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Facebook has a hidden tool to delete your phone number, email
- autoexec 4y ago> "You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address," the firm states. "If we do, you can request that we delete it from our address book database. To prevent it from being uploaded to this database again through someone's address book, we need to keep a copy in our block list." I wouldn't doubt if they remove your information from their "address book database" and add it to one or more others where they keep it forever. There's zero oversight, and zero accountability. It makes no sense at all to just assume that facebook will do anything they aren't forced to when not doing that thing could make them money. Facebook doesn't care about you, your privacy, or even the law. Facebook cares only about facebook.
- ritzaco 4y agoOf course, it's not a technical problem. They could keep a hash instead of a copy. But I'm sure people who find the 'hidden tool' and request to have their information removed are interested in specific products, so a list of these people is very valuable to train machine learning models on..
- m463 4y agoI wonder what happens if someone blocks their phone number, then switches it. Will the re-used number be blacklisted forever with a hash scheme?
- robertlagrant 4y agoThat's my thought as well. Maybe they should just stop using phone numbers for discovery purposes.
- kadoban 4y agoHashes of phone numbers is unfortunately not actually useful in almost any circumstance. You can trivially reverse them by iterating through every phone number and computing the hash. Hashes of emails is not quite as useless, but not far off (consider 90+% of emails are at like ~3 domains, and also that lists of vaguely ~valid email addresses aren't hard to get).
- popcalc 4y agoThis is the same reason hashing a SSN is purely security through obscurity. Anyone with a couple GB of space to spare for a text file can easily perform a reverse lookup. https://gist.github.com/stouset/4322307 https://gist.github.com/stouset/4322307
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThis is why any business that uses SSN as authentication should be liable for any losses that result from fraudulent usage of the SSN, as opposed to the SSN’s owner being liable.
- addingadimensio 4y agoHash and salt
- galeaspablo 4y agoHow could I match an incoming unhashed value to an existing salted hash?
- m4jor 4y agohashcat
- ohbtvz 4y agoThere are only about 3 billion valid US phone numbers. How many hashes can your GPU compute per second?
- krono 4y agoNot too dissimilar from Google Analytics official global opt-out browser extension. It injects a consistent/unchanging item into the global window scope of every single page you visit. https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/index.html https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/index.html License prohibits sharing its code so I won't - setting a good example for our artificially intelligent friends :)
- cyberphobe 4y agoI'm sure are artificially intelligent friends give precisely zero fucks what you do and will steal your shit with impunity. If you do crime on a large enough scale, it's called innovation.
- dataflow 4y ago> It injects a consistent/unchanging item into the global window scope of every single page you visit Confused, are you saying they inject a unique ID or something? Do you have an example of what they insert?
- easrng 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33430515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33430515
- easrng 4y ago
- SanjayMehta 4y agoThey used to backup to Blu-Ray, so there's that. http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uses-10000-blu-rays-for-backup-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uses-10000-blu-rays-...
- magic_hamster 4y agoThey also seem to care about fighting windmills in VR.
- jiveturkey 4y agoit's like cookies. to refuse cookies you "have to" accept a cookie saying you refuse the other cookies. the difference between the "address book" and the "block list" is that one can be used for marketing/targeting purpose. the other one presumably is on the other side of a chinese wall (could easily be so under FTC condition) where FB can't use it for said purpose. this would generally serve the intended purpose of "removing" your phone number. your other contacts that felt they should upload an address book in the first place may find surprise or random inconvenience that they can't upload your number.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoChanges to the interpretation of Section 230 are coming. Deperately-needed, long overdue "regulation" will come in the form of liability for mega-sized websites like Facebook that choose to algorithmically curate and use other web users' content to generate profits. People who develop free, open source alternatives for communicating directly over the internet should be ready for a possible mass exodus away from using so-called social media websites for communication. The Twitter mess is only going to make it more clear to everyone, including Supreme Court justices, that "social media" is a moral hazard, not a legitimate business model. Granted, I could be wrong. Time will tell.
- ls15 4y ago> To prevent it from being uploaded to this database again through someone's address book, we need to keep a copy in our block list. Don't they know hashing at facebook?
- littlecranky67 4y agoTo be fair, hashing phone numbers is mostly pointless since the search space is too small.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago> we need to keep a copy in our block list. If only there was a function that was deterministic, but somehow incredibly difficult to invert, that would sure make a hash of this requirement to store things you're required not to store.
- noja 4y agoApple does this. It is even more frustrating! If you ever had two Apple accounts, and close one, you can _never_ add the e-mail from the deleted account as an alias to the remaining account. You can imagine the headaches this causes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hashhar 4y agoI ran into this myself. It's even more frustrating that they don't warn you about it upfront when closing the account (at least they didn't back when I ran into this). I was hoping to start over with a fresh account and instead ended up having to create a new email alias in Outlook to use to create a new Apple account - luckily I used an alias the first time as well so the impact wasn't as bad.
- noja 4y agoApple support suggested I "simply change my e-mail address". Sure! I will just contact everyone I have ever known, and ask them to update it. Oh and every website I have ever created an account on! sigh
- Tepix 4y agoSure, there are hashing functions, but with a search space that is as small as a 10 digit phone number it is easy to create rainbow tables that covers them all. Signal has spent some time thinking about this problem, see https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
- prima-facie 4y agoIt most probably flips a boolean flag in their db. is_hidden=True. Done.
- rib3ye 4y agoIt's not a secret. You can google any product name plus "CCPA" and you'll get an email address for a legally binding request to delete data.
- encryptluks2 4y agoProviders have gotten creative now requiring you provide an identity proving you live in California and an ominous warning suggesting that it is a felony to state you live somewhere you do not.
- barbazoo 4y agoFor some reason https://www.facebook.com/legal/policy/ccpa https://www.facebook.com/legal/policy/ccpa doesn't open for me. Is this only for California residents?
- carbocation 4y agoIt opens for me in California, so I can't refute your hypothesis.
- notRobot 4y agoNot in California, doesn't open for me.
- actionfromafar 4y agoMore anecdata suggesting FB only does things they are forced to do.
- barbazoo 4y agoI wonder though how they know I don't reside in California. They don't have my address, maybe information about where I log in from?
- 4y ago
- sys_64738 4y agoDelete from FB.id where email in FB.email or phone == FB.phone; commit;
- lagrange77 4y agoTo answer your question: Why would they, if they didn't have to?
- mFixman 4y agoShouldn't they delete your posts and likes too?
- daledavies 4y agoSeems broken anyway. I requested it look for my phone number but never received a confirmation code.
- tpmx 4y agoWell, they now have your phone number.
- daledavies 4y agoHahaha yes indeed! Although I'm pretty sure they know everything there is to know about me anyway.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- neves 4y agoIt looks like a scam. I never confirmed my number, but they need to send a sms to it so they can confirm it.
- nikeee 4y agoThis instantly reminded me of this: https://i.imgur.com/nAoc3cO.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/nAoc3cO.jpeg
- jaredsohn 4y agoNice thing about this is how easy it is to implement. But if it ever says 'no' then there is a bug.
- gruez 4y ago>I never confirmed my number you don't need to. they probably got your number by scraping your friends/acquaintance's contact lists. >Someone may have uploaded their address book to Facebook, Messenger or Instagram with your contact information in it. You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address.
- walrus01 4y agosufficiently advanced or trick-the-user FAANG data privacy violation methods are indistinguishable from scams.
- tony-allan 4y agoThis is a service to ONLY delete your phone number uploaded from someone else's address book. You are just adding another signal to their data about your attitudes and beliefs. Read the text carefully - https://www.facebook.com/contacts/removal https://www.facebook.com/contacts/removal
- Raed667 4y ago> Something went wrong > We were unable to process your request. Please try again. { "data": { "xfb_contact_removal_send_confirmation_code": "VERIFY_NOTIFICATION_SENT_ERROR" }, "extensions": { "is_final": true } } I'm guessing this is not a service they planned on scaling.
- Daniel_sk 4y agoRemoving my phone number worked (it was there even though I deleted my FB long time ago), but I am getting the same error for email removal.
- EarlKing 4y agoYeah, I have a better idea: They should be mandated to not collect PII from third parties. They have no business giving you my phone number or email, and Facebook has no business hanging on to it.
- tempodox 4y agoI love the idea. Now we need to convince lawmakers.
- ratg13 4y agoAlready done in Europe. Digital Markets Act will start going into enforcement next year.
- atemerev 4y agoThe "third parties" are usually Whatsapp users who have your phone number in their contacts on their phones (Whatsapp belongs to Facebook). This is how Whatsapp can automatically connect with everyone you have in the contact list. So, if you do that, Whatsapp will stop working.
- EarlKing 4y agoWhatsapp can continue working just fine without this. All you have to do if you want to connect with me on Whatsapp (or anything else) is email me and ask what my account name is, and I either give it to you or I do not. Problem. Fucking. Solved. There is no justification for violating my privacy.
- prmoustache 4y ago> The "third parties" are usually Whatsapp users who have your phone number in their contacts on their phones (Whatsapp belongs to Facebook). This is how Whatsapp can automatically connect with everyone you have in the contact list. > > So, if you do that, Whatsapp will stop working. Not really. Whatsapp should access your contacts on your local devices without sending them to servers. There is no valid reason to do it any differently. It is up to the users to make sure their contacts are in sync on all their devices.
- darepublic 4y agoupdate users set phone=null, email=null where id = <id>
- walrus01 4y agoThe concept of some big tech company having your first name, last name, email address and phone number just because one of your friends or acquaintances or casual business contacts was dumb enough to click "yes, I agree" and share the entire contents of their address book needs to have a full stop put to it. By law if necessary. This is the same thing as when people install the LinkedIn app on their phone and allow it to trawl through their entire contacts list. Even if you have no relationship with LinkedIn at all and refuse to use on general principles, surprise, now they know who you are.
- jouiwoer3243 4y agoYou realize everyone who has a Google account on their phone (90+% IMO) have already shared this and a lot more with GOOG, right ?
- joeyh 4y agohttps://www.vice.com/en/article/qjk3wb/facebook-engineers-admit-they-dont-know-what-they-do-with-your-data https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjk3wb/facebook-engineers-ad...
- freeAgent 4y agoIt's safe to assume that your data go anywhere and everywhere.
- redbell 4y agoI find it hilarious how you will "voluntarily" enter your phone number or email into their service to check if it already exists! I might be paranoid, but what prevents FB from storing this new data if it is not already there?! I think this sort of behavior should be clearly articulated in the next update of the GDPR if it is not already addressed.
- kodt 4y agoWell they do in fact store it. They even tell you they will store it in a block list.
- zagrebian 4y agoThis is cool, but Facebook already leaked my phone number in 2021, forcing me to stop accepting calls from unknown numbers. It’s too late for deletion now.
- jaboutboul 4y agoIf they didn't have it before, they sure as hell have it now after you just put into that form ;)
- zaptheimpaler 4y agolol so you can basically ask to drop a column from a contacts table and have it be added to a blocked table instead.
- DeathArrow 4y agoIs that tool really deleting all traces of your phone number from all FB services and data stores or is it just making it invisible for some usages? Is there an independent audit verifying that the phone number is gone for good from their servers?
- kkfx 4y agoMh, so to delete my phone number you need to keep it? That's a nice way to harvest data from those who care about them and do not think... A bit like a potential usage for HaveYouBeenPwned...
- Daniel_sk 4y agoThey don't know who the number belongs to. You can just generate phone numbers and try to call them, they have a fixed format...
- ilyt 4y agoThe site looks like elaborate scam to get your phone number lmao
- smallpipe 4y agoI'm going to bet that data isn't just from people who gave access to their address book, it's probably from advertisers as well. Advertisers can upload a list of mobile phones, email address and names to Facebook to ask them not to target these people (for example, existing customers).
- egberts1 4y agoNever registered mine with a phone number to Facebook. But it got deleted shortly afterward about 2 years ago due to adding a virtual landline phone number.