15 ms·

Fury at Facebook as login requests “Government ID”

207 points by bgtyhn 13y ago

jason_slack 13y ago
Lets all just remember that we make our own choices. 1. If you want to use Facebook, then you must follow the rules they set forth. 2. If you dont like #1. Just dont use it. As consumers we all make choices that we need to make to benefit ourselves. If I dont like a grocery store, I dont shop there. If I get treated rude someplace. I find a new place that treats me better.
algorias 13y ago
With each passing day, I look less and less like a lunatic for avoiding facebook (and its ilk) like the plague. You should try it.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  People think those who don't use Facebook are lunatics? Why?
  - hnha 13y ago
    depending on the demographic, sure.
  - mjn 13y ago
    In some demographics it's seen as at least sort of quaint/eccentric disconnection, like not having a mobile phone.
  - tabookfaced 13y ago
    Because it's supposedly antisocial behaviour as you don't follow the herd and it has been noted that high profile serial killers and mass murderers don't have facebook. To me it's either people who can't be bothered or people who actually care, are knowledgeable enough and value their time and privacy.
  - keevie 13y ago
    I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how omnipresent facebook is in places like college campuses. I personally know about four people who aren't on facebook. There's a whole sphere of social interaction that you can't be a part of if you're not on facebook.
  - algorias 13y ago
    For younger generations who grew up with this kind of tech, it's just not conceivable. For them, Facebook is a synonym for having contact with their friends. In a discussion we once had in class, I mentioned that an option that hadn't been listed besides Facebook, Google+, Diaspora, etc was "none of the above". I got bewildered stares of disbelief in return.
    - frio 13y ago
      Maybe. This is rapidly becoming less true. I had to give a talk at a school the other day ("tech is cool, join the tech industry!") and the bulk of the students didn't have Facebook accounts -- because their parents are on it. Maybe that'll change when they reach a University age, but it was striking how few of them used it.
      - gailees 13y ago
        Instagram is taking over amongst young people.
        rzt 13y ago
        Instagram is even taking over among people in the post-adolescent set. The engagement I see seems to be more vigorous, especially if you're dialed-in and you're making good/interesting photos.
        Pretzels 13y ago
        Or snapchat.
      - ansgri 13y ago
        Now that's a really good point. No self-respecting kid will use the same _one-to-many_ platform to communicate with friends and parents. Maybe they'll add some convenient 'Circles' feature, but the association with 'those old people' will remain.
    - adventured 13y ago
      Actually Facebook is most likely going to erode from the younger generation/s upwards. They don't need Facebook at all, their social network is new and can be formed on other services. Over the coming decade, Facebook will become an older person's social network (35+). They'll completely lose the youth demographic. The least cool thing is to be where everybody else is, your parents and teachers included. This effect is already hitting Facebook.
  - pavs 13y ago
    Yes definitely. People who doesn't use facebook by choice are thought of being crazy. I use facebook, for me its a great to keep in touch with my friends and family members who are all over the world. I have a friend who doesn't want to jump in to the facebook bandwagon and our mutual friends thinks he is crazy for not using facebook. The side effect is he almost never gets invited if there is a get together and have no idea whats going with most of our mutual friends. He does have a close group of friends he keeps in touch with (like me, on phone or whatsapp). I hate facebook's privacy implications, I sympathize with his views. But facebook, the platform, is actually useful to me so I continue to use until a better alternative comes out.
    - darkbot 13y ago
      Have a look at Diaspora
      - tabookfaced 13y ago
        don't waste your time with this, it's an overhyped attempt at being facebook which is not what it should. have a look at the freedom box instead: https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/ https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/
        Amadou 13y ago
        I'm a big supporter of freedombox - but today you can use a diaspora server operated by someone else, basically no pain. But freedombox is a long ways from a similar no-pain experience.
        a1a 13y ago
        I have failed to find any list of "known attacks" against diaspora. But I would like to point out a fundamental flaw: What is to stop anyone from setting up a malicious server in diaspora? Even if I don't trust facebook, I still trust them more than a random individual running a server. Hopefully there are some solution for this? Perhaps server operators don't actually see any unencrypted data?
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    This attitude will die soon enough; the very young are starting to see Facebook as a niche website for grandparents.
- tabookfaced 13y ago
  Never ever registering or browsing facebook was the obvious thing to do, at least it is for people who have been around and online for a while. It's the total opposite of the web and the internet, not pseudymous, centralized, using shady tactics to grow, spamming at times and so on. I don't care everybody, their grandma and their dog have an account, until it is decentralized p2P, encrypted and my data stays my own and in my own vicinity, I won't be part of so called "social network" services/websites. I have email already.
  - a1a 13y ago
    Where did you find this encrypted decentralized p2p email service? Edit: I guess there is a obvious solution, you and all your friends hosts personal mail-servers, correct?
    - evacuationdrill 13y ago
      Don't be shitty, you know the idea is that you CAN set one up and use the same features, or you can freely switch providers. Try that with Facebook. It's like using AOL or something.
- jmpe 13y ago
  Oddly enough, this happened for me on day one when I considered joining. They asked to provide my email password so they could build up a list of contacts. Oddly enough I was one of the few who thought this is "not done" because it lowers the bar for online security, i.e. it would be considered normal after a while if websites started asking this. It didn't pan out, but as a result I never got a FB account.
- FridayWithJohn 13y ago
  @algorias, I once considered people like you to be weird not to communicate on FB... but for a while now I have really started to mistrust FB. The revelations by Snowden most certainly played a big role, but now that they are asking for freaking IDs I draw the line there. It is now time to really think about me leaving this crap... I think my boss might like that too as I'm sure to do more work now, haha
- vincie 13y ago
  I hear ya. And you know, I've come across a few morons who insinuated to me that I am anti-social and have Aspergers' because of my resistance to using Facebook. I think this is the genesis of it all: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-Facebook-sign-youre-psychopath-Some-employers-psychologists-say-suspicious.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-F...
  - harryf 13y ago
    All privacy questions aside, I quit Facebook simply because every time I used it, the "after taste" was that I'd wasted my time and made myself stupider in the process. The good news is "real life" still works perfectly fine for social interactions and a positive side effect is another source of distractions eliminated - I'm a fan of http://focusmanifesto.com/ http://focusmanifesto.com/
    - welly 13y ago
      > All privacy questions aside... ...I'd wasted my time and made myself stupider in the process. You perhaps need to find smarter friends then.
      - hobs 13y ago
        Really? All my friends who use facebook at first thought it was a useful tool, and then slowly the bloat beyond the first few friends you actually give a shit about occurs. Your feed started becoming invite spam and people who you dont even really know commenting on their breakfast or their kids or their cat doing a dumb thing. All I can think of when I see this on other people's screens (though most of the app invite spam has been taken care of): "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
- brador 13y ago
  Google will do the same thing soon. It wants one google account per person, and using real ID is the best way to do that.
  - algorias 13y ago
    Yeah, they have become very persistent in wanting you to link your google and youtube accounts, for instance. For the first time ever, I'm seriously considering ditching gmail.
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    Didn't they already ask for ID back during the whole "real name" debacle?
- adventured 13y ago
  I have been contemplating dumping Facebook more and more as the year goes on. I've used it probably every day for six plus years. I've gradually come to the conclusion that I can live without it and can easily keep up with all of my friends and family. There's so much trash, hostility and political arguing on Facebook these days, at least on my network. Some days it reminds me of a dramatically bigger version of MySpace.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Sounds more like television than myspace. I'm not saying you're wrong about myspace, just TV fits your definition even better. I suspect there is a high correlation between people who don't watch TV and people who don't do facebook/twitter. I am occasionally exposed to TV and I've noticed over the past couple years a ridiculous level of attempts at twitter integration on primetime major network TV.
- flexd 13y ago
  I have been thinking about it, but around here Facebook is so common it would be weird not to have it. My friends never send SMS any more, they use Facebook messenger. Nobody asks you for your phone number, they ask to add you on Facebook. Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event. If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life. What do you use for instant messages? Do you just use email a lot more? I really wish some kind of distributed social network could take off the way Facebook has. I do not want anyone to keep my data as much as the next guy, but if you want to be a social person in 2013 (at least here), you kind of need to have a Facebook account. A guy I met at the start of the semester is a german exchange student. He had to create a Facebook account when he got here because pretty much everything happens on Facebook. Some things do not even have their own website, just a Facebook page.
  - sneak 13y ago
    > Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event. > If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life. This. You can't expect people to set up and populate their own mailing lists to notify everybody they want to invite to their birthday party or share news of their engagement. I hate it too, but the reality is that being off facebook means losing touch with people that you don't have to lose touch with. Very, very few people will make an effort above and beyond the default choice these days (facebook events) to notify/invite you to stuff that involves more than a half-dozen people.
    - bcoates 13y ago
      Before Facebook, there was this thing called "the Grapevine", a decentralized communication network of people who were so intensely interested in everyone else's doings that you couldn't stop them from keeping you up to date about it. I have not, despite my best efforts, been able to unsubscribe from it.
      - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
        and that "Grapevine" usually resulted in news of your engagement turning into a story about how you helped Maverick engage MIG's over the Bering Strait just in time to save Iceman. ...am I the only one who remembers "The Telephone Game" from pre-school?
- sneak 13y ago
  I tried it for over five years. Many people use facebook messaging as their primary form of text communication these days. Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets. For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point. Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness.
  - gngeal 13y ago
    "Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets. For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point. Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness." The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with. Is it work-related? E-mail and sometimes phone are given. Is it not work-related, but urgent? I still have a phone. Is that costly? Perhaps, but if you have six urgent things to communicate every day, perhaps you have a much worse problem than having to pay a lot of money. Is it anything else? Well, what could it be? I have no idea. Frankly, this whole "you have to live a hectic social life, everyone's doing it!" movement puzzles me.
    - sneak 13y ago
      > The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with. Okay, so you're a snob. Doesn't change the fact that you're shooting yourself in the foot. There's nothing about wanting to be able to effectively communicate with people who use facebook messaging as their primary form of textual comms that dictates or necessitates a hectic social life.
      - gngeal 13y ago
        Okay, so you're a snob. No, I'm just an introvert. I have a few people to who I feel deeply connected to, and our exchanges are rare yet substantial. But these don't require IM or anything like that. I don't know anything about "shooting myself in the foot". I just don't have the impulses that some other people do (frankly, for me as a schizoid, people are very puzzling entities). Also, "effectively communicate" is such wonderfully non-specific expression that I don't know what that even means.
- jimwalsh 13y ago
  I love how the HN type of people come into Facebook threads like this claiming that using the site is bad and that they are above everyone for never using it. It's not that simple for people that aren't in the same circles as HN readers. Younger generations utilize it as their primary means of keeping in touch with people. That's fine if you get along well without it. But take a step back and look at all the teenagers who grew up with never not having Facebook to keep in touch with their friends/setup events/etc. You remember how difficult the social aspect of your younger days were in school. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram alleviate some of that for the younger generation. I've seen that in many youth that I've worked with over the years.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    It might alleviate a few problems, but a. There are better solutions, and b. there are much, much worse problems caused by Facebook.
    - jimwalsh 13y ago
      I agree with both, there are cases that support that. But in general it is a very valuable tool for kids trying to fit in during their pre/early teen years. Now teaching kids how to properly use technology and social media is another aspect that many non-tech savy parents could use some coaching I think.
  - hobs 13y ago
    I understand your point, but it IS that simple. My social network completely uses facebook, I do not. They invite me to things in person and respect my choice, and if they didn't, they would not be my social network. It seems you are talking about boils down to peer pressure ... how many after school specials about how not to give in do we need?
    - jkrems 13y ago
      Which risk is easier to judge and would seem smaller for 90% of teens: "I miss some (or even most) of my peer's social events" or "Facebook may give certain government agencies my information". Resisting peer pressure is a risk assessment and without some impressive "here's what smoking does to your body"-pictures it's a hard sell.
- arjn 13y ago
  Amen to that. I've been off facebook and orkut since early 2008 and have not regretted it for one moment. I get some mild flak from friends once in a while but they all know how to contact me if they want to.
- CaptainZapp 13y ago
  Why exactly would it be lunatic not to use Facebook? I "deleted" my account about 18 month ago to no ill effect, whatsoever (except having more time for more worthy ventures) I really don't mean to take the piss on you, but I'm constantly surprised in how people perceive Facebook and other social networks as an absolutely essential utility. Like phone service, electricity, water, or even financial services. I vehemently don't feel this to be the case.
- imgabe 13y ago
  Can you name a single, actual negative consequence that someone has experienced from Facebook, aside from people who lost jobs due to their own foolishness in making information public? So, Facebook asks for an ID to verify your identity because your account as behaving suspiciously. What's the downside of this? Are government agents going to burst into your home and arrest you?
  - Zikes 13y ago
    1. Facebook asks for your ID. 2. You give Facebook your ID. 3. Facebook gets hacked. 4. Someone uses your identity to commit a crime. 5. Government agents burst into your home and arrest you. Or they get credit cards in your name and run your credit score into the ground, which would likely take years to clear up (if ever). Next up: Facebook isn't sure you're really the gender, height, and weight you say you are. Please provide full body nude photos for verification.
aestetix 13y ago
Two comments on this: We started http://www.nymrights.org http://www.nymrights.org to combat issues like this. One of our long term goals is to get companies to adopt policies preventing data demands like this unless sufficient protections (read, laws) are in place. (if you're a company debating adopting such a policy, I'd love to chat!) Second, if you're European, check out the European Court of Human Rights, which offers protection against privacy intrusions like this. It's worth noting that some countries get more specific: Germany has the Telemedia Act, which specifically protects against problems like this.
- alextingle 13y ago
  How would you formulate such a law? What does Germany's Telemedia Act actually say? I can refuse to let you into my house if you won't show me your passport. If you don't have a passport, then I can just refuse to let you in no matter what. How does that change if I'm running a business? Or a web-site? Surely it would be better to focus on supply rather than demand. If government ID is mandatory for everyone (e.g. Germany, Belgium), then it makes it easy for businesses to demand to see it. If government ID is entirely optional (e.g. UK) then insisting on seeing it will exclude too many potential customers. If FB asks me for government-issued photo ID, then they will effectively be kicking me out - I'm not going to go through the rigmarole of applying for a passport just to get a FB log on.
  - aestetix 13y ago
    That's been the question of a lot of debate, which is why we're focusing on policy right now (hopefully eventually law). The Telemedia Act specifically allows use of non-government-issued ID online. This has been the subject of a big lawsuit with Facebook: http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/german-state-fine-facebook-allowing-psuedonyms-7716 http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/german-state-fine-facebo... Regarding the second set of questions, that's the big question right now. IANAL, but the "my house" is a domicile related context. While Facebook is not a domicile, they are a company, and a company can set their own policies. The challenge is that the people using Facebook aren't really employees, and they are using it like a public forum, which it isn't. There are a lot of social issues revolving around this. There's also the 3rd party doctrine to take into account (which incidentally is how NSA is justifying a lot of their monitoring). In terms of government ID being mandatory, you have two issues: one, that while many countries do have a national ID, the US does not. Second, if you require an ID for a website, then you run into all kinds of issues: data retention, access privilege, fraud problems, etc. South Korea had a related law which they abandoned in 2012 after several years, and China just adopted one. So the general answer is "it's complicated, it's a discussion much longer than a hnn thread offers, and nobody really knows yet." Hope that helped :)
NKCSS 13y ago
This is a smart move by Facebook; they already sit on the worlds largest data trove (user profiles with likes, family member info, network info, tagged pictures, etc. etc.), and now they add the last part of the user verification step...
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  How is this smart? (Not disagreeing, just requesting more info.)
  - weland 13y ago
    They can validate their social network graph with ease and therefore ensure they are selling perfectly valid data. It's really disgusting to see people willfully submitting to this.
  - nercury 13y ago
    It would make a good data sample for comparing user ID photos with actual tagged photos.
  - tabookfaced 13y ago
    Under the guise of user protection "we've locked your account to protect it from suspicious activity, prove you are the owner" they actually confirm the identity they're not sure about and force those who use false names, pseudonyms or multiple accounts to switch to real names or risk being locked out of their contacts and data. Reducing false accounts and such increases valuation of the data they sit on. When you buy a database of people on the black market it either comes in cheap truckloads of unverified data or expensive chest of verified detailed accounts.
- Tarang 13y ago
  I wouldn't disagree that its not smart, It increases the value of the data they have. On the downside it does incur a social cost to do this. Facebook's brand is more and more thought of negatively and associated more with a bad reputation with how they use their data. At its core the usage is optional and they're testing the waters further and further offshore. There could come a time user's just don't want to use it anymore or more readily move to an alternative that pops up some day. The social experience comes from viewing our friends picture's and knowing what they're up to, this is at the core of why we like facebook. Getting our government ID's doesn't help enhance this experience and the social cost of it is way more than the benefits in my opinion.
JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
Not as bad as Paypal with their requirement that you provide proof of SSN to unfreeze your funds that were frozen for no apparent legitimate reason.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rwallace 13y ago
  In fairness, PayPal, being a money transmitter, has to deal with regulations more complicated and onerous than anyone who hasn't worked in that business can ever know or understand, so there isn't any basis for holding them to blame for such things. Facebook has no such excuse.
nercury 13y ago
Simple, do rely only on Facebook, be ready to ditch it at any moment.
ohwp 13y ago
What amazes me even more is that almost all of those people are screaming an shouting and are entering the ID the next day and forget about it.
- Tarang 13y ago
  Thats the problem. I wish people would care more about their data. Lots of us who build stuff are more aware of how stuff works and the repercussions of putting data up just once.
  - jgeerts 13y ago
    This is most valid, data should be centralized, not distributed and not in the hands of facebook. Imagine that there would exist a website that contains all your personal data with 1 password, websites request access to a part of that data and if this website also actively checks that it is valid data that the site is requesting to function, I would pay for that.
  - tabookfaced 13y ago
    that's the beauty of it, once they've started providing data and build contacts using the service, you can require more identifying data and they will provide it not to lose what they already invested. Even threatening to lock them out of their data will work. It's a common escalation in scams and emotional abuse.
VladRussian2 13y ago
an ID-verified person - 1st level, 100%. Everything s/he tagged, communicated with, etc... - 2nd level, 95%, everybody "touched" by 2nd level - 90%,... Just a few hundred thousands optimally selected, and the graph is well verified while maintaining an impression of the ID-checks being rare exceptional events.
Tarang 13y ago
A response to 'The Zuckerberg Files' (http://zuckerbergfiles.org/ http://zuckerbergfiles.org/)? I find it hard to justify a use for this type of info online? You can get money-related businesses because of the need to comply legally but why facebook? Off topic: Does anyone think Google's floating barge is a way to evade compliance when it comes to data monitoring? Theoretically they could go further offshore
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >Does anyone think Google's floating barge is a way to evade compliance when it comes to data monitoring? Theoretically they could go further offshore the compliance is mainly enforced through the company execs being onshore, not the data/servers. The barges will be waiving 2 Irish flags with 1 Dutch flag in-between at the same time.
bru 13y ago
That actually happened to me at the beginning of the year. If I remember right I was in a foreign country (UK) (or just back from it) and Facebook asked me to log in and to scan my government ID (French one actually). However it was optional and there was a small link at the bottom of the page offering to skip that step (which i did without an hesitation). Is there a difference here? I mean, can they still skip the step? The article does not say much. Anyway the design was made such that it was hard to know you could skip the step.
jsvaughan 13y ago
This is the page about verifying your account: https://www.facebook.com/help/385569904840341 https://www.facebook.com/help/385569904840341 Facebook accepts any government-issued ID that contains name and date of birth. Examples include: Birth certificate, Driver’s license, Passport, Marriage certificate, Official name change paperwork, Personal or vehicle insurance card, Non-driver's government ID (ex. disability, SNAP or national ID card), Green card, residence permit or immigration papers, Social Security card, Voter ID card If you don't have a government-issued ID, Facebook will also accept two of the following items that combined must show name and date of birth. Examples include: Bank statement, Bus card, Check, Credit card, Employment verification, Library card, Mail, Magazine subscription stub, Medical record, Membership ID (ex. pension card, union membership, working or professional ID), Paycheck stub, Permit, School card, School record, Utility bill, Yearbook photo (actual scan or photograph of the page in your yearbook), Please cover up any personal information we don't need to verify your identity (ex: credit card number, social security number).
- Tarang 13y ago
  What do you think would happen if we just submitted fake data. Back before facebook went gigantic people used social networks with avatar like display pics & put up loads of fake data.
  - cmdkeen 13y ago
    You'd no doubt be committing all sorts of criminal offences in both the US and whatever (Western) country you send them from. It makes for a much better reason for getting the authorities involved in a hacked account than just the initial hack. It's also much less likely that someone will do it due to the hassle and lack of automation. Though no doubt some hot startup idea is about to be born...
    - darklajid 13y ago
      Committing a crime by doing what? Providing a utility bill that isn't legit/shows your name instead of mine? Providing a fake 'yearbook'? A 'bus card' to hijack an account? Obviously hijacking an account is illegal, but the means to do it probably aren't: A good number of these 'proves' aren't special, aren't protected documents as far as I can tell. There's nothing illegal about 'forging' a yearbook page. I'd say these measures are providing nothing but decent ways to hijack an account and have zero legitimate uses as means to identify myself to a random web application.
NemesorZandrak 13y ago
I'm from Europe. If they will do it to me I will be forced to stop using Facebook. And I will laugh if they will make it happen in uk as people here don't have such ID's
- dan1234 13y ago
  The UK issues both passports and photographic driving licences. Most people will have at least one of those.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    Yes, but there is no requirement to have one. UK law doesn't even require a person to have a name.
    - ubernostrum 13y ago
      There is no legal requirement in the US to have a picture ID card, either. Unless you want to drive. Or, in an increasing number of states, vote. Or get on a plane without a ton of hassle. Or... well, you get the idea. It is possible for something to be "not legally required" but still have a very high degree of adoption due to the inconvenience caused by not having it.
DominikR 13y ago
I am going to get a lot of downvotes for this but I am still curious to hear what solutions the HN community could come up with for the problem Facebook is facing: Some of the accounts have been hacked. You locked the accounts as a security measure. Now you need to validate that some person is the actual owner of the account. How would you solve this problem? (Sending a code via text message to the owners mobile device wont work in every case since old accounts didn't have to validate via phone number on registration)
- dlss 13y ago
  I'll take a stab at this. Before I get in to it, we need to correct a misconception on your part: using a government ID doesn't work in every case. It turns out hackers know how to forge government ID images, and some of FB's users don't have government IDs (for instance, before I turned 16 all I had was a private school id). With that out of the way, I think they should do what you suggested: sms verification. Email verification also works. As does postal mail. As does credit card charge. As does ACH charge. As does paypal charge. As does "send in a photo of you with a shoe on your head". As does having a user's friends vouch for them (they call their friends and ask). As do a lot of things. Facebook should look closely at whatever attacker they are trying to lock out, and make several methods of ownership verification available. Maybe require two? Requiring IDs just isn't a particularly good way to do it, and has bad PR effects these days.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    That shoe-on-head verification could've been an awesome PR win too. (Assuming it was presented as one option among many. Best would be to offer the choice of several of the options you suggested, as well as the government ID option.)
  - DominikR 13y ago
    I do not think that every mechanism you proposed is viable, but generally I think you nailed it with this: > Facebook should look closely at whatever attacker they are trying to lock out, and make several methods of ownership verification available. Maybe require two? We might already see that, at least I have been prompted to validate once via email and once via text message before. And then there are those questions Facebook asked me about some of my friends (do you know this person, is he/she real) which are obviously related to account verification in some way. I also agree that it isn't smart to ask for IDs after all those NSA revelations.
jnsaff2 13y ago
So I got locked out about 10h ago and as I saw lots of people like me on twitter then I just went to bed without verifying anything. Wake up, account unlocked without questions. I suspect this was related to the earlier news where Obama's facebook was hacked [1]. Some junior dev at FB forgot a WHERE clause at a sql query or did something equally dumb to mitigate this. [1] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/28/uk-usa-obama-twitter-hack-idUKBRE99R0YQ20131028 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/28/uk-usa-obama-twitte...
- signed0 13y ago
  That's not what happened at all. The link shortener that Obama used was hacked and previously shortened links where redirected. That article says nothing about his Facebook being hacked.
VeejayRampay 13y ago
I like how how those people think they know better than to provide their personal information to Facebook on a login dialog that is supposed to help them get onto Facebook in the first place. The irony is just so thick I don't even...
deleted 13y ago
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itsbits 13y ago
Atlast they did it..we can expect same from all other sites soon..
Fuxy 13y ago
:)) I don't upload images/scans of important documents on the internet what makes Facebook think they're special. I use my card online (because i have to) and I'm constantly checking my accounts for shady transactions but there's no way in hell I share my id on the internet. Every bit-coin website that asked for this lost my business and if Facebook does the same will happen to them.
- 02 13y ago
  I doubt they think they're special. I doubt they think you're special either.
crististm 13y ago
Why stop there? They could ask for the SSN as well.
Flenser 13y ago
They should get you to pick 2-3 friends from the subset of your closest contacts that they trust[1] to receive a multi-part[2] password so that you can prove you're you by your contact with your friends. [1] i.e. Facebook believe they are real people who could verify your identity. [2] It could be a form of n of m authentication so you wouldn't need to get all of them.
christopherryan 13y ago
GOSPEL ARTIST POSES NUDE! Evon Latrail is the author of a children's book "When Mommy Went to Heaven". She wrote/recorded a few songs; "Lord Bless My Enemies. And, even has a song entitled, "Can't You See (Abortion Is Murder). She went Pro-life after having a abortion! Really???? Now here is a photo of her posing in chocolate as a "Swamp Girl". The word Hypocrite is floating around somewhere. This story has made front page news in the local paper. Go to Google or YouTube and search, Evon Latrail.
hajderr 13y ago
Boycott Facebook.
sneak 13y ago
One of my least favorite memes in western society is that individual people actually believe that the government has some say in defining your name or the boundaries of your family. Everything from the idea of "legally changed his name" to "same-sex marriage" illustrates the problems of turning to city hall for approval or consent of individuals' and families' deeply personal and private matters. I wish the US had two more constitutional amendments: our bodies are property belonging to us individually and we are free to do with them as we please (solves abortion debate, war on drugs, assisted suicide, et c) and that government has no authority to regulate private familial matters such as what terms we use to call ourselves, what terms we use to call our loved ones, or who is within or without our families and the terms we use to refer to them (solves the current state of marriage inequality for homosexual relationships and also the discrimination against families that practice nonmonogamy, as well as any other oppressive status-quo reinforcement these assholes may come up with in the future). It takes a very special kind of oppressor to tell you what words you are allowed to use to call yourself, what things you are allowed to do to your own body, and who you are allowed to love and allow into your family.
- probably_wrong 13y ago
  I'd like to point out that your amendments do not solve the problems you mention, as they fail to include how your choices affect others. A variant of the two-body problem, if you will. Let's pick drugs. Half of the drugs regulations deal with keeping you from killing yourself, which your approach would simplify (although sounds like a variant of "let's solve stupidity by removing warning labels and let the problem sort itself"). The other half, however, is how this change would affect society as a whole, and drug addicts are a burden on society (see: homelessness, hospital costs, correlation with violent crimes, impaired drivers hurting others, etc). Of course, we know you would never become a dangerous addict lying in the streets arguing with yourself, but you can be damn right that I almost certainly would. And that's why, as I see it, Society (represented by the Government) jumps in and says "no drugs for either of you". The other points follow a similar line of thinking.
  - sneak 13y ago
    "Some people are irresponsible" does not justify the universal deployment of terrible and profound oppression such as you describe. Indeed, we have attempted it. Remember prohibition? We still have myriad addicts, have wasted unconscionable amounts of money, and senselessly ruined staggering amounts of lives attempting to pretend that society has claims to or on the physical body of an individual. If the "burden on society" argument was in any way real, cigarettes and alcohol would be outlawed. It's simply a red herring.
Amadou 13y ago
How does Facebook intend to validate these government IDs? I'm pretty sure they can't. They want you to send a scan of some photo-id - that means that all the anti-tamper / anti-forgery tech that might be on the actual ID will be non-existent. If you are lying about who you are, it will take about 10 minutes in photoshop to come up with something that will pass their test. Are there any countries that even provide validation services that facebook could use? As I recall, South Korea used to require residents to provide their national ID numbers to access most (all?) in-country websites. That ended up producing a ton of identity theft so they repealed that law.
- leke 13y ago
  In Finland, you can validate your identity with your banking authentication. It's a service all the banks provide.
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  You may be committing a crime of fraud to give them a doctored ID. Something you can be prosecuted for. Doesn't mean you can't do it and maybe get away with it, but now if you are caught, the state can press charges and put you in jail. Which is quite probably good enough for facebook, they wouldn't neccesarily get any additional value from actually validating you with the government somehow.
- batuhanicoz 13y ago
  Turkish Government has an API. You post all the info on the ID to it, and it returns true or false. You have to be a legal entity in Turkey to access it. (Edit: Correction, everyone can access it, and it doesn't require all the info anymore, just ID number, name and birthday. https://tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr/Service/KPSPublic.asmx?op=TCKimlikNoDogrula https://tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr/Service/KPSPublic.asmx?op=TCKiml...) I'm guessing there are other countries that provides this?
  - Amadou 13y ago
    just ID number, name and birthday. Probably the hardest thing to get is someone's ID number, but it doesn't sound like that is a secret. If you do have those three things, you can look them up in this system and then photoshop a fake-id that will pass anything facebook can verify via that system too.
harel 13y ago
What is a Government ID?
- samuellb 13y ago
  Good point. In my country the government didn't even issue ID cards until 2009 or so, and government-issued IDs are still very very uncommon. Here you typically get your ID from your bank.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Something similar happened to me. I had several company accounts with a page on each. I tried to login one day and Facebook requested ID. It seemed to happen to me when I tried to login via incognito mode in Chrome (so that I didn't have to logout of my main account first). I still haven't entered the ID but I manage one of the pages for a business (I also manage their website, twitter etc.) and I'm either going to have to enter the ID or give up the job. I can't see any reason Facebook require this. It seems like real scummy practice.
ecocentrik 13y ago
Facebook keeps pushing the bounds of what's acceptable in terms of personal privacy. They have given no indications that they will ever stop pushing the privacy boundaries. This behavior seems to be a major component of their operational/business model.
scrrr 13y ago
Business idea: Generate "Government ID" that is good enough to pass Facebook verification.
thehme 13y ago
Doesn't really make sense to why FB would want people's Gov IDs to then allow them to simply upload pictures, gossip, or comment of other people comments. Does this behavior remind anyone of 1984 and the whole idea about controlling people's behavior/thinking by pretending or actually monitoring their activities/life? What is two-step verification, passcode generators or answer your secret questions, if not for this?
hawkharris 13y ago
I think you all are overreacting to this story. You don't have to provide a government ID to login back into Facebook. Alternatively, I was able to give them my bank passwords, private emails and a list of deep dark childhood secrets.
tehmaco 13y ago
Isn't there a problem of copyright associated with Government ID? In the UK, things like your passport are copyright to The Crown and there's official guidance[1] on how to go about getting permission to make copies of them. I'd imagine other countries are the same. So Facebook is asking it's users to infringe government copyright. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118584/crown-copyright.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
ansgri 13y ago
I wonder how many people respond to such unreasonable request by uploading something... indecent and shocking, to say the least.
mkhalil 13y ago
Facebook is still that popular? I deactivated years ago and never cared to go back. I will activate every once in a while, check the feed, and leave. I have over 1000 friends, but the feed has slowed down to an extreme and it's mostly mommy/kid pictures now. A lot of people in my social circles agree too. It's pretty irrelevant as far as our social lives go. Instagram + Twitter is still pretty active. Hmm..wonder if it's bigger in other states/countries.
bovermyer 13y ago
Meh. The government already knows I use Facebook. Facebook can extrapolate anything about me using the information it already has, including, I imagine, my driver's license number and social security number. I really don't care at this point. I'm too deeply connected now to retract any of it.
hanley 13y ago
Wow, the way that they display the Twitter quotes in the article is hideous! The icons are huge and distracting, and on top of that they don't seem to understand the basic idea that all close quotes need to match up with an open quote. 'Open Quote Icon' message 'Close Quote Icon' -username 'Another Close Quote Icon'
znowi 13y ago
Wow. So, basically, Facebook says: "You're locked out. If you want to stay a Facebook user, you must provide your government issued ID, or else - get lost." This is a glimpse of the future, if we let it slide. The Internet giants can amend their ToS as they see fit and you will have to comply or get out. And for many people getting out is not an option when all of their immediate circle is already on it. So they endure humiliation in order to stay in, as well. There must be legal restrictions on this type of behavior.
ffrryuu 13y ago
Migrate to a Open Source social network instead then.
JeremyNT 13y ago
I encountered this, perhaps ironically, while attempting to deactivate my long unused Facebook account. I was able to log in using my credentials (which I store in a keepass database), but since the account had been inactive for so long (I guess?) this was insufficient. After successfully providing my username and passphrase, I was prompted with a security question, the answer to which I did not recall (I had created the account many years ago). The only remedy, according to Facebook support, was to provide a scan of a government ID (via email, of course). Nevermind that I knew the password. Nevermind that I had access to the email address associated with the account. I told them I was unwilling to provide this, and they told me I was out of luck. I decided that leaving a phantom, inactive FB account in the wild was better than providing these people with what they wanted, and got on with my life. After several weeks, I for some reason decided to try again - and at that time all I needed was my passphrase. Why? Who knows. Maybe it was my lucky day. I don't really know what the takeaway should be, but my personal lesson is that I should probably also store secret questions and answers in a password database, since apparently some services deem them to be required even when I have the passphrase.
twaddington 13y ago
I read that title as "Furry" at Facebook. I guess I need to put on a second pot of coffee.
4hthth4 13y ago
Is it April 1st?

207 points by bgtyhn 13y ago

Lets all just remember that we make our own choices. 1. If you want to use Facebook, then you must follow the rules they set forth. 2. If you dont like #1. Just dont use it. As consumers we all make choices that we need to make to benefit ourselves. If I dont like a grocery store, I dont shop there. If I get treated rude someplace. I find a new place that treats me better.

algorias 13y ago

With each passing day, I look less and less like a lunatic for avoiding facebook (and its ilk) like the plague. You should try it.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
People think those who don't use Facebook are lunatics? Why?
- hnha 13y ago
  depending on the demographic, sure.
- mjn 13y ago
  In some demographics it's seen as at least sort of quaint/eccentric disconnection, like not having a mobile phone.
- tabookfaced 13y ago
  Because it's supposedly antisocial behaviour as you don't follow the herd and it has been noted that high profile serial killers and mass murderers don't have facebook. To me it's either people who can't be bothered or people who actually care, are knowledgeable enough and value their time and privacy.
- keevie 13y ago
  I feel like a lot of people don't realize just how omnipresent facebook is in places like college campuses. I personally know about four people who aren't on facebook. There's a whole sphere of social interaction that you can't be a part of if you're not on facebook.
- algorias 13y ago
  For younger generations who grew up with this kind of tech, it's just not conceivable. For them, Facebook is a synonym for having contact with their friends. In a discussion we once had in class, I mentioned that an option that hadn't been listed besides Facebook, Google+, Diaspora, etc was "none of the above". I got bewildered stares of disbelief in return.
  - frio 13y ago
    Maybe. This is rapidly becoming less true. I had to give a talk at a school the other day ("tech is cool, join the tech industry!") and the bulk of the students didn't have Facebook accounts -- because their parents are on it. Maybe that'll change when they reach a University age, but it was striking how few of them used it.
    - gailees 13y ago
      Instagram is taking over amongst young people.
      - rzt 13y ago
        Instagram is even taking over among people in the post-adolescent set. The engagement I see seems to be more vigorous, especially if you're dialed-in and you're making good/interesting photos.
      - Pretzels 13y ago
        Or snapchat.
    - ansgri 13y ago
      Now that's a really good point. No self-respecting kid will use the same _one-to-many_ platform to communicate with friends and parents. Maybe they'll add some convenient 'Circles' feature, but the association with 'those old people' will remain.
  - adventured 13y ago
    Actually Facebook is most likely going to erode from the younger generation/s upwards. They don't need Facebook at all, their social network is new and can be formed on other services. Over the coming decade, Facebook will become an older person's social network (35+). They'll completely lose the youth demographic. The least cool thing is to be where everybody else is, your parents and teachers included. This effect is already hitting Facebook.
- pavs 13y ago
  Yes definitely. People who doesn't use facebook by choice are thought of being crazy. I use facebook, for me its a great to keep in touch with my friends and family members who are all over the world. I have a friend who doesn't want to jump in to the facebook bandwagon and our mutual friends thinks he is crazy for not using facebook. The side effect is he almost never gets invited if there is a get together and have no idea whats going with most of our mutual friends. He does have a close group of friends he keeps in touch with (like me, on phone or whatsapp). I hate facebook's privacy implications, I sympathize with his views. But facebook, the platform, is actually useful to me so I continue to use until a better alternative comes out.
  - darkbot 13y ago
    Have a look at Diaspora
    - tabookfaced 13y ago
      don't waste your time with this, it's an overhyped attempt at being facebook which is not what it should. have a look at the freedom box instead: https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/ https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/
      - Amadou 13y ago
        I'm a big supporter of freedombox - but today you can use a diaspora server operated by someone else, basically no pain. But freedombox is a long ways from a similar no-pain experience.
        a1a 13y ago
        I have failed to find any list of "known attacks" against diaspora. But I would like to point out a fundamental flaw: What is to stop anyone from setting up a malicious server in diaspora? Even if I don't trust facebook, I still trust them more than a random individual running a server. Hopefully there are some solution for this? Perhaps server operators don't actually see any unencrypted data?
- EliRivers 13y ago
  This attitude will die soon enough; the very young are starting to see Facebook as a niche website for grandparents.
tabookfaced 13y ago
Never ever registering or browsing facebook was the obvious thing to do, at least it is for people who have been around and online for a while. It's the total opposite of the web and the internet, not pseudymous, centralized, using shady tactics to grow, spamming at times and so on. I don't care everybody, their grandma and their dog have an account, until it is decentralized p2P, encrypted and my data stays my own and in my own vicinity, I won't be part of so called "social network" services/websites. I have email already.
- a1a 13y ago
  Where did you find this encrypted decentralized p2p email service? Edit: I guess there is a obvious solution, you and all your friends hosts personal mail-servers, correct?
  - evacuationdrill 13y ago
    Don't be shitty, you know the idea is that you CAN set one up and use the same features, or you can freely switch providers. Try that with Facebook. It's like using AOL or something.
jmpe 13y ago
Oddly enough, this happened for me on day one when I considered joining. They asked to provide my email password so they could build up a list of contacts. Oddly enough I was one of the few who thought this is "not done" because it lowers the bar for online security, i.e. it would be considered normal after a while if websites started asking this. It didn't pan out, but as a result I never got a FB account.
FridayWithJohn 13y ago
@algorias, I once considered people like you to be weird not to communicate on FB... but for a while now I have really started to mistrust FB. The revelations by Snowden most certainly played a big role, but now that they are asking for freaking IDs I draw the line there. It is now time to really think about me leaving this crap... I think my boss might like that too as I'm sure to do more work now, haha
vincie 13y ago
I hear ya. And you know, I've come across a few morons who insinuated to me that I am anti-social and have Aspergers' because of my resistance to using Facebook. I think this is the genesis of it all: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-Facebook-sign-youre-psychopath-Some-employers-psychologists-say-suspicious.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-F...
- harryf 13y ago
  All privacy questions aside, I quit Facebook simply because every time I used it, the "after taste" was that I'd wasted my time and made myself stupider in the process. The good news is "real life" still works perfectly fine for social interactions and a positive side effect is another source of distractions eliminated - I'm a fan of http://focusmanifesto.com/ http://focusmanifesto.com/
  - welly 13y ago
    > All privacy questions aside... ...I'd wasted my time and made myself stupider in the process. You perhaps need to find smarter friends then.
    - hobs 13y ago
      Really? All my friends who use facebook at first thought it was a useful tool, and then slowly the bloat beyond the first few friends you actually give a shit about occurs. Your feed started becoming invite spam and people who you dont even really know commenting on their breakfast or their kids or their cat doing a dumb thing. All I can think of when I see this on other people's screens (though most of the app invite spam has been taken care of): "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
brador 13y ago
Google will do the same thing soon. It wants one google account per person, and using real ID is the best way to do that.
- algorias 13y ago
  Yeah, they have become very persistent in wanting you to link your google and youtube accounts, for instance. For the first time ever, I'm seriously considering ditching gmail.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  Didn't they already ask for ID back during the whole "real name" debacle?
adventured 13y ago
I have been contemplating dumping Facebook more and more as the year goes on. I've used it probably every day for six plus years. I've gradually come to the conclusion that I can live without it and can easily keep up with all of my friends and family. There's so much trash, hostility and political arguing on Facebook these days, at least on my network. Some days it reminds me of a dramatically bigger version of MySpace.
- VLM 13y ago
  Sounds more like television than myspace. I'm not saying you're wrong about myspace, just TV fits your definition even better. I suspect there is a high correlation between people who don't watch TV and people who don't do facebook/twitter. I am occasionally exposed to TV and I've noticed over the past couple years a ridiculous level of attempts at twitter integration on primetime major network TV.
flexd 13y ago
I have been thinking about it, but around here Facebook is so common it would be weird not to have it. My friends never send SMS any more, they use Facebook messenger. Nobody asks you for your phone number, they ask to add you on Facebook. Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event. If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life. What do you use for instant messages? Do you just use email a lot more? I really wish some kind of distributed social network could take off the way Facebook has. I do not want anyone to keep my data as much as the next guy, but if you want to be a social person in 2013 (at least here), you kind of need to have a Facebook account. A guy I met at the start of the semester is a german exchange student. He had to create a Facebook account when he got here because pretty much everything happens on Facebook. Some things do not even have their own website, just a Facebook page.
- sneak 13y ago
  > Nobody invites anyone to anything without creating a Facebook event. > If I suddenly leave Facebook I am certain I'll also lose out on a lot of social life. This. You can't expect people to set up and populate their own mailing lists to notify everybody they want to invite to their birthday party or share news of their engagement. I hate it too, but the reality is that being off facebook means losing touch with people that you don't have to lose touch with. Very, very few people will make an effort above and beyond the default choice these days (facebook events) to notify/invite you to stuff that involves more than a half-dozen people.
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Before Facebook, there was this thing called "the Grapevine", a decentralized communication network of people who were so intensely interested in everyone else's doings that you couldn't stop them from keeping you up to date about it. I have not, despite my best efforts, been able to unsubscribe from it.
    - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
      and that "Grapevine" usually resulted in news of your engagement turning into a story about how you helped Maverick engage MIG's over the Bering Strait just in time to save Iceman. ...am I the only one who remembers "The Telephone Game" from pre-school?
sneak 13y ago
I tried it for over five years. Many people use facebook messaging as their primary form of text communication these days. Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets. For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point. Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness.
- gngeal 13y ago
  "Texting is expensive and regional, and nobody uses email, wants to remember email addresses or IM handles, or deal with spam. WhatsApp totally fucked themselves by not running on tablets. For lots of people, the most effective way to reach them quickly is facebook messaging. That's fact, not opinion, and how intrusive or shitty facebook is totally irrelevant to that point. Not having a facebook account means that you are sabotaging your own communications effectiveness." The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with. Is it work-related? E-mail and sometimes phone are given. Is it not work-related, but urgent? I still have a phone. Is that costly? Perhaps, but if you have six urgent things to communicate every day, perhaps you have a much worse problem than having to pay a lot of money. Is it anything else? Well, what could it be? I have no idea. Frankly, this whole "you have to live a hectic social life, everyone's doing it!" movement puzzles me.
  - sneak 13y ago
    > The people who'd do this are exactly those people I don't feel any need to communicate with. Okay, so you're a snob. Doesn't change the fact that you're shooting yourself in the foot. There's nothing about wanting to be able to effectively communicate with people who use facebook messaging as their primary form of textual comms that dictates or necessitates a hectic social life.
    - gngeal 13y ago
      Okay, so you're a snob. No, I'm just an introvert. I have a few people to who I feel deeply connected to, and our exchanges are rare yet substantial. But these don't require IM or anything like that. I don't know anything about "shooting myself in the foot". I just don't have the impulses that some other people do (frankly, for me as a schizoid, people are very puzzling entities). Also, "effectively communicate" is such wonderfully non-specific expression that I don't know what that even means.
jimwalsh 13y ago
I love how the HN type of people come into Facebook threads like this claiming that using the site is bad and that they are above everyone for never using it. It's not that simple for people that aren't in the same circles as HN readers. Younger generations utilize it as their primary means of keeping in touch with people. That's fine if you get along well without it. But take a step back and look at all the teenagers who grew up with never not having Facebook to keep in touch with their friends/setup events/etc. You remember how difficult the social aspect of your younger days were in school. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram alleviate some of that for the younger generation. I've seen that in many youth that I've worked with over the years.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  It might alleviate a few problems, but a. There are better solutions, and b. there are much, much worse problems caused by Facebook.
  - jimwalsh 13y ago
    I agree with both, there are cases that support that. But in general it is a very valuable tool for kids trying to fit in during their pre/early teen years. Now teaching kids how to properly use technology and social media is another aspect that many non-tech savy parents could use some coaching I think.
- hobs 13y ago
  I understand your point, but it IS that simple. My social network completely uses facebook, I do not. They invite me to things in person and respect my choice, and if they didn't, they would not be my social network. It seems you are talking about boils down to peer pressure ... how many after school specials about how not to give in do we need?
  - jkrems 13y ago
    Which risk is easier to judge and would seem smaller for 90% of teens: "I miss some (or even most) of my peer's social events" or "Facebook may give certain government agencies my information". Resisting peer pressure is a risk assessment and without some impressive "here's what smoking does to your body"-pictures it's a hard sell.
arjn 13y ago
Amen to that. I've been off facebook and orkut since early 2008 and have not regretted it for one moment. I get some mild flak from friends once in a while but they all know how to contact me if they want to.
CaptainZapp 13y ago
Why exactly would it be lunatic not to use Facebook? I "deleted" my account about 18 month ago to no ill effect, whatsoever (except having more time for more worthy ventures) I really don't mean to take the piss on you, but I'm constantly surprised in how people perceive Facebook and other social networks as an absolutely essential utility. Like phone service, electricity, water, or even financial services. I vehemently don't feel this to be the case.
imgabe 13y ago
Can you name a single, actual negative consequence that someone has experienced from Facebook, aside from people who lost jobs due to their own foolishness in making information public? So, Facebook asks for an ID to verify your identity because your account as behaving suspiciously. What's the downside of this? Are government agents going to burst into your home and arrest you?
- Zikes 13y ago
  1. Facebook asks for your ID. 2. You give Facebook your ID. 3. Facebook gets hacked. 4. Someone uses your identity to commit a crime. 5. Government agents burst into your home and arrest you. Or they get credit cards in your name and run your credit score into the ground, which would likely take years to clear up (if ever). Next up: Facebook isn't sure you're really the gender, height, and weight you say you are. Please provide full body nude photos for verification.

aestetix 13y ago

Two comments on this: We started http://www.nymrights.org http://www.nymrights.org to combat issues like this. One of our long term goals is to get companies to adopt policies preventing data demands like this unless sufficient protections (read, laws) are in place. (if you're a company debating adopting such a policy, I'd love to chat!) Second, if you're European, check out the European Court of Human Rights, which offers protection against privacy intrusions like this. It's worth noting that some countries get more specific: Germany has the Telemedia Act, which specifically protects against problems like this.

alextingle 13y ago
How would you formulate such a law? What does Germany's Telemedia Act actually say? I can refuse to let you into my house if you won't show me your passport. If you don't have a passport, then I can just refuse to let you in no matter what. How does that change if I'm running a business? Or a web-site? Surely it would be better to focus on supply rather than demand. If government ID is mandatory for everyone (e.g. Germany, Belgium), then it makes it easy for businesses to demand to see it. If government ID is entirely optional (e.g. UK) then insisting on seeing it will exclude too many potential customers. If FB asks me for government-issued photo ID, then they will effectively be kicking me out - I'm not going to go through the rigmarole of applying for a passport just to get a FB log on.
- aestetix 13y ago
  That's been the question of a lot of debate, which is why we're focusing on policy right now (hopefully eventually law). The Telemedia Act specifically allows use of non-government-issued ID online. This has been the subject of a big lawsuit with Facebook: http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/german-state-fine-facebook-allowing-psuedonyms-7716 http://fusion.net/modern_life/story/german-state-fine-facebo... Regarding the second set of questions, that's the big question right now. IANAL, but the "my house" is a domicile related context. While Facebook is not a domicile, they are a company, and a company can set their own policies. The challenge is that the people using Facebook aren't really employees, and they are using it like a public forum, which it isn't. There are a lot of social issues revolving around this. There's also the 3rd party doctrine to take into account (which incidentally is how NSA is justifying a lot of their monitoring). In terms of government ID being mandatory, you have two issues: one, that while many countries do have a national ID, the US does not. Second, if you require an ID for a website, then you run into all kinds of issues: data retention, access privilege, fraud problems, etc. South Korea had a related law which they abandoned in 2012 after several years, and China just adopted one. So the general answer is "it's complicated, it's a discussion much longer than a hnn thread offers, and nobody really knows yet." Hope that helped :)

NKCSS 13y ago

This is a smart move by Facebook; they already sit on the worlds largest data trove (user profiles with likes, family member info, network info, tagged pictures, etc. etc.), and now they add the last part of the user verification step...

sillysaurus2 13y ago
How is this smart? (Not disagreeing, just requesting more info.)
- weland 13y ago
  They can validate their social network graph with ease and therefore ensure they are selling perfectly valid data. It's really disgusting to see people willfully submitting to this.
- nercury 13y ago
  It would make a good data sample for comparing user ID photos with actual tagged photos.
- tabookfaced 13y ago
  Under the guise of user protection "we've locked your account to protect it from suspicious activity, prove you are the owner" they actually confirm the identity they're not sure about and force those who use false names, pseudonyms or multiple accounts to switch to real names or risk being locked out of their contacts and data. Reducing false accounts and such increases valuation of the data they sit on. When you buy a database of people on the black market it either comes in cheap truckloads of unverified data or expensive chest of verified detailed accounts.
Tarang 13y ago
I wouldn't disagree that its not smart, It increases the value of the data they have. On the downside it does incur a social cost to do this. Facebook's brand is more and more thought of negatively and associated more with a bad reputation with how they use their data. At its core the usage is optional and they're testing the waters further and further offshore. There could come a time user's just don't want to use it anymore or more readily move to an alternative that pops up some day. The social experience comes from viewing our friends picture's and knowing what they're up to, this is at the core of why we like facebook. Getting our government ID's doesn't help enhance this experience and the social cost of it is way more than the benefits in my opinion.

JoshGlazebrook 13y ago

Not as bad as Paypal with their requirement that you provide proof of SSN to unfreeze your funds that were frozen for no apparent legitimate reason.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rwallace 13y ago
In fairness, PayPal, being a money transmitter, has to deal with regulations more complicated and onerous than anyone who hasn't worked in that business can ever know or understand, so there isn't any basis for holding them to blame for such things. Facebook has no such excuse.

nercury 13y ago

Simple, do rely only on Facebook, be ready to ditch it at any moment.

ohwp 13y ago

What amazes me even more is that almost all of those people are screaming an shouting and are entering the ID the next day and forget about it.

Tarang 13y ago
Thats the problem. I wish people would care more about their data. Lots of us who build stuff are more aware of how stuff works and the repercussions of putting data up just once.
- jgeerts 13y ago
  This is most valid, data should be centralized, not distributed and not in the hands of facebook. Imagine that there would exist a website that contains all your personal data with 1 password, websites request access to a part of that data and if this website also actively checks that it is valid data that the site is requesting to function, I would pay for that.
- tabookfaced 13y ago
  that's the beauty of it, once they've started providing data and build contacts using the service, you can require more identifying data and they will provide it not to lose what they already invested. Even threatening to lock them out of their data will work. It's a common escalation in scams and emotional abuse.

VladRussian2 13y ago

an ID-verified person - 1st level, 100%. Everything s/he tagged, communicated with, etc... - 2nd level, 95%, everybody "touched" by 2nd level - 90%,... Just a few hundred thousands optimally selected, and the graph is well verified while maintaining an impression of the ID-checks being rare exceptional events.

Tarang 13y ago

A response to 'The Zuckerberg Files' (http://zuckerbergfiles.org/ http://zuckerbergfiles.org/)? I find it hard to justify a use for this type of info online? You can get money-related businesses because of the need to comply legally but why facebook? Off topic: Does anyone think Google's floating barge is a way to evade compliance when it comes to data monitoring? Theoretically they could go further offshore

VladRussian2 13y ago
>Does anyone think Google's floating barge is a way to evade compliance when it comes to data monitoring? Theoretically they could go further offshore the compliance is mainly enforced through the company execs being onshore, not the data/servers. The barges will be waiving 2 Irish flags with 1 Dutch flag in-between at the same time.

bru 13y ago

That actually happened to me at the beginning of the year. If I remember right I was in a foreign country (UK) (or just back from it) and Facebook asked me to log in and to scan my government ID (French one actually). However it was optional and there was a small link at the bottom of the page offering to skip that step (which i did without an hesitation). Is there a difference here? I mean, can they still skip the step? The article does not say much. Anyway the design was made such that it was hard to know you could skip the step.

jsvaughan 13y ago

This is the page about verifying your account: https://www.facebook.com/help/385569904840341 https://www.facebook.com/help/385569904840341 Facebook accepts any government-issued ID that contains name and date of birth. Examples include: Birth certificate, Driver’s license, Passport, Marriage certificate, Official name change paperwork, Personal or vehicle insurance card, Non-driver's government ID (ex. disability, SNAP or national ID card), Green card, residence permit or immigration papers, Social Security card, Voter ID card If you don't have a government-issued ID, Facebook will also accept two of the following items that combined must show name and date of birth. Examples include: Bank statement, Bus card, Check, Credit card, Employment verification, Library card, Mail, Magazine subscription stub, Medical record, Membership ID (ex. pension card, union membership, working or professional ID), Paycheck stub, Permit, School card, School record, Utility bill, Yearbook photo (actual scan or photograph of the page in your yearbook), Please cover up any personal information we don't need to verify your identity (ex: credit card number, social security number).

Tarang 13y ago
What do you think would happen if we just submitted fake data. Back before facebook went gigantic people used social networks with avatar like display pics & put up loads of fake data.
- cmdkeen 13y ago
  You'd no doubt be committing all sorts of criminal offences in both the US and whatever (Western) country you send them from. It makes for a much better reason for getting the authorities involved in a hacked account than just the initial hack. It's also much less likely that someone will do it due to the hassle and lack of automation. Though no doubt some hot startup idea is about to be born...
  - darklajid 13y ago
    Committing a crime by doing what? Providing a utility bill that isn't legit/shows your name instead of mine? Providing a fake 'yearbook'? A 'bus card' to hijack an account? Obviously hijacking an account is illegal, but the means to do it probably aren't: A good number of these 'proves' aren't special, aren't protected documents as far as I can tell. There's nothing illegal about 'forging' a yearbook page. I'd say these measures are providing nothing but decent ways to hijack an account and have zero legitimate uses as means to identify myself to a random web application.

NemesorZandrak 13y ago

I'm from Europe. If they will do it to me I will be forced to stop using Facebook. And I will laugh if they will make it happen in uk as people here don't have such ID's

dan1234 13y ago
The UK issues both passports and photographic driving licences. Most people will have at least one of those.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  Yes, but there is no requirement to have one. UK law doesn't even require a person to have a name.
  - ubernostrum 13y ago
    There is no legal requirement in the US to have a picture ID card, either. Unless you want to drive. Or, in an increasing number of states, vote. Or get on a plane without a ton of hassle. Or... well, you get the idea. It is possible for something to be "not legally required" but still have a very high degree of adoption due to the inconvenience caused by not having it.

DominikR 13y ago

I am going to get a lot of downvotes for this but I am still curious to hear what solutions the HN community could come up with for the problem Facebook is facing: Some of the accounts have been hacked. You locked the accounts as a security measure. Now you need to validate that some person is the actual owner of the account. How would you solve this problem? (Sending a code via text message to the owners mobile device wont work in every case since old accounts didn't have to validate via phone number on registration)

dlss 13y ago
I'll take a stab at this. Before I get in to it, we need to correct a misconception on your part: using a government ID doesn't work in every case. It turns out hackers know how to forge government ID images, and some of FB's users don't have government IDs (for instance, before I turned 16 all I had was a private school id). With that out of the way, I think they should do what you suggested: sms verification. Email verification also works. As does postal mail. As does credit card charge. As does ACH charge. As does paypal charge. As does "send in a photo of you with a shoe on your head". As does having a user's friends vouch for them (they call their friends and ask). As do a lot of things. Facebook should look closely at whatever attacker they are trying to lock out, and make several methods of ownership verification available. Maybe require two? Requiring IDs just isn't a particularly good way to do it, and has bad PR effects these days.
- tempestn 13y ago
  That shoe-on-head verification could've been an awesome PR win too. (Assuming it was presented as one option among many. Best would be to offer the choice of several of the options you suggested, as well as the government ID option.)
- DominikR 13y ago
  I do not think that every mechanism you proposed is viable, but generally I think you nailed it with this: > Facebook should look closely at whatever attacker they are trying to lock out, and make several methods of ownership verification available. Maybe require two? We might already see that, at least I have been prompted to validate once via email and once via text message before. And then there are those questions Facebook asked me about some of my friends (do you know this person, is he/she real) which are obviously related to account verification in some way. I also agree that it isn't smart to ask for IDs after all those NSA revelations.

jnsaff2 13y ago

So I got locked out about 10h ago and as I saw lots of people like me on twitter then I just went to bed without verifying anything. Wake up, account unlocked without questions. I suspect this was related to the earlier news where Obama's facebook was hacked [1]. Some junior dev at FB forgot a WHERE clause at a sql query or did something equally dumb to mitigate this. [1] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/28/uk-usa-obama-twitter-hack-idUKBRE99R0YQ20131028 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/28/uk-usa-obama-twitte...

signed0 13y ago
That's not what happened at all. The link shortener that Obama used was hacked and previously shortened links where redirected. That article says nothing about his Facebook being hacked.

VeejayRampay 13y ago

I like how how those people think they know better than to provide their personal information to Facebook on a login dialog that is supposed to help them get onto Facebook in the first place. The irony is just so thick I don't even...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

itsbits 13y ago

Atlast they did it..we can expect same from all other sites soon..

Fuxy 13y ago

:)) I don't upload images/scans of important documents on the internet what makes Facebook think they're special. I use my card online (because i have to) and I'm constantly checking my accounts for shady transactions but there's no way in hell I share my id on the internet. Every bit-coin website that asked for this lost my business and if Facebook does the same will happen to them.

02 13y ago
I doubt they think they're special. I doubt they think you're special either.

crististm 13y ago

Why stop there? They could ask for the SSN as well.

Flenser 13y ago

They should get you to pick 2-3 friends from the subset of your closest contacts that they trust[1] to receive a multi-part[2] password so that you can prove you're you by your contact with your friends. [1] i.e. Facebook believe they are real people who could verify your identity. [2] It could be a form of n of m authentication so you wouldn't need to get all of them.

christopherryan 13y ago

GOSPEL ARTIST POSES NUDE! Evon Latrail is the author of a children's book "When Mommy Went to Heaven". She wrote/recorded a few songs; "Lord Bless My Enemies. And, even has a song entitled, "Can't You See (Abortion Is Murder). She went Pro-life after having a abortion! Really???? Now here is a photo of her posing in chocolate as a "Swamp Girl". The word Hypocrite is floating around somewhere. This story has made front page news in the local paper. Go to Google or YouTube and search, Evon Latrail.

hajderr 13y ago

Boycott Facebook.

sneak 13y ago

One of my least favorite memes in western society is that individual people actually believe that the government has some say in defining your name or the boundaries of your family. Everything from the idea of "legally changed his name" to "same-sex marriage" illustrates the problems of turning to city hall for approval or consent of individuals' and families' deeply personal and private matters. I wish the US had two more constitutional amendments: our bodies are property belonging to us individually and we are free to do with them as we please (solves abortion debate, war on drugs, assisted suicide, et c) and that government has no authority to regulate private familial matters such as what terms we use to call ourselves, what terms we use to call our loved ones, or who is within or without our families and the terms we use to refer to them (solves the current state of marriage inequality for homosexual relationships and also the discrimination against families that practice nonmonogamy, as well as any other oppressive status-quo reinforcement these assholes may come up with in the future). It takes a very special kind of oppressor to tell you what words you are allowed to use to call yourself, what things you are allowed to do to your own body, and who you are allowed to love and allow into your family.

probably_wrong 13y ago
I'd like to point out that your amendments do not solve the problems you mention, as they fail to include how your choices affect others. A variant of the two-body problem, if you will. Let's pick drugs. Half of the drugs regulations deal with keeping you from killing yourself, which your approach would simplify (although sounds like a variant of "let's solve stupidity by removing warning labels and let the problem sort itself"). The other half, however, is how this change would affect society as a whole, and drug addicts are a burden on society (see: homelessness, hospital costs, correlation with violent crimes, impaired drivers hurting others, etc). Of course, we know you would never become a dangerous addict lying in the streets arguing with yourself, but you can be damn right that I almost certainly would. And that's why, as I see it, Society (represented by the Government) jumps in and says "no drugs for either of you". The other points follow a similar line of thinking.
- sneak 13y ago
  "Some people are irresponsible" does not justify the universal deployment of terrible and profound oppression such as you describe. Indeed, we have attempted it. Remember prohibition? We still have myriad addicts, have wasted unconscionable amounts of money, and senselessly ruined staggering amounts of lives attempting to pretend that society has claims to or on the physical body of an individual. If the "burden on society" argument was in any way real, cigarettes and alcohol would be outlawed. It's simply a red herring.

Amadou 13y ago

How does Facebook intend to validate these government IDs? I'm pretty sure they can't. They want you to send a scan of some photo-id - that means that all the anti-tamper / anti-forgery tech that might be on the actual ID will be non-existent. If you are lying about who you are, it will take about 10 minutes in photoshop to come up with something that will pass their test. Are there any countries that even provide validation services that facebook could use? As I recall, South Korea used to require residents to provide their national ID numbers to access most (all?) in-country websites. That ended up producing a ton of identity theft so they repealed that law.

leke 13y ago
In Finland, you can validate your identity with your banking authentication. It's a service all the banks provide.
jrochkind1 13y ago
You may be committing a crime of fraud to give them a doctored ID. Something you can be prosecuted for. Doesn't mean you can't do it and maybe get away with it, but now if you are caught, the state can press charges and put you in jail. Which is quite probably good enough for facebook, they wouldn't neccesarily get any additional value from actually validating you with the government somehow.
batuhanicoz 13y ago
Turkish Government has an API. You post all the info on the ID to it, and it returns true or false. You have to be a legal entity in Turkey to access it. (Edit: Correction, everyone can access it, and it doesn't require all the info anymore, just ID number, name and birthday. https://tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr/Service/KPSPublic.asmx?op=TCKimlikNoDogrula https://tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr/Service/KPSPublic.asmx?op=TCKiml...) I'm guessing there are other countries that provides this?
- Amadou 13y ago
  just ID number, name and birthday. Probably the hardest thing to get is someone's ID number, but it doesn't sound like that is a secret. If you do have those three things, you can look them up in this system and then photoshop a fake-id that will pass anything facebook can verify via that system too.

harel 13y ago

What is a Government ID?

samuellb 13y ago
Good point. In my country the government didn't even issue ID cards until 2009 or so, and government-issued IDs are still very very uncommon. Here you typically get your ID from your bank.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

Something similar happened to me. I had several company accounts with a page on each. I tried to login one day and Facebook requested ID. It seemed to happen to me when I tried to login via incognito mode in Chrome (so that I didn't have to logout of my main account first). I still haven't entered the ID but I manage one of the pages for a business (I also manage their website, twitter etc.) and I'm either going to have to enter the ID or give up the job. I can't see any reason Facebook require this. It seems like real scummy practice.

ecocentrik 13y ago

Facebook keeps pushing the bounds of what's acceptable in terms of personal privacy. They have given no indications that they will ever stop pushing the privacy boundaries. This behavior seems to be a major component of their operational/business model.

scrrr 13y ago

Business idea: Generate "Government ID" that is good enough to pass Facebook verification.

thehme 13y ago

Doesn't really make sense to why FB would want people's Gov IDs to then allow them to simply upload pictures, gossip, or comment of other people comments. Does this behavior remind anyone of 1984 and the whole idea about controlling people's behavior/thinking by pretending or actually monitoring their activities/life? What is two-step verification, passcode generators or answer your secret questions, if not for this?

hawkharris 13y ago

I think you all are overreacting to this story. You don't have to provide a government ID to login back into Facebook. Alternatively, I was able to give them my bank passwords, private emails and a list of deep dark childhood secrets.

tehmaco 13y ago

Isn't there a problem of copyright associated with Government ID? In the UK, things like your passport are copyright to The Crown and there's official guidance[1] on how to go about getting permission to make copies of them. I'd imagine other countries are the same. So Facebook is asking it's users to infringe government copyright. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/118584/crown-copyright.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

ansgri 13y ago

I wonder how many people respond to such unreasonable request by uploading something... indecent and shocking, to say the least.

mkhalil 13y ago

Facebook is still that popular? I deactivated years ago and never cared to go back. I will activate every once in a while, check the feed, and leave. I have over 1000 friends, but the feed has slowed down to an extreme and it's mostly mommy/kid pictures now. A lot of people in my social circles agree too. It's pretty irrelevant as far as our social lives go. Instagram + Twitter is still pretty active. Hmm..wonder if it's bigger in other states/countries.

bovermyer 13y ago

Meh. The government already knows I use Facebook. Facebook can extrapolate anything about me using the information it already has, including, I imagine, my driver's license number and social security number. I really don't care at this point. I'm too deeply connected now to retract any of it.

hanley 13y ago

Wow, the way that they display the Twitter quotes in the article is hideous! The icons are huge and distracting, and on top of that they don't seem to understand the basic idea that all close quotes need to match up with an open quote. 'Open Quote Icon' message 'Close Quote Icon' -username 'Another Close Quote Icon'

znowi 13y ago

Wow. So, basically, Facebook says: "You're locked out. If you want to stay a Facebook user, you must provide your government issued ID, or else - get lost." This is a glimpse of the future, if we let it slide. The Internet giants can amend their ToS as they see fit and you will have to comply or get out. And for many people getting out is not an option when all of their immediate circle is already on it. So they endure humiliation in order to stay in, as well. There must be legal restrictions on this type of behavior.

ffrryuu 13y ago

Migrate to a Open Source social network instead then.

JeremyNT 13y ago

I encountered this, perhaps ironically, while attempting to deactivate my long unused Facebook account. I was able to log in using my credentials (which I store in a keepass database), but since the account had been inactive for so long (I guess?) this was insufficient. After successfully providing my username and passphrase, I was prompted with a security question, the answer to which I did not recall (I had created the account many years ago). The only remedy, according to Facebook support, was to provide a scan of a government ID (via email, of course). Nevermind that I knew the password. Nevermind that I had access to the email address associated with the account. I told them I was unwilling to provide this, and they told me I was out of luck. I decided that leaving a phantom, inactive FB account in the wild was better than providing these people with what they wanted, and got on with my life. After several weeks, I for some reason decided to try again - and at that time all I needed was my passphrase. Why? Who knows. Maybe it was my lucky day. I don't really know what the takeaway should be, but my personal lesson is that I should probably also store secret questions and answers in a password database, since apparently some services deem them to be required even when I have the passphrase.

twaddington 13y ago

I read that title as "Furry" at Facebook. I guess I need to put on a second pot of coffee.

4hthth4 13y ago

Is it April 1st?