4 ms·

any sources on data that FB is scraping about you?

by djohnston 6y ago

paulryanrogers 6y ago
They had been scraping contacts from email inboxes and devices, IIRC
- yuliyp 6y ago
  FB asks you explicitly if you want to upload your contacts as part of helping you find your friends. That's a far cry from "scraping your data everywhere on the internet" from the your grandparent post.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    Off-hand I suspect your contact book is more valuable than virtually anything publicly available on you. It's also entirely unnecessary to building a lookup-by-email or lookup-by-phone. I'm going to go ahead and say it's a much more evil practice than scraping.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Not years ago they did not. Phones didn't even have security options to ask at that time.
junon 6y ago
They scrape all of your contacts and create ghost profiles to better track connections of even people who do not use their services. Apple does this too. Well, did - not sure if they still do.
- gitpusher 6y ago
  > Apple does this too This doesn't sound familiar. What case(s) are you referring to?
  - junon 6y ago
    It was a discussion a while back I had with someone that used to work for them. Not sure how much of it was public.
macNchz 6y ago
Given their tracking pixels are installed on at least 8 million websites(1), they are effectively watching everything you do on a large proportion of popular/commercial websites. They were also caught a few years ago asking users to "verify their emails" by providing Facebook their email account password(2), after which FB's servers logged into the user's email account and scraped their contacts out without warning. They also acquired a popular VPN app explicitly so they could comb through the users' traffic data and identify competing apps for acquisition.(3) In my opinion it's core to how the company has always been. Facebook's predecessor, or perhaps first iteration, FaceMash, was a hot-or-not game based on student photos scraped from Harvard's internal websites(4). [1] https://theoutline.com/post/4578/facebook-is-tracking-you-on-over-8-million-websites?zd=1&zi=jgbzi7gu https://theoutline.com/post/4578/facebook-is-tracking-you-on... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-password-contacts-upload-1-5-million-security-cybersecurity https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-p... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/ [4] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...
- ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
  the pixel is installed by web developers, the same way google analytics or any script is setup on a website.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    Which makes it even worse. At least with the extension the user is deciding to install it. In the webpage case, the web developer is choosing to provide the user's data to Facebook or Google (without the user's consent). The vast majority of people don't even understand how this works and think that Facebook can only see activity performed on Facebook itself.
    - ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
      Yes, but thinking that it's a specific issue is misguided. This is how the web works and it is extremely hard to change it. By default you do send your IP, and other metadata, to a server who can do whatever they want with it. You can either refuse this reality and try to invent a new set of internet protocols, or try to fix them on the client-side with VPNs and browsers that randomize metadata, etc. Not super practical though.
monadic2 6y ago
This has got to be a joke.

any sources on data that FB is scraping about you?

paulryanrogers 6y ago

They had been scraping contacts from email inboxes and devices, IIRC

yuliyp 6y ago
FB asks you explicitly if you want to upload your contacts as part of helping you find your friends. That's a far cry from "scraping your data everywhere on the internet" from the your grandparent post.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Off-hand I suspect your contact book is more valuable than virtually anything publicly available on you. It's also entirely unnecessary to building a lookup-by-email or lookup-by-phone. I'm going to go ahead and say it's a much more evil practice than scraping.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Not years ago they did not. Phones didn't even have security options to ask at that time.

junon 6y ago

They scrape all of your contacts and create ghost profiles to better track connections of even people who do not use their services. Apple does this too. Well, did - not sure if they still do.

gitpusher 6y ago
> Apple does this too This doesn't sound familiar. What case(s) are you referring to?
- junon 6y ago
  It was a discussion a while back I had with someone that used to work for them. Not sure how much of it was public.

macNchz 6y ago

Given their tracking pixels are installed on at least 8 million websites(1), they are effectively watching everything you do on a large proportion of popular/commercial websites. They were also caught a few years ago asking users to "verify their emails" by providing Facebook their email account password(2), after which FB's servers logged into the user's email account and scraped their contacts out without warning. They also acquired a popular VPN app explicitly so they could comb through the users' traffic data and identify competing apps for acquisition.(3) In my opinion it's core to how the company has always been. Facebook's predecessor, or perhaps first iteration, FaceMash, was a hot-or-not game based on student photos scraped from Harvard's internal websites(4). [1] https://theoutline.com/post/4578/facebook-is-tracking-you-on-over-8-million-websites?zd=1&zi=jgbzi7gu https://theoutline.com/post/4578/facebook-is-tracking-you-on... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-password-contacts-upload-1-5-million-security-cybersecurity https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/18/18485089/facebook-email-p... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/ [4] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
the pixel is installed by web developers, the same way google analytics or any script is setup on a website.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Which makes it even worse. At least with the extension the user is deciding to install it. In the webpage case, the web developer is choosing to provide the user's data to Facebook or Google (without the user's consent). The vast majority of people don't even understand how this works and think that Facebook can only see activity performed on Facebook itself.
  - ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
    Yes, but thinking that it's a specific issue is misguided. This is how the web works and it is extremely hard to change it. By default you do send your IP, and other metadata, to a server who can do whatever they want with it. You can either refuse this reality and try to invent a new set of internet protocols, or try to fix them on the client-side with VPNs and browsers that randomize metadata, etc. Not super practical though.

monadic2 6y ago

This has got to be a joke.