Tagged: privacy Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Geebo 9:03 am on July 3, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , privacy   

    Facebook bug only exposes 800,000 accounts this time 

    Facebook bug only exposes 800,000 accounts this time

    I’m running out of analogies for Facebook’s porous way it retains our private information. I’ve referred to their privacy practices as a sieve and a submarine with a screen door. I guess now I could refer to Facebook as a butterfly net with holes in it as a new bug has compromised the privacy of some 800,000 accounts.

    According to Facebook, If you have blocked someone on Facebook but posted something that was shared beyond friends, such as a post marked public, the blocked person could see your posts. This bug, as Facebook is calling it, is said to have affected around 800,000 users between May 29th and June 5th. This is not to be confused with Facebook’s last faux pas that changed the privacy settings of 14 million users. While 800,000 may not seem like a lot of people compared to Facebook’s supposed 2 billion users, it’s still just a little bit more than the entire population of the U.S. state of North Dakota, or just a little less than the population of San Francisco.

    So, if I had to make a new analogy about Facebook I guess I would compare them to a leaky kitchen faucet. You know the one I’m talking about. It was really bad at first, but you did some home repairs at first to stop most of the leaking. However, it’s still dripping but you never get around to calling a professional to fix it completely. Facebook needs a plumber to fix its leaks before the Federal Government acting as the housing inspector condemns the whole house.

     

  • Geebo 9:01 am on June 28, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , privacy   

    Facebook can’t keep track of where your data went 

    Facebook can't keep track of where your data went

    You’ll have to forgive us for constantly railing on Facebook for its sieve-like tendencies when it comes to its users’ personal data. I can’t speak for everyone at Geebo, but I come from a time on the internet when you didn’t share a bunch of personal information online. Then almost overnight with the advent of social media, we started sharing almost every intimate detail of our personal lives. Even if you post the most innocuous statuses on Facebook, the social media giant can determine so many things about you as this video demonstrates.

    According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has so much of our data that they can’t keep track of it all. We’re all familiar with the Cambridge Analytica scandal by now but as the WSJ points out, Facebook has also given a lot of our data to companies that are no longer in business and because of that our personal information could be anywhere out in the wild. Once something is out on the internet it’s next to impossible to get it back.

    Again it needs to be said that this is too much information for one entity like Facebook to have. It’s now gotten to the point where Facebook apparently seems to be the proverbial submarine with a screen door when it comes to our personal data. This data can be abused in so many ways by bad actors and Facebook treats it like so much junk mail that it just throws on a table and forgets about it. Unfortunately, the only true way to stop Facebook from abusing our private data is to stop giving it to them, but in a society that’s driven by how many likes you can get for your vacation photos that won’t be happening any time soon.

     

  • Geebo 9:06 am on June 26, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , privacy   

    Facebook files spying patent 

    Facebook files spying patent

    It appears that it’s going to be another Facebook-heavy week again as the social media giant is once again back in the news for more potential Orwellian shenanigans. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress, he specifically stated that Facebook is not listening to our conversations through our phones. While that may or may not be true, one of Facebook’s more recent patent filings shows it may not need to listen to our conversations to influence our lives.

    According to several reports, one of Facebook’s new patents is for a technology that would allow a Facebook-enabled device to listen for inaudible tones coming from your TV in order to tell what ads you’re watching and whether or not you’re muting the ads or leaving the room when the ad is on. Once these tones are heard, your device would be capable of recording all ambient noise around it including any conversations going on near the device.

    This is only one of several patents filed by Facebook that the New York Times has referred to as ‘creepy’. Each of these patents seems more invasive than the next yet Facebook says that these are merely ideas and should not be taken as evidence for its future product plans. Somehow, I don’t think Facebook is filing these patents just for the fun of it.

     

  • Geebo 8:59 am on June 8, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Facebok, privacy   

    Facebook screws up privacy…again 

    Facebook screws up privacy...again

    I’m sorry to have to bludgeon you over the head with the blunt end of Mark Zuckerberg again this week, but Facebook once again finds itself embroiled in yet another privacy gaffe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that they were doing this on purpose now. However, instead of giving access to 300 million accounts or possibly allowing the Chinese government to have access to user information, this time they’ve only exposed 14 million users. While 14 million may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to 2 billion Facebook users, 14 million is 1.6 New York Cities or 24 Wyomings.

    According to reports, Facebook developers accidentally caused a bug that changed the privacy settings of 14 million Facebook users. This means that if you changed your Facebook account to be private, or made a post that was only supposed to be shared among friends, Facebook may have changed those options to make the accounts or posts public ones. As is can be expected by now, Facebook’s response has been the usual of we’re sorry and this won’t happen again, until the next time it does.

    One of the major causes of these privacy blunders is that Facebook has virtually no competition. While teens may be fleeing to YouTube in droves to get their social media fixes, Facebook still has an iron grip on the majority of social media users. It almost seems like Facebook’s general attitude toward privacy concerns are, that’s nice but where are you going to go once you leave Facebook? I’m afraid it’s going to take more than a mass exodus of users or government regulation to make Facebook start taking user privacy seriously.

     

  • Geebo 9:16 am on June 7, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , privacy   

    Did Facebook share data with the Chinese government? 

    Did Facebook share data with the Chinese government?

    I’ve mentioned previously that I don’t normally feel inclined to post about the same subject in the same week. For example, if Facebook makes the news for one of its many alleged data leaks, I try to only post about that once a week. I do this to try to avoid reader burnout on any particular topic. However, Facebook seems to be the gift that keeps on giving with its reported mishandling of user data when it comes to third parties. Now, there are concerns that Facebook may have inadvertently shared user data with a foreign government.

    In an update to our previous post about Facebook sharing user data with device manufacturers, one of those manufacturers has questionable ties with the Chinese government. China-based Huawei is the third largest manufacturers of cell phones in the world. Many within the US government believe that Huawei could allow access to their devices by the government of China which could lead to espionage in the US. This is nothing new either as these concerns have been around since the last two previous administrations. Huawei is one of those manufacturers that Facebook had an agreement with to share user data leading some to assume that Facebook may have exposed user data to the government of China.

    Once again, Facebook is playing catch-up with their possible data breaches as they say that they’re ending their relationship with Huawei even though Huawei claims they never exposed any user information.

    How many more potential data breaches will it take before the public decides to limit the personal information they voluntarily give to Facebook who then gives it to multiple third parties? The US government already seems poised to regulate or break up Facebook, yet the Facebook users continue to sacrifice privacy for the sake of convenience.

     

  • Geebo 9:03 am on June 5, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , privacy   

    Facebook can’t stop sharing our data 

    Facebook can't stop sharing our data

    As it turns out, the Cambridge Analytica scandal wasn’t the first time Facebook allegedly shared personal user information to third-parties on a grand scale. According to a New York Times report, Facebook has been sharing extensive user information with device manufacturers for close to a decade if not more. Some of those companies are said to have included Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Samsung.

    A Times reporter was supposedly able to use a 5-year-old Blackberry phone to access the personal information of close to 300,000 Facebook users. This ranged from friends to friends of friends and so on. Facebook hasn’t expressly denied that device makers didn’t have access to this information but instead claims that no information has been misused by any of its device partners. In response to this report, Apple has stated that it never requested any information from Facebook. Apple even took it a step further at their most recent developers conference when they introduced a new feature to iOS that would block Facebook’s tracking capabilities.

    Should we be surprised about this latest look at how Facebook handle’s our privacy? Probably not. Facebook isn’t a non-profit. They’re in business to make money. The way they make their money is through targeted advertising and for that Facebook needs as much of our personal information as possible. Yet, as Facebook users, we are more than happy to hand that information over to them just so we can satiate our social media addictions. Facebook won’t stop using our information until we stop supplying it to them.

     

  • Geebo 9:01 am on April 12, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , privacy   

    Zuckerberg: Facebook is not a monopoly 

    Zuckerberg: Facebook is not a monopoly

    For the past two days, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before both houses of Congress in regards to the data breaches and scandals that have been in the public eye since the 2016 Presidential election. Zuckerberg’s total testimony added up to about ten hours of testimony in total, and in that ten hours not a lot of progress was actually made as Mr. Zuckerberg either tried to deflect the questions asked of him or would offer a nebulous explanation of how Facebook works.

    However, that’s not to say there wasn’t some newsworthy information to come from Mr. Zuckerberg’s testimony. When Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked if Zuckerberg thought Facebook was a monopoly, Zuckerberg responded with “It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me.” When asked by Sen Dan Sullivan (R-AK) if Facebook was too powerful, Zuckerberg replied with the non-answer of “We need to have a conversation about the right regulation.” Yet in his testimony Zuckerberg claimed that “I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

    As we have seen through the election meddling, the Cambridge Analytica breach, and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people through Facebook in Myanmar, the social media giant absolutely has too much power. It has so much power that Facebook isn’t even control of all of the power it possesses. The question that then needs to be asked is Mark Zuckerberg so insulated from his own company that he believes what he is telling Congress, or is he just an outright liar? No one man or company should hold such global power. Facebook needs to either rethink their business model or face possible regulatory wrath of Congress that hasn’t been seen since the breakup of AT&T.

     

  • Geebo 9:05 am on April 6, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , privacy   

    Facebook has more controversies than it can handle 

    Facebook has more controversies than it can handle

    Artist’s rendering of the Facebook board room

    I’m going to let you have a little peek behind the curtain here at Greg’s Corner. As the official blogger for Geebo.com, I don’t like to post about the same subject twice in the same week. For example, earlier this week, I posted about how some in tech journalism are wondering if Mark Zuckerberg should step down as Facebook CEO in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. So, I had no real intentions of posting about Facebook again this week. That was until I checked my usual sources for news and the attention on Facebook was so intense that I had no choice but to blog about Facebook once again this week. The problem is that it’s not just one story about Facebook that is grabbing headlines today, but an overabundance of headlines in regard to Facebook today.

    For example…

    The Australian government is launching an investigation into Facebook as it’s possible that the data of 300,000 Australian Facebook users may have been compromised. This is similar to a claim made my the European Union that says that 2.7 million citizens of the EU may have had their information compromised as well. While we’re still on the world stage, Indonesia is launching its own investigation to see if Facebook breached that country’s privacy laws.

    Speaking of privacy issues, Facebook recently admitted that it scans users private messages. Supposedly, they do it to block content that doesn’t fit their ‘community standards’ but Facebook has always been intentionally vague about what those standards exactly entail. However, there is one person on Facebook whose private messages are completely safe. Of course that’s Mark Zuckerberg. Some of his private messages to other Facebook employees have been removed from Facebook. Facebook claims they did this in the wake of the Sony hacking scandal of a few years ago. Still, it seems a little bit more than hypocritical on Facebook’s part. However, the most egregious possible invasion of privacy Facebook was looking to commit was that of users’ medical records. According to CNBC, Facebook was allegedly asking several prominent hospitals for anonymous data about their patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, for a proposed research project. That doesn’t sound ominous in the least. Wisely, Facebook has decided to stop pursuing that avenue of research for now.

    I was about to say that Facebook is on the verge of becoming some kine of Orwellian surveyor, but let’s face it, they already are. The fictional Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984 would be jealous of the amount of surveillance Facebook conducts on its 2 billion users.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on March 26, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , privacy   

    Facebook has been collecting Android user data for years 

    Facebook has been collecting Android user data for years

    While the Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to find its way into the headlines, Facebook is undergoing yet another perceived breach of user trust. Over the weekend, tech news site Ars Technica reported that Facebook has been allegedly collecting data for years from users who use its mobile application on Android devices.

    The report states that Facebook has been collecting information not just on your contacts on Android, but information about your calls and text messages such as who you contacted and how long the call may have been. Facebook tries to defend itself by saying this an optional and voluntary feature, but as the Ars Technica report points out, that particular check box is pre-checked when you install Facebook to your device. Forbes has an article on how you can see how much of your data Facebook has and how to prevent Facebook from gathering this data in the future.

    Even Silicon Valley, which is normally protective of its own, has been coming down hard on Facebook lately. Not only has Elon Musk removed the Facebook pages for Tesla and Space X, but Apple CEO Tim Cook said that “well-crafted” rules toward Facebook privacy may well be needed.

    It’s long been said on the internet that if you’re using a free service as much as Facebook is used, you’re not the customer but the product. With each passing day, Facebook continuously seems to prove that adage correct.

     

← Older posts

Newer posts →

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel