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They're the ones who will take the blame when a third-party app gets compromised and is used to siphon off people's data. This isn't a theoretical concern. It'

by jsnell 2y ago

They're the ones who will take the blame when a third-party app gets compromised and is used to siphon off people's data. This isn't a theoretical concern. It's pretty much exactly what happened with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook didn't really do anything wrong; they provided an API for data access, people explicitly authorized an app with broad access their data, and it turned out that the app was basically a trojan horse for data collection. And politicians, the media, the general public, and even the technologically savvier people who should know better all blamed Facebook for this.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
You're leaving out a very important part of the Cambridge Analytica story, which is "transitive permissions". "Normal" people think of transitive permissions very different from computer science folks. That is, the vast majority of people whose data was sucked up by Cambridge Analytica did not explicitly authorize the app. Instead, their friends did, and at the time authorizing a third party app meant the app got to see everything you did, including all of the data about your friends. Now, you may argue that if you share your data with your friends that you're then at the mercy of whoever they give this data to, but I guarantee very few people at the time understood this - saying "I authorize Bob to see my FB data" is different, in most people's minds, to saying "I authorize Bob to see my data, and also any random app that can convince Bob into giving them access." Facebook was rightly pilloried for this permissions model.
- jsnell 2y ago
  Right, thanks for the demonstration about people on HN blaming the API rather than the user or the abuser too. Do you now see why the only realistic option is for platforms to not provide such dangerous unscoped APIs, or in cases where they do provide such an API, have rigorous security and purpose audits?

by jsnell 2y ago

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

You're leaving out a very important part of the Cambridge Analytica story, which is "transitive permissions". "Normal" people think of transitive permissions very different from computer science folks. That is, the vast majority of people whose data was sucked up by Cambridge Analytica did not explicitly authorize the app. Instead, their friends did, and at the time authorizing a third party app meant the app got to see everything you did, including all of the data about your friends. Now, you may argue that if you share your data with your friends that you're then at the mercy of whoever they give this data to, but I guarantee very few people at the time understood this - saying "I authorize Bob to see my FB data" is different, in most people's minds, to saying "I authorize Bob to see my data, and also any random app that can convince Bob into giving them access." Facebook was rightly pilloried for this permissions model.

jsnell 2y ago
Right, thanks for the demonstration about people on HN blaming the API rather than the user or the abuser too. Do you now see why the only realistic option is for platforms to not provide such dangerous unscoped APIs, or in cases where they do provide such an API, have rigorous security and purpose audits?