does have a Data Protection law anyway) and I see this "Lan Tim 2" crap in my Facebook as well. If I have bought anything from Spreadshirt it was months (maybe years?) before the supposed "Off-Facebook interaction" listed by Lan Tim 2. I actually wouldn't be astonished if this comes down to: * There's an incentive (maybe not by Facebook) to create tremendous numbers of "Interactions". * It is possible to create fake Interactions by generating garbage, e.g. lists of randomly chosen phone numbers or email addresses and sending them to Facebook. * So somebody creates accounts maybe initially with real business names "South China Air Freight Inc." and then they get lazy "So Lee" ... "Lan Tim" ... "Lan Tim 2" and they upload random garbage to harvest the incentive. * This publicity drives Facebook to eliminate the incentive or make it too hard to upload garbage so that the incentive isn't worth it, and the "problem" goes away.
martinko 7y ago
I am stunned that despite having ublock origin and privacy badger in chrome, I still see numerous sites sharing my data. What plugin disables this?
- notRobot 7y ago
  None of them. You sign up to a website, they'll get your name, username, email and turn it over to FB.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    I made the mistake of using the same "throwaway" email address for Facebook as all my online orders. Of course many of the stores uploaded their data on me to Facebook... The bitchy thing is, even an Android app like MX Player or Maps.ME was sending events to Facebook, but FB's JSON just said "custom event"...
- tablethnuser 7y ago
  You have little control over businesses transmitting purchase data to Facebook or other data aggregators. Best you can do is withhold information at time of purchase. Use cash, don't give your email, phone number, etc. Some businesses are clever and dangle a carrot with the request for PII such as emailing you the receipt or texting you status updates. You will have to learn to be "that guy" and politely refuse, or give bogus information.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- olex 7y ago
  You need something like Multi-account Containers in Firefox to fully isolate Facebook from anything else. Basically if you are signed into Facebook in the browser, they can track you across any sites that use their Like buttons, comments or just tracking pixels. Some of it is blocked by Privacy Badger, FF built-in tracking protection and the like, but not all. By using a container to isolate Facebook's session from other tabs, you can prevent that.
huhtenberg 7y ago
> Suppose I go to a restaurant, and I booked using my name and phone number. The restaurant sends that data to Facebook to say "Terence Eden ate at this restaurant on this day." Do I read this correctly that a restaurant will just dump its complete visitor log to FB and then let FB "sort it out". Meaning that FB gets to vacuum the info on everyone including those without FB accounts?
- eli 7y ago
  https://www.facebook.com/business/help/155437961572700?id=565900110447546 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/155437961572700?id=56...
  - Jerry2 7y ago
    Why are all these companies giving data to FB? What are they getting in return? I've looked at this page and they don't mention benefits to businesses at all.
    - orhanhh 7y ago
      I assume they are able to target these users with advertisements (by paying Facebook money..)
    - notatoad 7y ago
      >"see your results in Events Manager and Facebook ads reporting." businesses want to see if their ads are working. by uploading their visitor records, they can get reports of how many people who saw their ads visited the restaurant.
    - rhizome 7y ago
      Better placement in search and greater reach with posts, I'm sure. That's pretty much all FB can use to trade without displaying a currency sign anywhere.
    - nsx147 7y ago
      FB has an analytics platform that businesses can use - like a mixpanel/amplitude/google analytics. https://analytics.facebook.com https://analytics.facebook.com
evanb 7y ago
If it is Spreadshirt, doesn't going by `Lan Tim 2' violate Facebooks real names policy? Or is that just for peons?
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  From the article, it sounds like Spreadshirt outsources its manufacturing. (Just guessing, but they may even do drop shipping.) There's no specific reason to believe this isn't the real name of the manufacturer. I tried to find more information about Lan Tim to see if that's likely the case, but I couldn't, but that's not very conclusive.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
So one of the comments on the post got my pressure up before coffee had a chance to kick in: "It's just offline conversion events being uploaded so you'd stop getting these ads, or so they can market to you again in the future. You purchased this product, gave them a phone number.. Not sure where the issue lies? You agreed to the terms on Spreadshirt which is probably where you opted for marketing." This is the basic approach. You give it to us. You agree to whatever we put in legalese and now we can do whatever we want. What? It is disheartening, but I agree with the rest of the posts on HN that it is not at all surprising. I just don't know how to approach it.
- floren 7y ago
  Yeah it's amazing, that guy typed out the whole comment and hit submit and apparently never once thought, "Wait, really? Is this what I do? Am I... scum?"
  - TaylorGood 7y ago
    Sounds like that guy is Mr. Spreadshirt.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    It reminds me of a landlord who charged me $300 for returning my girlfriend's key late since she was out of town. I talked to him before and he said oh sure, no problem just bring it by the office... Then charged $50 a day. Of course, anyone decent would have warned me or not charged me. His defense for this was that "the contract allows me to do that".
    - sneak 7y ago
      Signed and negotiated real estate contracts are pretty much the definition of informed consent. You explicitly agreed to those terms. I think it is entirely decent to stick to the defined, mutually agreed terms.
      - tialaramex 7y ago
intsunny 7y ago
I also have "Lan Tim 2" in my account. But I've never even heard of Spreadshirt until now. Strange.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  It's shown on my account too, it's the only thing shown. I use a Container to ensure Facebook doesn't connect my presence there to anything else, but evidently "Lan Tim 2" wasn't fooled and somehow connected... something to that account. I also have access to an account for a fictitious member of an old web comedy group I was part of. They don't have anything from Lan Tim 2, but Lê Linh did register some "Off-Facebook Activity". Which is impressive for a person who doesn't even exist. Good quality data, obviously, from both Lan Tim 2 and Lê Linh.
easytiger 7y ago
Just checked mine. Literally hundreds of entries. 700+ Crikey. Just downloaded all the data and having a browse. 22k line location file (about 3k locations) stored too. I don't have the app installed on any device i own. I presumed the mobile page wouldn't have permission. Checking the data it does seem to stop when I changed phone (samsung preinstall fb app) $ date -d @1495296127 Sat 20 May 17:02:07 BST 2017 $ date -d @1573424412 Sun 10 Nov 22:20:12 GMT 2019 What are they doing with ancient location data? Also have every deliveroo purchase I've made in there they have an entry for every deliveroo purchase i've made { "name": "Deliveroo", "events": [ { "id": 4538632xxxx, "type": "SUBMIT_APPLICATION", "timestamp": 1583216215 }, { "id": 33897312xxxx, "type": "PURCHASE", "timestamp": 1583146135 }, { "id": 3389731270xxxxxx, "type": "PURCHASE", "timestamp": 1582371142 },
- papito 7y ago
  Delete Facebook.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    Deleting Facebook doesn't mean they won't stop stalking you. In this case it isn't about Facebook collecting data about you, it's about other companies willingly sending data to Facebook. Deleting your Facebook account won't stop those companies from sending data to them. The solution is to stop doing business with all the companies that did share data with Facebook, whenever possible.
  - 101404 7y ago
    That just means you can't download your own data anymore. Fb will still collect it though. And no, GDPR will not stop them. The privacy guys here in Europe only go after small businesses, sadly.
- landgenoot 7y ago
  I am facing the same problem. Never installed the Facebook app anywhere, but still seeing recent stuff from apps that I have installed on my Samsung. The only thing I did was logging in to Facebook via the browser on my phone. Wait... I logged in to Tinder with Facebook on my phone. That how the Facebook SDK probably found out.
misiti3780 7y ago
Interesting and scary post. But raises a more important question: If you are reading this and don't like it - why do you still have a FB account?
- edent 7y ago
  Because humans are a social species. Abstinence is unrealistic for most people https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/abstinence-isnt-safe-why-quitting-social-media-isnt-the-solution/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/abstinence-isnt-safe-why-qu...
  - ablation 7y ago
    That’s a bit of a flawed argument. Facebook isn’t the only place online or offline where humans can socialise. Making the argument that staying with Facebook just for one potential (and flawed) avenue for socialising is to ignore myriad other ways to socialise.
    - dhosek 7y ago
      Except that it's where the people that I would choose to socialize are. My twitter social graph is has nearly no overlap with my FB graph. For me twitter is mostly writers/literary types, FB is mostly people I know in real life (although most of my interaction on FB has been with interest-based communities for which no analogue exists outside of FB). That said, I'm doing a social media fast for Lent. It's entirely possible that when Easter comes I might not go back to either Twitter or Facebook.
    - banads 7y ago
      Comparing not using FB to complete social and sexual abstinence is quite absurd indeed; like an alcoholic who knows its bad for them but doesn't want to stop going to bars and clubs because they think that's the only way they can socialize and find sexual partners.
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      I deleted my Facebook account some years ago. Even when I had one, most of my friends used it as a micro blog, image host, or free ad platform (e.g. "network marketing"), and the amount of meaningful socializing was slim to none. Most of my socializing has been and continues to be done in person, over text, or over email. I do miss out on updates from distant family and friends, but the interaction on Facebook was always shallow anyway, so I don't feel like I'm missing much.
mstg 7y ago
Using Facebook for Business does not violate GDPR as long as it's stated in the privacy policy. Which for example Airbnb do mention (https://www.airbnb.com/terms/privacy_policy#sec201910_4 https://www.airbnb.com/terms/privacy_policy#sec201910_4). Other situations where Facebook processes data sent by third parties to show relevant ads for said third party and not use the data to match for other ads is also legal under GDPR, since Facebook only acts as a data processor to act on behalf of said third party. When ordering from Spreadshirt, you may be ordering from a partner that uses Facebook for Business and their privacy policy apply to you. This is also stated in Spreadshirt's privacy policy. GDPR is not an umbrella protection for all type of tracking, even though it usually is brought up as such. It only makes sure you have insight in what is getting shared, a way to export, modify and delete said information. In shop/partner situations, you have to contact the partner to request deletion as the shop is not responsible after your approval. I may be completely wrong, but this is my general understanding.
- robin_reala 7y ago
  Just putting it in the privacy policy isn’t good enough. The general consensus is that unless you’re claiming another legal basis for your processing of data (which would be hard to argue here), consent needs to be informed, opt-in, and granular per usage. I don’t see evidence of that in this story.
Vinnl 7y ago
A bit off-topic, but does any one know how to get to the Off-Facebook Activity page by clicking through the interface? I've only seen links to it in articles, but I'd like to be able to show it to people who are logged in to Facebook.
- kevinastone 7y ago
  On the web, it's Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> Off-Facebook Activity.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    Thanks!
cfv 7y ago
When the game is at this stage it's better to just not play. When an advertising platform has to pay fartsniffers to follow you around to offer marginally better ctr than email spam, maybe just don't run ads? Work manually on growing networks of users, actually walk up to them and chat, talk in relevant business forums and you won't spend thousands of dollars you don't have casting a net in hopes of finding people who more likely than not just don't want to be associated with your practices.
- ainiriand 7y ago
  That is very true. Also the Google Page Rank has evolved strongly towards that direction. If you have meaningful content, praised by your peers, you get better organic traffic.
AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
I have LAN TIM 2 on my facebook account and I have never bought anything from spreadshirt. Moreover my facebook account is just a dummy one which only has the bare minimum of information to own my business page, which I don't even post to (I have dedicated social media people who do that). Facebook doesn't even have my phone number, only my name and my business email address. Very creepy.
- Balgair 7y ago
  > I have LAN TIM 2 on my facebook account and I have never bought anything from spreadshirt. Lan Tim 2 is likely a contract manufacturer. Spreadshirt outsources the production of their t-shirts to Lan Tim 2. Likely, many companies do this as well. Lan Tim 2 probably does more than just t-shirts. It's like with most craft beer sold in cans. The individual breweries cannot supply the demand for their product, so they have another company that specializes in mass production do it according to their recipe. The contract manufacturer is likely the one giving data to FB, not the spreadshirt.
  - AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
    I can confidently say i've never bought any t-shirts. Perhaps they do other whitelabel manufacturing, but I just looked through my emails a week around the date and I don't see anything it could be. Also keep in mind the only thing tied to my FB account is my work email (and my name I suppose), which I definitely didn't order anything with.
jkaplowitz 7y ago
I've never made a Facebook account because I haven't wanted to agree to their data collection practices, terms of service, privacy policy, etc. How can I see what they have on me without agreeing to those things? (At minimum they should have records of their attempts to recruit me as an employee, but I never initiated those and never proceeded beyond a polite "no thanks" email reply.) I don't get the benefit of GDPR or CCPA since I live in Quebec, Canada rather than the EU or California. But, I wonder if there's a way for me to send a request based on Canadian or Quebec privacy law, since they do have an office and plenty of users here in Quebec? Or have they effectively firewalled that stuff off from whatever entity controls or processes the data?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > How can I see what they have on me without agreeing to those things? You can't. It's part of the perversity that is Facebook -- in order to be able to see (and delete-ish) the data they have about you, you need to sign up for an account and give them more data about you.
CrankyBear 7y ago
It's really pretty simple. If you use Facebook to login to other services, they're connected. If you're concerned about it, don't use Facebook as your ticket to all the other services out there.
- zimbu668 7y ago
  That is not true, I have never used FaceBook login for anything, and certainly not for the 12 services listed in my "Off-Facebook Activity" tab.
  - rolph 7y ago
    i just get a facebook loginpage when i click the link. I dont use facebook thus dont have an account and never have. I wonder what is the difference?
- cmauniada 7y ago
  It's not just about facebook logins. Any website that you visit can send information to facebook and that's where most of these websites are sharing info with facebook. I just checked my own off-facebook activity and I am blown away at just how much information is available on me. They have a fairly concise list of all the websites that I have visited in the past month, none of which I used facebook for logging in.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Not using Facebook to log into services does not exclude you from this. Almost all mobile games I've used (and only those) are listed on my FB activity despite not giving them my login or even having the Facebook or Messenger apps installed. I think this may be by correlating the Android advertising ID?
- sneak 7y ago
  Facebook has your phone number even if you've never used Facebook, because all of your friends that have your name and phone number in their address book uploaded their complete address books to Facebook. Then, when you use another service, and don't even create an account or log in, and simply provide that service with your phone number (e.g. OpenTable, Deliveroo, AirBnb, others), and then that service provides a complete log of all of their transactions to Facebook with phone numbers and email addresses, now Facebook can associate your purchase history with your name, email address, and phone number provided to them by your contacts. It's called a Shadow Profile. It has nothing to do with "us[ing] Facebook as your ticket to all the other services". They track you even if you don't have a Facebook account at all, and don't create accounts on other sites, simply through your telephone number or email address. I wouldn't be surprised if they're also storing credit card numbers (or one-way hashes thereof) to cross-link purchases, too.
sneak 7y ago
This is a good reason to use a service like Burner ( https://www.burnerapp.com/ https://www.burnerapp.com/ ), and also probably to cycle your GSM handset number at your carrier multiple times per year, as TFA notes. (Switch to TOTP or U2F for two factor.) I already use anonymous single-use email addresses for a lot of services (anonaddy.com is good for this), and I think in the future I'm going to just decline to use anything that demands a phone number of me. Far, far too much of it is being sold to third parties as soon as it's obtained by these companies. https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your...
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Ironic that the service that's supposed to protect my privacy redirects me to a tracker (adjust.io) when trying to download their app. I'm also willing to bet good money the app itself will have creepy tracking built-in.
poorman 7y ago
Am I the only one who thinks it would be pretty cool to hook this up as SaaS product that sends me an alert when I get a new offline conversion? Kind of like how my credit card sends me a push notification when I get charged for something. I like the level of transparency it provides. Then you could also do something on a case by case basis where you can click to say “I don’t want Facebook to have this offline conversion.”
settsu 7y ago
Perhaps ironically, I'm frankly astounded at the apparent naïveté still held about Facebook, Google, et al. > I have never used FaceBook [sic] login for anything > Facebook doesn't even have my phone number, only my name and my business email address. People, if any company has A-N-Y-thing that can be associated with you, online or offline, you have no privacy. None. It is gone forever. There is billions of dollars at stake for companies to build as complete a picture as possible of you and every detail of your life. And billions more remains on the table. That is plenty motivation to fuel a highly-lucrative market for accurate, meaningful profiling for years. Sure, there's a long list of actions you could take to begin minimizing your exposure, the practicality of each varying widely. But frankly, most of them would only serve to make going about daily life inconvenient. (And the correlation between effectiveness and convenience isn't 1:1...) The best case scenario is your data becoming stale, such that its values diminishes to a degree that makes it effectively background noise. There is simply no means of unembedding yourself. But also, more discouragingly, for most people there is no practical means to avoid being ingested. edit: grammar
- grecy 7y ago
  > There is billions of dollars at stake for companies to build as complete a picture as possible of you and every detail of your life Do you mean that purely in the sense of marketing and advertising? i.e. they want to market to me as effectively as possible, so that's why they're going to these great lengths?
  - settsu 7y ago
    Yes. Google and Facebook revenues, for example, are almost entirely from advertising and their ad business models hinge on being able to sell their ability to target very precisely. Every data point gathered builds towards a more comprehensive knowledge they have on you. It hardly matters if you never log in to a third-party site using credentials from Facebook/Google/etc., that's just icing on the icing on the icing for them. They'll know if you logged in regardless, as long as their widgets or services are in place on a site. While cookies are certainly the most common means of following you around the internet, there's other means of fingerprinting that, while perhaps not as laser precise, certainly provide more data than most people realize. Why do you think ISPs are so ardently against people's ability to use them as dumb pipes? And why has the smart TV platform landscape grown like gangbusters (spoiler alert: Roku's CEO has outright said why https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595384/roku-ceo-anthony-wood-ads-hardware-business-interview-business-model https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595384/roku-ceo-anthony...)? edit: clarifying grammar
dehrmann 7y ago
A while ago, I switched to per-site email addresses and a burner phone number I give to anything that isn't a financial institution or healthcare provider.
- rsync 7y ago
  Smart. Recommended. Twilio makes this very simple.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Assuming Twilio doesn't leak your data. It doesn't, right?
    - mirthflat83 7y ago
      Hahaha
    - rsync 7y ago
      "Assuming Twilio doesn't leak your data. It doesn't, right?" Twilio has no idea who I am. They have a corporate name and a corporate Visa card.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      Even if Twilio did leak the fact that the author signed up to Facebook it is still a lot better than leaking every single merchant to where the user has been.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Not necessarily. Twilio leaking would mean all the identities you thought were separate are one JOIN away from being aggregated into one. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505464.
        Nextgrid 7y ago
CollinEMac 7y ago
You can deactivate Off Facebook Activity. https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/future_activity https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/future_activi...
- TaylorGood 7y ago
  But the "fear" bit they instill is that it may prevent you from ever logging back into the apps/sites in question.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  You are naive if you actually believe Facebook will actually stop associating the events with your profile just because you disable this setting.
smarri 7y ago
If true, this is absolutely outrageous behaviour from Facebook and companies involved or doing similar things. It's stalking branded as advertising.
Username_TBD 7y ago
Home Depot lets you sign up to have your receipts emailed to you. Turns out if you do this they will send what you purchase to Facebook with your email, which was connected to my account. I use Firefox to avoid being tracked by Facebook, and never login with Facebook. But it looks like I slipped up in signing up for email receipts! Even if I didn't have a Facebook account, Facebook would still be building a profile on me using my email address /phone number in anticipation of the day I made an account.
- weka 7y ago
  I hate this whole new way of handling receipts. If you order via kiosk in Taco Bell, you have your receipt ONLY by text message or email. Yep. No print out option. HOWEVER, if you order via cashier, you CAN print it out.
  - ajkjk 7y ago
    Hard to sympathize. Paper receipts seem like one of those wasteful pointless relics of a bygone era that can't die soon enough.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    "I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut. I give you money and you give me the donut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a donut." --Mitch Hedberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx6uA5aCrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx6uA5aCrE
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Mitch Hedberg is great, but I've expensed Dunkin Donuts while traveling for work many-a-time. And HR/Accounts Payable definitely want to see a receipt... even for a donut.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
bashmelek 7y ago
Is it just coincidence that the name is a lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin
DevKoala 7y ago
I design Ad Tech systems, currently work as an architect for a DSP, and I deleted my Facebook accounts years ago. People who think they are privacy conscious and use Facebook are a living oxymoron.
- burkaman 7y ago
  Why do you build ad tech if you think it's harmful?
  - DevKoala 7y ago
    I moved to B2B, doing ads for companies targeting employees of other companies. Convincing you to buy a bad database is not harmful compared to convincing you buy unhealthy food or feel anxious about not having the latest in fashion.
    - chaps 7y ago
      Have any of the systems you've designed ever been used for something they weren't originally meant for? Will they ever? Do you have any guarantees of that? You can say that the systems that you're building are not being used in a dystopic fashion, but in doing so you're ignoring the fact that you're still building scaffolding for the rest of the industry.
    - burkaman 7y ago
      I agree that sounds less harmful, but why not do something that's not harmful at all? Or maybe even beneficial? Getting a software job is so easy right now. If you don't feel like you're helping the world at all, why do it?
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      Does B2B advertising still rely on stalking and collecting personal data? Personally my problem isn't as much as what the ads are about and more about the data they collect, essentially creating an ever growing liability for me up until the entire thing blows up when the data finally leaks.
soared 7y ago
A few comments and op were trying to align dates listed in fb to dates they made purchases based on cc data and haven’t been successful. I don’t know if it’s the case here, but working with dates in facebook ads is a bit of headache. Those dates might be when the transaction was made, when it processed, when the product was shipped, when the user first saw an as, when they last saw an ad, etc.
jvagner 7y ago
What would a "Real Privacy Problems" website/blog, aimed at individuals/consumers, look like and need to do to be an effective site to a) inform, and b) empower people to hold companies and our governments more accountable for the regulatory and industry environment in which we operate, and c) empower those individuals to make the changes in their own tech and behavior to minimize their own exposure?
JohnFen 7y ago
> Suppose I go to a restaurant, and I booked using my name and phone number. The restaurant sends that data to Facebook to say "Terence Eden ate at this restaurant on this day." Facebook can then tell if I saw an advert which led me to make a purchase. That's just great. So I guess the gift that marketing agencies have given us is that we can't trust anybody. The only thing left to do is go entirely cash-only and never give any personal details to any business whatsoever. The marketing industry has become so toxic that it is now poisoning everything.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Not sure how you got to that conclusion. A simple ad blocker and not using fb would solve this issue entirely. Transaction data like restaurant purchases is only useful in this scenario if it’s linkable to other online tracking data on you.
  - notRobot 7y ago
    That's BS. Even if you don't have an FB account, they can link all the offline places you've been to and purchases you've made through all this data uploaded by merchants. This data can be sold or leaked. And is readily accessible to governments.
  - sedatk 7y ago
    "A simple ad blocker and not using FB would solve this issue entirely". You just killed my aunt.
  - i1856511 7y ago
    Browser ad blocker can't protect you from the actions of restaurant staff, acting on their booking software. Not using fb can't protect you from fb independently creating shadow profiles with triangulation.
    - hammock 7y ago
      >Browser ad blocker can't protect you from the actions of restaurant staff Then use a restaurant details blocker? Celebrities have been doing this since the beginning of time. Use an alias. The notion that physical places of business are collecting our data for their own purpose is not really a new one.
CoryAlexMartin 7y ago
I feel even better about resisting Facebook's attempts to get me to provide my phone number. If I'm remembering right, they had two methods they'd switch between: A. By emphasizing how much more secure it would make my account. B. By telling me how many of my friends have provided theirs, which is a blatant attempt at manipulation via peer-pressure.
- rhizome 7y ago
  OKCupid is making a lot of noise these days about requiring a phone number, right after Facebook themselves had a massive breach (267+ million numbers): https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2019/12/19/267-million-names-and-phone-numbers-leaked-online---and-theyre-all-from-facebook/#3cf81c4c5a6b https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2019/12/19/267-mil... Either it's a bizdev scam that they're all trying to get in on, or they're clueless. I lean toward the latter but expect it to be the former. Surely they can raise ad rates with the extra PII, I'm guessing?
glangdale 7y ago
Ah! This might explain some of the weirder "wow, how could Facebook have known about this short of using the microphone" moments that I've had recently... well, short of either (a) using the microphone or (b) grovelling through vast piles of much more easily accessible external-to-Facebook data. Interesting.
fyp 7y ago
Why the fuck are government websites like coveredca.com sharing information with facebook? I don't use facebook logins with it.
qwertox 7y ago
I just checked, and have "LAN TIM 2" and "DiepTrinh" on my list. The data from "LAN TIM 2" was sent to Facebook on the 5th of March 2020, yesterday that is. The only stores I've shopped at lately were ALDI and EDEKA, and yesterday I bought a Webhosting offer directly at the hoster's site, no third party involved. I have never bought a custom shirt. What I do have is a Motorola G7 Plus, which is filled with uninstallable background services from Facebook. Two days ago I upgraded it to Android 10 and now all those background services, like "Facebook App Manager" or "Facebook Installer", "Facebook Services", all names which truly frighten me, are activated again. I had deactivated them months ago on Android 9 as soon as I got this phone. I really am wondering about the data this phone is pushing to Facebook without my consent. I really wonder what caused those two entries, I never give any consent to any company to share my data. God I hate Facebook, they are the cancer of the internet.
- smtpserver 7y ago
  I have DiepTrinh as well and as I track my expenses I know for sure that I have not bought anything on the day they appeared on my list.
gcbpp 7y ago
the fact there is no "household" or "user targeting" to be found in this comment thread with currently 265 comments tell me there are only clueless pundits. every single advertising company already sell advertisements by "household" where they clump together all accounts assumed to be from one user and their family/roommates, effectively going back to aggregate IP targeting, but not saying its using IPs because that tarnish things with GDPR et al. also, even if not using household, they sell by "people targeting" vs the old "device targeting", which again breaks all account separation people here assume. I strongly suggest people minimally interested in privacy or advertising to create an account with any advertising network, or at the very least look up youtube videos on how marketers create and target campaigns.
etxm 7y ago
As a person that doesn’t use Facebook, the restaurant thing makes me want to punch Facebook employees.
lqs469 7y ago
This reminds me of a meme, "My wife asked why I spoke so softly in house, I said I was afraid Mack Zuckerberg was listening! She laughed, I laughed, Siri laughed, Alexa laughed"
cnxsoft 7y ago
I can just see Facebook know which banking apps/websites I'm using, and I just don't understand why...
vietvu 7y ago
I don't know the technical details, but the name itself looks like Vietnamese name, stripped from Vietnamese accent. The one with accent might be "Lan Tím 2". Also since it is related to Spreadshirt, many Vietnamese are working in t-shirt making MMO, which make it even more suspicious to me.
anotheryou 7y ago
I always prefer to log in not through facebook and voila: no app in my list :) I mean, what did you think happens when you sign up via facebook?
imhoguy 7y ago
This is GDPR bomb.

657 points by edent 7y ago

peter_retief 7y ago

A good reason not to have facebook on your phone or create a facebook account linked to you cell number.

bookofjoe 7y ago
One of many good reasons.
zeveb 7y ago
Interesting … it occurs to me that Signal ties everything to phone numbers, and is presumably able to see which phone numbers are communicating with one another (since they route messages between accounts and don't use private information retrieval). I wonder if they resell any of that information.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Signal doesn't know who sent most messages between friends. Signal users have a "profile" which is encrypted, and their device can give the keys to other people. By default it'll give keys to Contacts you message on Signal, and this encrypted profile has more keys and tokens inside it that people can use to send you stuff. So when you send a Signal message to your friend Alice, what Signal sees is that somebody sent this encrypted message, which comes with a token proving Alice authorised somebody to send her a message. Alice's device decrypts the message, and in doing so it decrypts a MAC which it can then examine to prove that this is a message from zeveb (or Alice has faked a message to herself but like, why?). Signal never learns who you were in this process. So, if you use Signal to communicate with strangers and they haven't overridden the defaults (you can say you love strangers and don't mind spam, in which case this Sealed Sender technology works for anybody sending you messages) they would if they wanted to be able to figure out this relationship, and then monetize it. They explicitly promise not to, but I guess if you want to you could believe that Signal is the problem and we shouldn't worry about Facebook. I definitely have a bridge for sale you should enquire about, also that big iron tower in France? I can get you a good deal on the scrap.
  - zeveb 7y ago
    > Signal doesn't know who sent most messages between friends. Why not? They know which device sent the message (because Signal were sent it) and they know which device received it (because Signal sent it). I know that they have some really clever ways to forget the sender information and still route the messages, but we really don't know that they actually do forget it. > They explicitly promise not to, but I guess if you want to you could believe that Signal is the problem and we shouldn't worry about Facebook. I think Facebook is a far greater problem, but I also worry that Signal is a problem too. It's not either/or but both/and.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      > They know which device sent the message (because Signal were sent it) "Which device" here meaning they have an origin IP address for the traffic? Is that what you think most people mean by "sender" ? Like, who sent this postcard "A pillar box in Westminster, London" ? If your quibble was that this isn't technically completely anonymous I'm down with that. But the original claim was that Signal can tie this to a phone number, and "We could tell the IP address of the sending device" isn't that at all. If you are worried about IP addresses then just as with literally everything else the only effective way to hide your IP is Tor. But then why bring Signal into this?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bayareabronco 7y ago

"This is a summary of the 931 apps and websites that have shared your activity." And "Some of your activity may not appear here." Holy cow!

XCSme 7y ago
"This is a summary of the 285 apps and websites that have shared your activity." hmmm, that's more than I expected. A lot of them are from sites which probably had a Facebook pixel on them.
fullstop 7y ago
"This is a summary of the 16 apps and websites that have shared your activity." Not bad!
blackearl 7y ago
Only 4 for me, woot!
code_duck 7y ago
I only had half a dozen, all from the last month. This is pretty surprising. I use Instagram regularly, though I only sign into Facebook occasionally. All of the activity I had was from games that I casually installed and then deleted in the past month. These are games that I signed into with Google Play, which displayed advertisements primarily for Facebook. Speaking of which, some of Facebook's advertisements are absurd. https://i.redd.it/czyfotsak2l41.jpg https://i.redd.it/czyfotsak2l41.jpg "Start Reacting Today".
- danlugo92 7y ago
  AI-made ad?
zhte415 7y ago
Delete Facebook. I did so years ago. Get out of their web.
- 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

> It goes to show, Facebook's level of transparency of data isn't good enough. I'm actually quite (pleasantly) surprised that Facebook provides this information, and somewhat curious why the author is angry at them rather than "Lan Tim 2".

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
Maybe because Facebook doesn't tell you anything past "Lan Tim 2" so how do you know who to be angry with? Who is "Lan Tim 2"? What business or what transaction is behind that entry?
- pbalau 7y ago
  Maybe facebook doesn't know who is behind Lan Tim 2.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    If Facebook doesn't know this, then things are far worse with Facebook than I thought. At a minimum, they should know who is feeding them data just as much as they should know who they're giving data to.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
edent 7y ago
I'm not angry, just disappointed... The problem is, they don't give me any meaningful data other than a code name and an incorrect date. If they'd said "This is from Company X on or around date Y regarding action Z" that would be more transparent, and more useful.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Fair, but they might not always have that data. As the other examples show, they do provide human-facing company names; perhaps in this case there was none and/or "Lan Tim 2" are the ones that handle all this without Facebook knowing what's going on behind them.

s3r3nity 7y ago

As anyone who is, or has, worked in ad-tech would tell you, this is pretty _tame_ in terms of the "offline conversion problem." When there are $billions$ of dollars at stake for this type of information, you can guarantee there will be many companies attacking this problem. Therefore, not to be a pessimist, but if you think that 1) using a fake cell number on Facebook is going to help or that 2) there aren't services like Google doing this already, potentially with just as good match rates as Facebook, or 3) that using Firefox + adblock is all you need, then you're going to be constantly plugging holes in a leaking boat.

dangerface 7y ago
Working in ad-tech I know these problems are ubiquitous but apart from trying to patch these issues when we notice them in whatever in significant ways we can what else can you do?
- numpad0 7y ago
  Spinning it in a way that doing it becomes a threat to business continuity? If they’re deducted $0.15 from income, paid to you, on spot each time they query that information, or if it adds 0.015% to probability of their stock crashing in that quarter quantifiably, then I’d expect it’ll be gone forever before any of their C-class stands up for some coffee next time. The reality is roughly reverse of that.
  - dangero 7y ago
    Interesting point. Can you imagine how the attitude around facebook would change instantly if they started profit sharing with their users?
    - mokus 7y ago
      Paying facebook’s users for facebook’s spy network isn’t quite the right [dis]incentive though. I don’t use Facebook but they still pay others to spy on me. Those others should have to pay me for the spying they do on me.

scottmcleod 7y ago

This is seriously just a purchase event for a t-shirt that OP got. There is no mysterious Lan Tim 2 its just a random app for a random merchant that uses FB Ads and uses offline conversion / uploads.

jstanley 7y ago
Why do Facebook get that information though? It's fine that OP bought a t-shirt, not fine that that is somehow reported to Facebook.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Quite simply so that "lan tim 2" can track their customer acquisition, they give the data to FB, FB correlate it with "did the customer see ads on our network, which ones, how often, etc." and give that back to the supplier.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Hello stasi
  - jiofih 7y ago
    Which means they are sharing their entire customer activity, everyone, including personal data you never forfeited for this purpose (like the phone number / address used for shipping).
    - Biganon 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm not sure I understood OP's innuendo at the end, but this is totally against GDPR right?
      - kuu 7y ago
        GDPR only applies in EU

notyourday 7y ago

Camera! My bloody camera application that came with a phone pushes activity to facebook! Google Chromecast shares activity with facebook!

raverbashing 7y ago
Makes me wonder how much Samsung is paid to have fb spyware shipped in their phones
jeroenhd 7y ago
Based on some of the network analysis I did on my phone, I think this is related to Facebook's analytics engine. Most apps I've seen communicate with graph.facebook.com to send telemetry (when which screen was opened etc.). It wouldn't be beyond Facebook to immediately connect that telemetry to your user profile, making these apps show up in your profile.
- notyourday 7y ago
  Why would Google send anything to Facebook from its Home app ( the one used to control Chromecasts )? It's beyond short sighted to feed data to a competitor.
  - teejmya 7y ago
    In what world are these two competitors? Would people "quit" Facebook to "join" Google? You are the product in both of these companies, why wouldn't they work together? Ethics, sure, but that won't stop them.
    - notyourday 7y ago
      They have the same customers and customers have a finite advertising budgets. When Facebook gets more Google data it benefits the "result" of the ads on facebook which in turn over time gets more $$ shifted there.

awinder 7y ago

This seems like a decent level of effort to build out especially if it’s to become an effective thing. What’s driving it, is it to show that facebook ads are delivering a total value in excess of the online conversions? Is this being done because there’s questions over Facebook ads value return? Are we sure that Facebook ads even do deliver good value prop, like is this program showing successful linkage / is that linkage ad-related or organic?

tim_sw 7y ago

Facebook also tracks your location via phones and has your location history - not sure if this is surfaced in this latest attempt at transparency https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/understanding-updates-to-your-devices-location-settings/ https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/understanding-updates-to-y...

wil421 7y ago
If you don’t have the app does the website track your location on mobile or desktop?
- edent 7y ago
  If you have given the FB website permission to use your browser's location, then it could track you. If you haven't, the best it can do is IP location. For example, if you try to login from an unknown computer, you'll get an email asking if it was you - that usually contains a rough location based on IP.
- tim_sw 7y ago
  I am not sure because they could still potentially get it via their SDKs.

hadrien01 7y ago

This is in blatant violation of GDPR. At what moment did you as a user authorize Spreadshirt to communicate your private information to its partner "Lan Tim 2", and how does "Lan Tim 2" assume it can transfer your data to Facebook?

ajross 7y ago
Lan Tim 2 was a subcontractor for the merchandise, and probably shipped it themselves. I'm no expert on the GDPR but I'm sure it has some kind of carve out for this kind of (very traditional, very routine) business arrangement. The sharing with Facebook seems presumptively illegal. But I'm guessing the author isn't in Europe.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Nope, GDPR (and similar legislation before it) is explicit, you (even an individual "Sole Trader" in the course of business) need to explicitly get permission to store or process people's personal information and you need to explain what will get done with it. You can't say "Eh, you know, stuff" and you aren't allowed to change your mind without requesting fresh permission (which obviously most users won't grant). You also need to make it possible for anybody to see what you've stored about them, and ensure you fix any mistakes promptly. You might get away with being somewhat vague about who needs it, e.g. maybe you can say "Our delivery contractors need to know your address" and not spell out which companies you've contracted with for delivery. But it's on you, the outfit the user gave their personal information to, to enforce that e.g. "This phone number is for calling our recipient about the delivery, you can't keep it after the delivery is successful and you can't give it to anybody else" through contractual arrangements or whatever other reasonable legal steps. I am in Europe (though it's England, so eventually no longer subject to EU regulations sadly but it does have a Data Protection law anyway) and I see this "Lan Tim 2" crap in my Facebook as well. If I have bought anything from Spreadshirt it was months (maybe years?) before the supposed "Off-Facebook interaction" listed by Lan Tim 2. I actually wouldn't be astonished if this comes down to: * There's an incentive (maybe not by Facebook) to create tremendous numbers of "Interactions". * It is possible to create fake Interactions by generating garbage, e.g. lists of randomly chosen phone numbers or email addresses and sending them to Facebook. * So somebody creates accounts maybe initially with real business names "South China Air Freight Inc." and then they get lazy "So Lee" ... "Lan Tim" ... "Lan Tim 2" and they upload random garbage to harvest the incentive. * This publicity drives Facebook to eliminate the incentive or make it too hard to upload garbage so that the incentive isn't worth it, and the "problem" goes away.

martinko 7y ago

I am stunned that despite having ublock origin and privacy badger in chrome, I still see numerous sites sharing my data. What plugin disables this?

notRobot 7y ago
None of them. You sign up to a website, they'll get your name, username, email and turn it over to FB.
- netsharc 7y ago
  I made the mistake of using the same "throwaway" email address for Facebook as all my online orders. Of course many of the stores uploaded their data on me to Facebook... The bitchy thing is, even an Android app like MX Player or Maps.ME was sending events to Facebook, but FB's JSON just said "custom event"...
tablethnuser 7y ago
You have little control over businesses transmitting purchase data to Facebook or other data aggregators. Best you can do is withhold information at time of purchase. Use cash, don't give your email, phone number, etc. Some businesses are clever and dangle a carrot with the request for PII such as emailing you the receipt or texting you status updates. You will have to learn to be "that guy" and politely refuse, or give bogus information.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
olex 7y ago
You need something like Multi-account Containers in Firefox to fully isolate Facebook from anything else. Basically if you are signed into Facebook in the browser, they can track you across any sites that use their Like buttons, comments or just tracking pixels. Some of it is blocked by Privacy Badger, FF built-in tracking protection and the like, but not all. By using a container to isolate Facebook's session from other tabs, you can prevent that.

huhtenberg 7y ago

> Suppose I go to a restaurant, and I booked using my name and phone number. The restaurant sends that data to Facebook to say "Terence Eden ate at this restaurant on this day." Do I read this correctly that a restaurant will just dump its complete visitor log to FB and then let FB "sort it out". Meaning that FB gets to vacuum the info on everyone including those without FB accounts?

eli 7y ago
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/155437961572700?id=565900110447546 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/155437961572700?id=56...
- Jerry2 7y ago
  Why are all these companies giving data to FB? What are they getting in return? I've looked at this page and they don't mention benefits to businesses at all.
  - orhanhh 7y ago
    I assume they are able to target these users with advertisements (by paying Facebook money..)
  - notatoad 7y ago
    >"see your results in Events Manager and Facebook ads reporting." businesses want to see if their ads are working. by uploading their visitor records, they can get reports of how many people who saw their ads visited the restaurant.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    Better placement in search and greater reach with posts, I'm sure. That's pretty much all FB can use to trade without displaying a currency sign anywhere.
  - nsx147 7y ago
    FB has an analytics platform that businesses can use - like a mixpanel/amplitude/google analytics. https://analytics.facebook.com https://analytics.facebook.com

evanb 7y ago

If it is Spreadshirt, doesn't going by `Lan Tim 2' violate Facebooks real names policy? Or is that just for peons?

adrianmonk 7y ago
From the article, it sounds like Spreadshirt outsources its manufacturing. (Just guessing, but they may even do drop shipping.) There's no specific reason to believe this isn't the real name of the manufacturer. I tried to find more information about Lan Tim to see if that's likely the case, but I couldn't, but that's not very conclusive.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

So one of the comments on the post got my pressure up before coffee had a chance to kick in: "It's just offline conversion events being uploaded so you'd stop getting these ads, or so they can market to you again in the future. You purchased this product, gave them a phone number.. Not sure where the issue lies? You agreed to the terms on Spreadshirt which is probably where you opted for marketing." This is the basic approach. You give it to us. You agree to whatever we put in legalese and now we can do whatever we want. What? It is disheartening, but I agree with the rest of the posts on HN that it is not at all surprising. I just don't know how to approach it.

floren 7y ago
Yeah it's amazing, that guy typed out the whole comment and hit submit and apparently never once thought, "Wait, really? Is this what I do? Am I... scum?"
- TaylorGood 7y ago
  Sounds like that guy is Mr. Spreadshirt.
- code_duck 7y ago
  It reminds me of a landlord who charged me $300 for returning my girlfriend's key late since she was out of town. I talked to him before and he said oh sure, no problem just bring it by the office... Then charged $50 a day. Of course, anyone decent would have warned me or not charged me. His defense for this was that "the contract allows me to do that".
  - sneak 7y ago
    Signed and negotiated real estate contracts are pretty much the definition of informed consent. You explicitly agreed to those terms. I think it is entirely decent to stick to the defined, mutually agreed terms.
    - tialaramex 7y ago

intsunny 7y ago

I also have "Lan Tim 2" in my account. But I've never even heard of Spreadshirt until now. Strange.

tialaramex 7y ago
It's shown on my account too, it's the only thing shown. I use a Container to ensure Facebook doesn't connect my presence there to anything else, but evidently "Lan Tim 2" wasn't fooled and somehow connected... something to that account. I also have access to an account for a fictitious member of an old web comedy group I was part of. They don't have anything from Lan Tim 2, but Lê Linh did register some "Off-Facebook Activity". Which is impressive for a person who doesn't even exist. Good quality data, obviously, from both Lan Tim 2 and Lê Linh.

easytiger 7y ago

Just checked mine. Literally hundreds of entries. 700+ Crikey. Just downloaded all the data and having a browse. 22k line location file (about 3k locations) stored too. I don't have the app installed on any device i own. I presumed the mobile page wouldn't have permission. Checking the data it does seem to stop when I changed phone (samsung preinstall fb app) $ date -d @1495296127 Sat 20 May 17:02:07 BST 2017 $ date -d @1573424412 Sun 10 Nov 22:20:12 GMT 2019 What are they doing with ancient location data? Also have every deliveroo purchase I've made in there they have an entry for every deliveroo purchase i've made { "name": "Deliveroo", "events": [ { "id": 4538632xxxx, "type": "SUBMIT_APPLICATION", "timestamp": 1583216215 }, { "id": 33897312xxxx, "type": "PURCHASE", "timestamp": 1583146135 }, { "id": 3389731270xxxxxx, "type": "PURCHASE", "timestamp": 1582371142 },

papito 7y ago
Delete Facebook.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Deleting Facebook doesn't mean they won't stop stalking you. In this case it isn't about Facebook collecting data about you, it's about other companies willingly sending data to Facebook. Deleting your Facebook account won't stop those companies from sending data to them. The solution is to stop doing business with all the companies that did share data with Facebook, whenever possible.
- 101404 7y ago
  That just means you can't download your own data anymore. Fb will still collect it though. And no, GDPR will not stop them. The privacy guys here in Europe only go after small businesses, sadly.
landgenoot 7y ago
I am facing the same problem. Never installed the Facebook app anywhere, but still seeing recent stuff from apps that I have installed on my Samsung. The only thing I did was logging in to Facebook via the browser on my phone. Wait... I logged in to Tinder with Facebook on my phone. That how the Facebook SDK probably found out.

misiti3780 7y ago

Interesting and scary post. But raises a more important question: If you are reading this and don't like it - why do you still have a FB account?

edent 7y ago
Because humans are a social species. Abstinence is unrealistic for most people https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/abstinence-isnt-safe-why-quitting-social-media-isnt-the-solution/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/02/abstinence-isnt-safe-why-qu...
- ablation 7y ago
  That’s a bit of a flawed argument. Facebook isn’t the only place online or offline where humans can socialise. Making the argument that staying with Facebook just for one potential (and flawed) avenue for socialising is to ignore myriad other ways to socialise.
  - dhosek 7y ago
    Except that it's where the people that I would choose to socialize are. My twitter social graph is has nearly no overlap with my FB graph. For me twitter is mostly writers/literary types, FB is mostly people I know in real life (although most of my interaction on FB has been with interest-based communities for which no analogue exists outside of FB). That said, I'm doing a social media fast for Lent. It's entirely possible that when Easter comes I might not go back to either Twitter or Facebook.
  - banads 7y ago
    Comparing not using FB to complete social and sexual abstinence is quite absurd indeed; like an alcoholic who knows its bad for them but doesn't want to stop going to bars and clubs because they think that's the only way they can socialize and find sexual partners.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    I deleted my Facebook account some years ago. Even when I had one, most of my friends used it as a micro blog, image host, or free ad platform (e.g. "network marketing"), and the amount of meaningful socializing was slim to none. Most of my socializing has been and continues to be done in person, over text, or over email. I do miss out on updates from distant family and friends, but the interaction on Facebook was always shallow anyway, so I don't feel like I'm missing much.

mstg 7y ago

Using Facebook for Business does not violate GDPR as long as it's stated in the privacy policy. Which for example Airbnb do mention (https://www.airbnb.com/terms/privacy_policy#sec201910_4 https://www.airbnb.com/terms/privacy_policy#sec201910_4). Other situations where Facebook processes data sent by third parties to show relevant ads for said third party and not use the data to match for other ads is also legal under GDPR, since Facebook only acts as a data processor to act on behalf of said third party. When ordering from Spreadshirt, you may be ordering from a partner that uses Facebook for Business and their privacy policy apply to you. This is also stated in Spreadshirt's privacy policy. GDPR is not an umbrella protection for all type of tracking, even though it usually is brought up as such. It only makes sure you have insight in what is getting shared, a way to export, modify and delete said information. In shop/partner situations, you have to contact the partner to request deletion as the shop is not responsible after your approval. I may be completely wrong, but this is my general understanding.

robin_reala 7y ago
Just putting it in the privacy policy isn’t good enough. The general consensus is that unless you’re claiming another legal basis for your processing of data (which would be hard to argue here), consent needs to be informed, opt-in, and granular per usage. I don’t see evidence of that in this story.

Vinnl 7y ago

A bit off-topic, but does any one know how to get to the Off-Facebook Activity page by clicking through the interface? I've only seen links to it in articles, but I'd like to be able to show it to people who are logged in to Facebook.

kevinastone 7y ago
On the web, it's Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> Off-Facebook Activity.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  Thanks!

cfv 7y ago

When the game is at this stage it's better to just not play. When an advertising platform has to pay fartsniffers to follow you around to offer marginally better ctr than email spam, maybe just don't run ads? Work manually on growing networks of users, actually walk up to them and chat, talk in relevant business forums and you won't spend thousands of dollars you don't have casting a net in hopes of finding people who more likely than not just don't want to be associated with your practices.

ainiriand 7y ago
That is very true. Also the Google Page Rank has evolved strongly towards that direction. If you have meaningful content, praised by your peers, you get better organic traffic.

AdamJacobMuller 7y ago

I have LAN TIM 2 on my facebook account and I have never bought anything from spreadshirt. Moreover my facebook account is just a dummy one which only has the bare minimum of information to own my business page, which I don't even post to (I have dedicated social media people who do that). Facebook doesn't even have my phone number, only my name and my business email address. Very creepy.

Balgair 7y ago
> I have LAN TIM 2 on my facebook account and I have never bought anything from spreadshirt. Lan Tim 2 is likely a contract manufacturer. Spreadshirt outsources the production of their t-shirts to Lan Tim 2. Likely, many companies do this as well. Lan Tim 2 probably does more than just t-shirts. It's like with most craft beer sold in cans. The individual breweries cannot supply the demand for their product, so they have another company that specializes in mass production do it according to their recipe. The contract manufacturer is likely the one giving data to FB, not the spreadshirt.
- AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
  I can confidently say i've never bought any t-shirts. Perhaps they do other whitelabel manufacturing, but I just looked through my emails a week around the date and I don't see anything it could be. Also keep in mind the only thing tied to my FB account is my work email (and my name I suppose), which I definitely didn't order anything with.

jkaplowitz 7y ago

I've never made a Facebook account because I haven't wanted to agree to their data collection practices, terms of service, privacy policy, etc. How can I see what they have on me without agreeing to those things? (At minimum they should have records of their attempts to recruit me as an employee, but I never initiated those and never proceeded beyond a polite "no thanks" email reply.) I don't get the benefit of GDPR or CCPA since I live in Quebec, Canada rather than the EU or California. But, I wonder if there's a way for me to send a request based on Canadian or Quebec privacy law, since they do have an office and plenty of users here in Quebec? Or have they effectively firewalled that stuff off from whatever entity controls or processes the data?

JohnFen 7y ago
> How can I see what they have on me without agreeing to those things? You can't. It's part of the perversity that is Facebook -- in order to be able to see (and delete-ish) the data they have about you, you need to sign up for an account and give them more data about you.

CrankyBear 7y ago

It's really pretty simple. If you use Facebook to login to other services, they're connected. If you're concerned about it, don't use Facebook as your ticket to all the other services out there.

zimbu668 7y ago
That is not true, I have never used FaceBook login for anything, and certainly not for the 12 services listed in my "Off-Facebook Activity" tab.
- rolph 7y ago
  i just get a facebook loginpage when i click the link. I dont use facebook thus dont have an account and never have. I wonder what is the difference?
cmauniada 7y ago
It's not just about facebook logins. Any website that you visit can send information to facebook and that's where most of these websites are sharing info with facebook. I just checked my own off-facebook activity and I am blown away at just how much information is available on me. They have a fairly concise list of all the websites that I have visited in the past month, none of which I used facebook for logging in.
pjc50 7y ago
Not using Facebook to log into services does not exclude you from this. Almost all mobile games I've used (and only those) are listed on my FB activity despite not giving them my login or even having the Facebook or Messenger apps installed. I think this may be by correlating the Android advertising ID?
sneak 7y ago
Facebook has your phone number even if you've never used Facebook, because all of your friends that have your name and phone number in their address book uploaded their complete address books to Facebook. Then, when you use another service, and don't even create an account or log in, and simply provide that service with your phone number (e.g. OpenTable, Deliveroo, AirBnb, others), and then that service provides a complete log of all of their transactions to Facebook with phone numbers and email addresses, now Facebook can associate your purchase history with your name, email address, and phone number provided to them by your contacts. It's called a Shadow Profile. It has nothing to do with "us[ing] Facebook as your ticket to all the other services". They track you even if you don't have a Facebook account at all, and don't create accounts on other sites, simply through your telephone number or email address. I wouldn't be surprised if they're also storing credit card numbers (or one-way hashes thereof) to cross-link purchases, too.

sneak 7y ago

This is a good reason to use a service like Burner ( https://www.burnerapp.com/ https://www.burnerapp.com/ ), and also probably to cycle your GSM handset number at your carrier multiple times per year, as TFA notes. (Switch to TOTP or U2F for two factor.) I already use anonymous single-use email addresses for a lot of services (anonaddy.com is good for this), and I think in the future I'm going to just decline to use anything that demands a phone number of me. Far, far too much of it is being sold to third parties as soon as it's obtained by these companies. https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your...

Nextgrid 7y ago
Ironic that the service that's supposed to protect my privacy redirects me to a tracker (adjust.io) when trying to download their app. I'm also willing to bet good money the app itself will have creepy tracking built-in.

poorman 7y ago

Am I the only one who thinks it would be pretty cool to hook this up as SaaS product that sends me an alert when I get a new offline conversion? Kind of like how my credit card sends me a push notification when I get charged for something. I like the level of transparency it provides. Then you could also do something on a case by case basis where you can click to say “I don’t want Facebook to have this offline conversion.”

settsu 7y ago

Perhaps ironically, I'm frankly astounded at the apparent naïveté still held about Facebook, Google, et al. > I have never used FaceBook [sic] login for anything > Facebook doesn't even have my phone number, only my name and my business email address. People, if any company has A-N-Y-thing that can be associated with you, online or offline, you have no privacy. None. It is gone forever. There is billions of dollars at stake for companies to build as complete a picture as possible of you and every detail of your life. And billions more remains on the table. That is plenty motivation to fuel a highly-lucrative market for accurate, meaningful profiling for years. Sure, there's a long list of actions you could take to begin minimizing your exposure, the practicality of each varying widely. But frankly, most of them would only serve to make going about daily life inconvenient. (And the correlation between effectiveness and convenience isn't 1:1...) The best case scenario is your data becoming stale, such that its values diminishes to a degree that makes it effectively background noise. There is simply no means of unembedding yourself. But also, more discouragingly, for most people there is no practical means to avoid being ingested. edit: grammar

grecy 7y ago
> There is billions of dollars at stake for companies to build as complete a picture as possible of you and every detail of your life Do you mean that purely in the sense of marketing and advertising? i.e. they want to market to me as effectively as possible, so that's why they're going to these great lengths?
- settsu 7y ago
  Yes. Google and Facebook revenues, for example, are almost entirely from advertising and their ad business models hinge on being able to sell their ability to target very precisely. Every data point gathered builds towards a more comprehensive knowledge they have on you. It hardly matters if you never log in to a third-party site using credentials from Facebook/Google/etc., that's just icing on the icing on the icing for them. They'll know if you logged in regardless, as long as their widgets or services are in place on a site. While cookies are certainly the most common means of following you around the internet, there's other means of fingerprinting that, while perhaps not as laser precise, certainly provide more data than most people realize. Why do you think ISPs are so ardently against people's ability to use them as dumb pipes? And why has the smart TV platform landscape grown like gangbusters (spoiler alert: Roku's CEO has outright said why https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595384/roku-ceo-anthony-wood-ads-hardware-business-interview-business-model https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17595384/roku-ceo-anthony...)? edit: clarifying grammar

dehrmann 7y ago

A while ago, I switched to per-site email addresses and a burner phone number I give to anything that isn't a financial institution or healthcare provider.

rsync 7y ago
Smart. Recommended. Twilio makes this very simple.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Assuming Twilio doesn't leak your data. It doesn't, right?
  - mirthflat83 7y ago
    Hahaha
  - rsync 7y ago
    "Assuming Twilio doesn't leak your data. It doesn't, right?" Twilio has no idea who I am. They have a corporate name and a corporate Visa card.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    Even if Twilio did leak the fact that the author signed up to Facebook it is still a lot better than leaking every single merchant to where the user has been.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Not necessarily. Twilio leaking would mean all the identities you thought were separate are one JOIN away from being aggregated into one. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505464.
      - Nextgrid 7y ago

CollinEMac 7y ago

You can deactivate Off Facebook Activity. https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/future_activity https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/future_activi...

TaylorGood 7y ago
But the "fear" bit they instill is that it may prevent you from ever logging back into the apps/sites in question.
Nextgrid 7y ago
You are naive if you actually believe Facebook will actually stop associating the events with your profile just because you disable this setting.

smarri 7y ago

If true, this is absolutely outrageous behaviour from Facebook and companies involved or doing similar things. It's stalking branded as advertising.

Username_TBD 7y ago

Home Depot lets you sign up to have your receipts emailed to you. Turns out if you do this they will send what you purchase to Facebook with your email, which was connected to my account. I use Firefox to avoid being tracked by Facebook, and never login with Facebook. But it looks like I slipped up in signing up for email receipts! Even if I didn't have a Facebook account, Facebook would still be building a profile on me using my email address /phone number in anticipation of the day I made an account.

weka 7y ago
I hate this whole new way of handling receipts. If you order via kiosk in Taco Bell, you have your receipt ONLY by text message or email. Yep. No print out option. HOWEVER, if you order via cashier, you CAN print it out.
- ajkjk 7y ago
  Hard to sympathize. Paper receipts seem like one of those wasteful pointless relics of a bygone era that can't die soon enough.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  "I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut. I give you money and you give me the donut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a donut." --Mitch Hedberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx6uA5aCrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx6uA5aCrE
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Mitch Hedberg is great, but I've expensed Dunkin Donuts while traveling for work many-a-time. And HR/Accounts Payable definitely want to see a receipt... even for a donut.
    - JohnFen 7y ago

bashmelek 7y ago

Is it just coincidence that the name is a lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin

DevKoala 7y ago

I design Ad Tech systems, currently work as an architect for a DSP, and I deleted my Facebook accounts years ago. People who think they are privacy conscious and use Facebook are a living oxymoron.

burkaman 7y ago
Why do you build ad tech if you think it's harmful?
- DevKoala 7y ago
  I moved to B2B, doing ads for companies targeting employees of other companies. Convincing you to buy a bad database is not harmful compared to convincing you buy unhealthy food or feel anxious about not having the latest in fashion.
  - chaps 7y ago
    Have any of the systems you've designed ever been used for something they weren't originally meant for? Will they ever? Do you have any guarantees of that? You can say that the systems that you're building are not being used in a dystopic fashion, but in doing so you're ignoring the fact that you're still building scaffolding for the rest of the industry.
  - burkaman 7y ago
    I agree that sounds less harmful, but why not do something that's not harmful at all? Or maybe even beneficial? Getting a software job is so easy right now. If you don't feel like you're helping the world at all, why do it?
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    Does B2B advertising still rely on stalking and collecting personal data? Personally my problem isn't as much as what the ads are about and more about the data they collect, essentially creating an ever growing liability for me up until the entire thing blows up when the data finally leaks.

soared 7y ago

A few comments and op were trying to align dates listed in fb to dates they made purchases based on cc data and haven’t been successful. I don’t know if it’s the case here, but working with dates in facebook ads is a bit of headache. Those dates might be when the transaction was made, when it processed, when the product was shipped, when the user first saw an as, when they last saw an ad, etc.

jvagner 7y ago

What would a "Real Privacy Problems" website/blog, aimed at individuals/consumers, look like and need to do to be an effective site to a) inform, and b) empower people to hold companies and our governments more accountable for the regulatory and industry environment in which we operate, and c) empower those individuals to make the changes in their own tech and behavior to minimize their own exposure?

JohnFen 7y ago

> Suppose I go to a restaurant, and I booked using my name and phone number. The restaurant sends that data to Facebook to say "Terence Eden ate at this restaurant on this day." Facebook can then tell if I saw an advert which led me to make a purchase. That's just great. So I guess the gift that marketing agencies have given us is that we can't trust anybody. The only thing left to do is go entirely cash-only and never give any personal details to any business whatsoever. The marketing industry has become so toxic that it is now poisoning everything.

mdorazio 7y ago
Not sure how you got to that conclusion. A simple ad blocker and not using fb would solve this issue entirely. Transaction data like restaurant purchases is only useful in this scenario if it’s linkable to other online tracking data on you.
- notRobot 7y ago
  That's BS. Even if you don't have an FB account, they can link all the offline places you've been to and purchases you've made through all this data uploaded by merchants. This data can be sold or leaked. And is readily accessible to governments.
- sedatk 7y ago
  "A simple ad blocker and not using FB would solve this issue entirely". You just killed my aunt.
- i1856511 7y ago
  Browser ad blocker can't protect you from the actions of restaurant staff, acting on their booking software. Not using fb can't protect you from fb independently creating shadow profiles with triangulation.
  - hammock 7y ago
    >Browser ad blocker can't protect you from the actions of restaurant staff Then use a restaurant details blocker? Celebrities have been doing this since the beginning of time. Use an alias. The notion that physical places of business are collecting our data for their own purpose is not really a new one.

CoryAlexMartin 7y ago

I feel even better about resisting Facebook's attempts to get me to provide my phone number. If I'm remembering right, they had two methods they'd switch between: A. By emphasizing how much more secure it would make my account. B. By telling me how many of my friends have provided theirs, which is a blatant attempt at manipulation via peer-pressure.

rhizome 7y ago
OKCupid is making a lot of noise these days about requiring a phone number, right after Facebook themselves had a massive breach (267+ million numbers): https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2019/12/19/267-million-names-and-phone-numbers-leaked-online---and-theyre-all-from-facebook/#3cf81c4c5a6b https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2019/12/19/267-mil... Either it's a bizdev scam that they're all trying to get in on, or they're clueless. I lean toward the latter but expect it to be the former. Surely they can raise ad rates with the extra PII, I'm guessing?

glangdale 7y ago

Ah! This might explain some of the weirder "wow, how could Facebook have known about this short of using the microphone" moments that I've had recently... well, short of either (a) using the microphone or (b) grovelling through vast piles of much more easily accessible external-to-Facebook data. Interesting.

fyp 7y ago

Why the fuck are government websites like coveredca.com sharing information with facebook? I don't use facebook logins with it.

qwertox 7y ago

I just checked, and have "LAN TIM 2" and "DiepTrinh" on my list. The data from "LAN TIM 2" was sent to Facebook on the 5th of March 2020, yesterday that is. The only stores I've shopped at lately were ALDI and EDEKA, and yesterday I bought a Webhosting offer directly at the hoster's site, no third party involved. I have never bought a custom shirt. What I do have is a Motorola G7 Plus, which is filled with uninstallable background services from Facebook. Two days ago I upgraded it to Android 10 and now all those background services, like "Facebook App Manager" or "Facebook Installer", "Facebook Services", all names which truly frighten me, are activated again. I had deactivated them months ago on Android 9 as soon as I got this phone. I really am wondering about the data this phone is pushing to Facebook without my consent. I really wonder what caused those two entries, I never give any consent to any company to share my data. God I hate Facebook, they are the cancer of the internet.

smtpserver 7y ago
I have DiepTrinh as well and as I track my expenses I know for sure that I have not bought anything on the day they appeared on my list.

gcbpp 7y ago

the fact there is no "household" or "user targeting" to be found in this comment thread with currently 265 comments tell me there are only clueless pundits. every single advertising company already sell advertisements by "household" where they clump together all accounts assumed to be from one user and their family/roommates, effectively going back to aggregate IP targeting, but not saying its using IPs because that tarnish things with GDPR et al. also, even if not using household, they sell by "people targeting" vs the old "device targeting", which again breaks all account separation people here assume. I strongly suggest people minimally interested in privacy or advertising to create an account with any advertising network, or at the very least look up youtube videos on how marketers create and target campaigns.

etxm 7y ago

As a person that doesn’t use Facebook, the restaurant thing makes me want to punch Facebook employees.

lqs469 7y ago

This reminds me of a meme, "My wife asked why I spoke so softly in house, I said I was afraid Mack Zuckerberg was listening! She laughed, I laughed, Siri laughed, Alexa laughed"

cnxsoft 7y ago

I can just see Facebook know which banking apps/websites I'm using, and I just don't understand why...

vietvu 7y ago

I don't know the technical details, but the name itself looks like Vietnamese name, stripped from Vietnamese accent. The one with accent might be "Lan Tím 2". Also since it is related to Spreadshirt, many Vietnamese are working in t-shirt making MMO, which make it even more suspicious to me.

anotheryou 7y ago

I always prefer to log in not through facebook and voila: no app in my list :) I mean, what did you think happens when you sign up via facebook?

imhoguy 7y ago

This is GDPR bomb.