Tag Archives: F*c*book

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More F*c*book Spying

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They didn’t mean to. It was a mistake! Facebook spied on Instagram users through their iPhone cameras, a new lawsuit claims

In July, users noticed that a green FaceTime symbol was showing up when they scrolled through their Instagram feed, per the Independent. The symbol appears on iPhones when the camera is on.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by Instagram user Brittany Conditi, claims that Facebook’s intentional access of the camera allows the app to collect “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to,” Bloomberg reported.

The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The accusation follows allegations that Facebook illegally holds more than 100 million Instagram users’ biometric data. The social media company offered to pay $650 million in July to settle a lawsuit that accused it of collecting data through the photo-tagging tool available on the app.

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Reality Is Racist

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You knew it was. Facts are bad. Instagram Censors FBI Crime Stats Graph As ‘Hate Speech’.

Facebook-owned Instagram is now censoring FBI crime statistic graphs as “hate speech,” according to Blaze TV’s Elijah Schaffer.

“Instagram is now removing FBI crime statistic graphs,” Schaffer said Saturday on Twitter. “Posted with the necessary citations [as] ‘hate speech.'”

“We are getting to the point where narratives are more important than truth,” Schaffer said. “And the truth when inconvenient makes you a hateful person. This is 1984.”

The graphs are from the 2013 FBI Crime Report, and the 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey. They cover the rates of interracial crime. Though I’m not sure why the 2013 FBI Crime Report is referenced.

You can find all of the FBI reports at the following site. FBI: UCR – Crime in the U.S. The 2019 preliminary report is available, but you can find the complete report for 2018 at this link. You can download the spreadsheets and make whatever graphs you care to make. The 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is also the most current data available. Criminal Victimization, 2018. Though I have not looked at that report in a number of years, the data tables are available for download, as are both the summary and full reports.

Hat tip to 90 Miles from Tyranny, who notes…

While Instagram has apparently deemed FBI crime stats off limits, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are now running them on their front pages.

I think this falls under the heading, “F*c*book wants its own facts,” because the facts the rest of us use, don’t fit their world view.

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Zoom Is Sending Your Info to F*c*book

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Because of course it is. Zoom iOS App Sends Data to Facebook Even if You Don’t Have a Facebook Account.

What the company and its privacy policy don’t make clear is that the iOS version of the Zoom app is sending some analytics data to Facebook, even if Zoom users don’t have a Facebook account, according to a Motherboard analysis of the app.

Actually most apps send data to F*c*book, because programmers are lazy, and the F*c*book development environment is an easy place to start.

Privacy is such a 20th Century concept. (Hat tip to Wirecutter.)

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Industry Recognizes the Threat of COVID-19

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TechCrunch has the info on what conferences are canceled, and who is bailing from stuff not yet canceled. (And can I say it is about freaking time that someone recognizes that there is real danger in this thing, because I’ve been underwhelmed by the response of governments the world over.)

The GDC Gaming convention (San Francisco) is apparently still going on, even though COVID-19 is apparently loose on the ground in California. Amazon is the latest to ditch GDC this year.

Facebook, Sony, Microsoft, Unity and Epic Games have all pulled out of the conference over concerns surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, Amazon joins them.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would attend.

F*c*book has canceled its developer conference. Daily Crunch: Facebook cancels F8 over coronavirus concerns.

Facebook has confirmed that it has canceled its annual F8 developers conference over growing concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. More specifically, the company says it’s canceling the “in-person component” — there may still be video presentations, along with live-streamed and local events, under the F8 umbrella.

And the Auto Industry is also awake to the dangers. Geneva Motor Show canceled over coronavirus fears.

The Geneva Motor Show is the latest trade show to cancel over fears of the coronavirus. The Swiss auto show is one of the largest car shows in the world and is usually the venue where high-end and exotic auto makers roll out new models and wild concepts.

I do take exception to that “fears of coronavirus.” It isn’t cowardly to recognize the reality of a situation. It is rational.

Auto shows predate the Internet, and fall into the general category of, “We’ve always done it that way.” And if tech giants can’t figure out how to interact with their customers/partners/whatever without a face-to-face chat, then something is wrong with our 21st Century model of how stuff works.

Europe is really experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak, or what certainly looks like the start of a problem. California has been shown to have the virus loose on the ground, so it would only take one individual to send the virus to a lot of places. OK, so you won’t get to drink in the “hospitality suites.” Use the money you saved to buy a nice bottle of expensive Scotch, or whatever your poison of choice is. This will be probably be cleared up next year anyway. If we don’t continue to go out of our way to make things worse.

I’m sure there is more that is being or that has been canceled. But these three are all currently on the first page of TechCrunch homepage.

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Censorship in the Age of Big Tech

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F*c*book alone will decide what you can know. Eric Ciaramella Is the ‘Whistleblower’ and Other Things You’re Not Allowed to Say.

Three weeks ago, I posted to Facebook a link to a post by Instapundit, and discovered that it is “coordinating harm and promoting crime” to name Eric Ciaramella, despite the fact that he is allegedly the man responsible for the current impeachment of President Trump. And of course, as I said, his identity is by no means a secret (although some of us have trouble trying to get the spelling right).

What ever happened to antitrust laws?

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F*c*book Is Acting Like a Monopoly?

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Color me shocked! (OK, not too shocked.) Massive Facebook document leak gives ammunition to investigators.

Facebook is facing a new round of intense scrutiny worldwide after 7,000 pages of confidential files stemming from a lawsuit were made public yesterday. Those documents are not the ones California’s attorney general needs, though, so separately, the company is also facing a court challenge demanding it produce more documentation for an investigation amid allegations of stonewalling.

I have a F*c*book profile. It is disabled. I log in once a year or so and change the password, and disable it again. Because I don’t care to be someone’s product.

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Welcome to the Panoptican

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Netflix. Roku. Smart-TVs. They are all spying on you. Facebook and Google have ad trackers on your streaming TV, studies find.

Modern TV, coming to you over the Internet instead of through cable or over the air, has a modern problem: all of your Internet-connected streaming devices are watching you back and feeding your data to advertisers. Two independent sets of researchers this week released papers that measure the extent of the surveillance your TV is conducting on you. They also sort out who exactly is benefiting from the massive amounts of consumer data that is taken with or without consumer knowledge.

They just can’t stand the idea that you have any privacy. Or that you think thoughts they don’t approve of, but that’s another story.

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WhatsApp Is Lacking In Security

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But then the people behind it don’t care about security. How Hackers Broke WhatsApp With Just a Phone Call.

A new Financial Times report alleges that the notorious Israeli spy firm NSO Group developed a WhatsApp exploit that could inject malware onto targeted phones—and steal data from them—simply by calling them. The targets didn’t need to pick up to be infected, and the calls often left no trace on the phone’s log.

Apparently the latest patch fixes some of the problem, and they are “doing infrastructure upgrades” to also address the issue. But WhatsApp is all about convenience. And convenience is in many ways the enemy of security.

“This does indeed sound like a freak incident, but at the heart of it seems to be a buffer overflow problem that is unfortunately not too uncommon these days,” says Bjoern Rupp, CEO of the German secure communication firm CryptoPhone. “Security never was WhatsApp’s primary design objective, which means WhatsApp has to rely on complex VoIP stacks that are known for having vulnerabilities.”

They bad guys are targeting high-profile dissidents and political activists. So probably bad-states.

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F*c*book Investigation Trifecta

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It couldn’t happen to a more deserving organization. Facebook hit with three privacy investigations in a single day.

  1. Ireland launched a GDPR investigation for the “hundreds of millions” of users who had their passwords stored in plaintext.
  2. Canada is upset over the 600,000 Canadian citizens who had their data vacuumed up and used in the Cambridge Analytica insanity
  3. And the 1.5 million users who had their contact lists stolen was too much for the Attorney General of New York.

“It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers’ personal information,” said [NY Attorney General Letitia] James in a statement. “Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers’ information while at the same time profiting from mining that data.”

They are evil and must be destroyed. Plaintext passwords, and stealing contact information is inexcusable.

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F*c*book Steals Contacts from 1.5 Million People

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I am even more convinced that F*c*book is evil and must be destroyed. Facebook says it ‘unintentionally uploaded’ 1.5 million people’s email contacts without their consent.

These 2 things are really all you need to know.

  • A security researcher recently noticed Facebook was asking some new users to provide their email passwords when they signed up — a move widely condemned by security experts.
  • Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was “importing” your contacts without asking for permission first.

They didn’t mean to do this, really. That was never their intent. They LOVE privacy, and Zuckerberg *spit* wants to ‘rebrand’ as a privacy organization. Good luck with that.

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F*c*book Really Hates Security

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When F*c*book screws up, they don’t do it in small measures. Facebook: we logged 100x more Instagram plaintext passwords than we thought.

Millions of users, not tens-of-thousands of users were impacted.

The social networking behemoth admitted that it had been logging some passwords in plaintext, saving a record of exactly what your password was, character by character, rather than just keeping a cryptographic hash used for verifying that your password was correct.

This is Data Security 101. It may be Programming 101. Not logging passwords in plaintext, has been around for a very long time. Measured in decades long-time. But given the F*c*book doesn’t care the least little bit about privacy or your security, what the hell do they care?

Facebook is evil and must be destroyed.

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F*c*book Doesn’t Care About Cybercrime

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The more things change, the more F*c*book doesn’t give a crap. A Year Later, Cybercrime Groups Still Rampant on Facebook.

So a year ago Brian Krebs (Krebs on Security) searched F*c*book to find groups concentrating on cybercrime. He reported the groups with mixed results, then threatened to publish, and action ensued. A year later, not much has changed.

Researchers at Cisco Talos discovered the groups using the same sophisticated methods I employed last year — running a search on Facebook.com for terms unambiguously tied to fraud, such as “spam” and “phishing.” Talos said most of the groups were less than a year old, and that Facebook deleted the groups after being notified by Cisco.

Talos also re-confirmed my findings that Facebook still generally ignores individual abuse reports about groups that supposedly violate its ‘community standards,’ which specifically forbid the types of activity espoused by the groups that Talos flagged.

Talos also found “limited action” by F*c*book until they talked about publishing.

Facebook deleted all offending groups after researchers told Facebook’s security team they were going to publish their findings. This is precisely what I experienced a year ago.

This just reinforces my belief that F*c*book doesn’t care about security or privacy or fraud or misuse of your data in anyway. They do have a financial interest in the USE of your data. They wouldn’t want to lock it down too much, they might not make as much money. Selling your info. Whether you want them to or not.

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F*c*book Blocked Trump’s Social Media Chief

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Because the Left hates the First Amendment to the Constitution. Facebook blocks Trump’s social media chief: ‘Why are you silencing me?’.

Of course the Left also doesn’t like the 2nd, or the 9th or the 10th, Limited powers, etc.

Dan Scavino Jr. said on Facebook that his page was blocked without notice.

“AMAZING. WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME from replying to comments followers have left me – on my own Facebook Page!!?? People have the right to know. Why are you silencing me??? Please LMK! Thanks,” he wrote today.

You know there is a reason we have antitrust laws.

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F*c*book’s Latest Security Insanity

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F*c*book hates privacy. Why would they worry about yours? Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years.

How do you get Hundreds of Millions of passwords stored in plaintext?

Facebook is probing a series of security failures in which employees built applications that logged unencrypted password data for Facebook users and stored it in plain text on internal company servers. That’s according to a senior Facebook employee who is familiar with the investigation and who spoke on condition of anonymity

Because security reviews? We don’t need that at F*c*book! </sarcasm>

There is “no indication” that the people who violated one the most basic principles of security did anything nefarious. Sure, they are all good guys harvesting PWs. No credential-stuffing by these guys.

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Yet Another Reason to Avoid the Edge Browser

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Microsoft and F*c*book: Individually they are each obnoxious. Together they achieve critical mass for being a force for evil. Microsoft Edge Secret Whitelist Allows Facebook to Autorun Flash.

Microsoft’s Edge web browser comes with a hidden whitelist file designed to allow Facebook to circumvent the built-in click-to-play security policy to autorun Flash content without having to ask for user consent.

Never-mind that Flash continues to be full of security defects. Never-mind that I want nothing to do with F*c*book. Microsoft knows what’s best for everyone – and that is letting F*c*book spy on me.

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Brave Browser: Not as Private as They Want You to Think

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But then Facebook and Twitter are the elephants in the room. Facebook, Twitter Trackers Whitelisted by Brave Browser.

The Brave Browser promotes itself on being built from the ground up to provide enhanced privacy to its users. Yet, users voiced concern today after finding a section of the browser’s source code that shows tracking scripts for Facebook and Twitter are whitelisted so that they are not blocked by the browser.

Why? Because not blocking them would cause some sites to break. (Firefox lets me decide how much privacy/breakage I want.)

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Facebook Is Spying On Your App Usage

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Facebook and Privacy. Two things that are never found in the same place. How Apps on Android Share Data with Facebook – Report.

  • We found that at least 61 percent of apps we tested automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app. This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not.
  • Typically, the data that is automatically transmitted first is events data that communicates to Facebook that the Facebook SDK has been initialized by transmitting data such as “App installed” and “SDK Initialized”. This data reveals the fact that a user is using a specific app, every single time that user opens an app.

Even if you aren’t logged into Facebook. So they are spying on everyone, even those of us who don’t use Facebook. Exactly where is it than I can opt out that? Nowhere. They Hate Privacy. F*c*book.

A prime example is the travel search and price comparison app “KAYAK”, which sends detailed information about people’s flight searches to Facebook, including: departure city, departure airport, departure date, arrival city, arrival airport, arrival date, number of tickets (including number of children), class of tickets (economy, business or first class).

That is a lot of data to be sending to Facebook, for something that it isn’t clear Facebook should know, even if you use Facebook, and are logged in.

Without any further transparency from Facebook, it is impossible to know for certain, how the data that we have described in this report is being used. This is particularity the case since Facebook has been less than transparent about the ways in which it uses data of non-Facebook users in the past.

If you follow this link, you can see ther results of their evaluation for that app. I may uninstall a few I have. (Hat Tip to Small Dead Animals.)

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“Another day, another Facebook privacy scandal.”

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Color me shocked! Facebook is playing fast and loose with privacy. Facebook’s latest privacy scandal: What we know about the company’s handling of user data.

They’re serious about privacy, because privacy costs them money. (So, they don’t like it, but they are serious about it.)

Facebook gave big companies greater access to its users’ data without the user’s permission. This includes giving Microsoft’s search engine Bing access to see all of a user’s friends without the user’s consent, letting Netflix and Spotify read a user’s private messages and allowing Amazon to gather names and contact information.

When you connect Facebook to stuff like Netflix or Spotify you are giving away more access than you realize.

Facebook gave the aforementioned big companies, as well as others like the Royal Bank of Canada, more detailed data than it had previously disclosed and without user knowledge. All as part of an effort designed to grow Facebook’s user base and generate more advertising dollars.

When a hard Left company like FB loses the New York Times (the paper that published the original story) they just might be in trouble.

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Facebook Cares Nothing For Your Privacy

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They make money off selling access to data about you. Why would they want to cut into that? Facebook fears more secret documents have been leaked.

Among them were emails showing that Facebook tried to strangle its competitors by cutting off their access to its data, as well as emails in which Facebook employees discussed how to read users’ mobile phone logs without prompting a dialogue box asking for their consent.

So they wield monopoly power, and the want to trample over privacy. What a surprise.

I don’t use Facebook. (I have an account which I log into a few times a year to change the password and deactivate.) I use Google as little as possible. (I am still using Gmail, but I am working to get it out of anything important, like banking.)

I have pretty much stopped using Twitter. (I was sort of disappointed that I wasn’t banned, but then I wasn’t really trying.)

I don’t want information about my life to someone’s product for sale.

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Being “Pro-police” Is Too Much for Facebook

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Calling for killing of police and war against police is perfectly OK. But they have to draw the line somewhere. Facebook Shuts Down Ad Account For Promoting Stories About Police.

The thing is… the only promotions I was trying to run were in support of law enforcement.

One of those promotions was the video capturing the story of Sgt. Carla, a police officer with the Coral Springs PD who responded to the Parkland school shooting. In the video, she talks about the tragedy and how her department is trying to implement new training to help teachers save lives.

Unbiased? Not hardly.

Now if you peruse the “Cops Behaving Badly” category, you will see that I am not a knee-jerk-reaction police supporter. I have dealt with some assholes “on the job,” and they are truly assholes. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize there are decent people trying to maintain law and order, and I actually believe that those people should be celebrated as much as I believe that the law-breakers in uniform need to be severely punished. What Facebook is doing is just stupid.