Mmm! I love raisins made with SELECT * FROM [Equipment Table]! (pic) - <AUTHOR> http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Classics-Week-Chocolate-Covered-SQL-.aspx <comment><USER2> I guess PG didn't entrust his admin duties to anyone while he's on vacation. I expected this to be killed a while ago.

<comment><USER3> I think he kills stuff that's wildly off-topic. This is still about making webapps, which is a stone's throw from making a business (well, maybe only if you've got a good arm). I'd say this is about as on-topic as, say, much of the Lisp-related stuff that is posted here. And my 2 cents is that this shouldn't be killed.

<comment><USER2> Trying... to... resist.. arguing pointless stuff...

It's hopeless: First, you're clearly not alone in thinking it should not be killed. This is social site and you could make a good argument that that is plenty of reason to leave it up. Regardless...

I've had show dead on since I signed up and have sorta noted what gets killed. Humorous images most always get killed. Especially if they start to climb up the homepage.

Now for the superfluous nitpicking that I encourage everyone to ignore:

Image of bag of chocolates w/ sql on it both about making webapps _and_ as pertinent as prose about programming languages? I'm lost on the webapps part and I don't buy the Lisp part. I'm not saying it does not have it's place. It's funny and funny's good; you could even argue it's an interesting commentary on technical industry at large if you chose to. But any lessons you might glean from that image are limited to something like _don't blow it so hard that you look like one of the most incompetent people on the planet_. I think we're all way past that. At least I could _theoretically_ use Lisp knowledge in my startup if I wanted too. Further learning about Lisp is not going to hurt my programming ability, which as a hacker is pretty central to any startup I'm involved in.

<comment><USER3> I think we're actually pretty much in agreement, just with a slightly different conclusion. If a lot of these "funny image" posts started cropping up, that would not be good (and maybe that's reason enough to nix this puppy?), but I'd never seen anything like this bag of chocolates, and it got a chuckle out of me, so I gave it the upvote. Programming languages prose... definitely more pertinent.

You're right, the picture might not have to do webapps. I think I was imagining those square brackets were the result of some ASP gone astray, but I don't actually know what ASP looks like, so why would I assume that?

Now I'm going to downvote myself and go to bed.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. It's as much about relevancy as it is about the level of discourse around here. And, whatever the value of the post, it's led to to thoughtful and even handed discussion so I'm hard pressed to complain about the latter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051 <comment><USER4> As a security engineer, I cannot overstate just how horrible this is. Phone numbers might not be an ideal 2nd factor for authentication, but to punish users for setting up 2FA by using the provided phone number for ad targetting is incredibly unethical.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your sentiment.

But, as someone who understands that not all people and companies use the same moral set as myself, this is why I've never set up 2fa using a phone.

Why should I give some company my phone number? Increasingly it's become a single point of metadata to uniquely describe myself (just as my email addresses have).

<comment><USER6> > just as my email addresses have

That doesn't need to be the case though with just a little bit of effort and minimal cost. Use your own domain for email and set your account to be a catchall. Then use email@example.com and your email address is no longer a cross site unique identifier.

<comment><USER7> Isn't this it though, the engineers designing the ad targeting system at Facebook is linking the random emails you use as "catch all" to your main identity so you can be targeted specifically even though neither party has full knowledge of the linkage between your catchall email and your main identity email. This is facilitated by information that is not under your control.

If facebook was able to design and build this system, you can bet that other companies are doing this too.

<comment><USER6> Check the TOS and/or implementations for many of the tracking providers and you'll see they use hashed emails. Show me a way to extract the common domain name from the below:

9425ca8eb02d022309ec175a7067b1567a5f741ec7010cc1b5034287f9db6e2f

4d1c86b9f418c713e784760fea809e34418c2f13e993d907783572ecc2c9bb6e

<comment><USER8> If the hashing algorithm is known (and my guess is it is at least possible to reverse engineer it, if it isn't documrnted) then cracking a hash with a GPU may be quite feasible.

<comment><USER6> The hashing algorithm is well known, it's unsalted md5/sha1/sha256. That doesn't make it necessarily _possible_ (sure, some cases yes, but not even most), let alone feasible, to rainbow table them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue.

But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from decelerating growth and spending to make FB more user-friendly, so there's a clear disconnect between shareholder incentives and those of the general populace.

On top of that, most people remain unaware that FB owns both WhatsApp and IG, and while the departures of their top brass have made waves in these circles, it's not a concern for most.

I don't see FB's dominance relenting any time soon, though I wish it would.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has occasionally runs experiments with FB adverts for various types of business. I feel it's boiling point will be when people and organisations advertising on the platform really start to look deeply into the value for money they are getting on it. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen organisations throw money at it in return for dubious clicks from markets they never targeted, bot like users and poor really ROI after advertising with it.

<comment><USER11> Are you hinting that FB advertisers are throwing 50 billion (expected 2018 revenue) at ads that are poorly performing? Obviously that is not correct, the result of all this detailed targeting is campaigns that are performing very well for experienced marketeers.

<comment><USER12> okay so…

\- not all people buying FB ads are experienced marketers

\- companies throw tons of money at ineffective ads, that should be obvious…

\- we have no idea what the ratio of "successful" to unsuccessful campaigns is

\- even if that ratio is negative, Facebook is still one of the only remaining "games" in town, so people _will_ continue throwing money at it. "Least worst" is a fine and lucrative place to be in.

\- can we just get over this idea of rational economies, by the way

\- marketing is less of a science than a craft, and all the implications thereof

<comment><USER11> I'm in ad tech, and believe me: FB advertising _works_. The vast majority of their ad revenue is coming from experienced ad buyers that are spending immense amounts on direct response campaigns, not branding.

If you want to see how things work, start a small ad campaign yourself of FB. It's all about ROI, attribution, cost per action, super detailed targeting, etc. It's the opposite of "throwing money at it hoping that it'll work", unlike offline advertising or even traditional display ads.

<comment><USER13> Exactly like this article states. You can give Facebook a list of phone numbers or email addresses and it will put your ad in front of only those people. Does anyone know how small a list you can target? List of one? List of one plus N number of dead email addresses? Therefore a list of one, but more expensive?

<comment><USER14> > The smallest audience you can upload is an audience size of 30 people. Also, > this audience size needs to be 30 people which Facebook can identify and > find. So, if you upload an email list of 30 and Facebook can match only 20 > of those email addresses to Facebook profiles then it will reject your list, > so in most cases you need to upload a list of about 60 people. You then need > ensure you upload a list of only females or males which includes the one > email address of the person you are targeting (the opposite to the one > person that you are targeting). Lastly you need to choose the gender in the > demographic filtering which matches the intended target. Here's a step by > step example below

"Sniper Targeting on Facebook: How to Target ONE specific person with super targeted ads" [https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on- facebo...](https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-facebook-how- to-target-one-specific-person-with-super-targeted-ads-515ba6e068f6)

<comment><USER13> Informative article, mostly about how amoral this salesman is. I wonder if most people in sales think this way. Maybe the article was created solely as an ad for the author's company and the content is all lies. I'd have no way to know with out trying the myself and a fake article would be in complete alignment with the author's value system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Give me as much service as you can while keeping me as far off the grid as possible" is a skill that is sorely lacking in this market. I don't have this problem with weed dealers, but I have this problem with information dealers. Internet companies could seriously learn a thing or two from the black market on how you treat your customers.

<comment><USER16> Does your weed dealer provide the service for free? If you want to be treated as a $$$ paying customer start paying. Problem with social networks and $$$ is that network effects will not come into effect as not everyone will be willing to pay.

There are actually ethical information dealers but they require you to pay them as you are paying your weed dealer.

<comment><USER17> Most internet service companies, including Facebook and Google, don't give you the option of paying for privacy even if you wanted to.

<comment><USER18> I think that if it's possible to define a way of operating businesses in a way that doesn't harvest data in a way that's nonessential to the services, then there should be a law requiring this option: to pay out of your pocket directly the amount of revenue the company would have expected to make, in exchange for the company not doing this data collection. But it seems difficult to get to such a definition. I think this law would be very popular.

<comment><USER19> Indirectly GDPR does this. All data collection must be either opt in, or necessary to provide the service.

<comment><USER18> Oh, I forgot an important detail. I should have added another aim I would want is that as a result of paying this money, you wouldn't receive any advertisements from the service.

<comment><USER20> We're trying to build the idea of "paid for storage" that doesn't look at your stuff, but getting people to pay fora service that others provide with advertising for free is hard.

Any company being truthful about what their customers want can't be tracking them 24-7 and sifting everything they type. Almost no-one wants that level of invasiveness. We just put up with it because there are no real (easy) alternatives or aren't aware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another personal observation. I have an Instagram account that I thought was fully incognito. I never connected it to any other social account, I used a separate email for authentication etc. Just days after the Instagram founders left Facebook I started receiving friend suggestion on my IG that were very very relevant. Those were people I knew in real life and mostly connected via Facebook but not only. I shouldn't be surprized as being connected to the Internet by itself is an end to your privacy but still, this was probably the spookiest invasion into my privacy so far. Bye-bye Instagram.

<comment><USER22> This is a perfect example of the need for physical comparmentation. Separate devices never connected through the same internet service. As far as devices go, to think you have separated "anything" on only one device, you're living in fantasyland.

<comment><USER23> If the app can look at your wireless, even that is not enough. It can just make a map of the SSID/BSSID around you.

<comment><USER24> Statements like this make me want to learn phone OS development just so I can have a better understanding on what information an app can get from the OS. Honest question, why would an app ever need to know the SSID of a wireless network? The app should only care if there is a valid network connection, and then use it. I can see being able to know if it is wifi vs cellular so they can have the option to limit large downloads to wifi only. However, the SSID would not be necessary information for the app.

<comment><USER25> An example would be an app for associating a device without a screen on to a wireless network. Think IoT devices or Alexa. Saves the user from having to type in the SSID which is a pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The reason I never give fb my mobile is if you use a pseudonym account, it will suggest your profile as a friend to anyone who has your mobile in their phone contact list (eg ex-partners, stalkers, employers, drug dealers). Found that one out the hard way.

I know Zuck wants me to preemptively upload my nudes, but still.

<comment><USER27> This is basically how FBI Director Comey's secret Instagram account (and thus Twitter account) was unmasked. But it was even worse - you are suggested to 3rd party people who just follow the people who know you: [https://gizmodo.com/this-is-almost-certainly-james-comey- s-t...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-almost-certainly-james-comey-s-twitter- account-1793843641)

<comment><USER28> Yep, something similar I discovered recently that if you sign up to Instagram with somebody's email that they use on Facebook then within a day or two you'll start to see all of their friends from Facebook whom are also on Instagram in your recommended follows. All of this happens without email verification..

<comment><USER29> > All of this happens without email verification

This has very interesting consequences...

<comment><USER30> Whoa... so it was around in the open since around 2013, and still not fixed? 0_0

<comment><USER31> Almost every shop does this, no verification before use. ffs, at least provide a "report not mine" function.

<comment><USER32> I've only ever seen a "report not mine" function from Google. Where else have you seen it? I am not on FB/LinkedIn/most similar ones, so I may be missing examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> recently interviewed at Facebook (didn't pass the in-person) and one thing I was looking for was a job that WASN'T based on ads. I didn't want to come across negative so I was circumspect in my asking ("Tell me about the positions at Facebook that I as an outsider don't know about - I know ads, messaging, and events"). I wasn't really excited by the answers I got - <USER2> seemed worked into everything they brought up, but the answers weren't super- nefarious either. This was the Seattle office, which apparently has a strong ads-basis. Because they hire people and then (allegedly) let them pick from available team openings (after a "bootcamp" to do onboarding), I simultaneously felt like I'd have a chance to avoid the worst but also couldn't be sure of what I was committing to. I didn't pass the interview and the few weeks since have tried very hard to make me not regret that by raising issues like this one, despite my natural tendency to give FB the benefit of the doubt and to recognize the difficulty of moderating speech sanely.

I've never had such uncertainty about what a job would involve before - <USER3> "you find your match" sounded good initially, but in retrospect I'm wondering if I dodged a bullet - so hard to know.

<comment><USER34> I find it interesting that you would absolve yourself for working for Facebook just because you wouldn't be working directly on ads. Facebook is an ad company with services attached (a fairly reprehensible one in my opinion). If you work for them, you are helping them achieve their goals, which ultimately is about serving people ads, it doesn't matter what particular role you are doing there.

<comment><USER33> "absolve" is not the correct term (I think) - I don't find ads particularly offensive, I just don't ENJOY them, and I was looking for a job I'd enjoy and enjoy telling people about. I'm perfectly fine with ads existing, though I'm supportive of being able to buy my way out of them. (You can raise issues about ads being inherently deceptive and manipulative, and I wouldn't say you're wrong, but I've not taken a position against them...yet)

That facebook is doing bad things because ads are their only real source of income is a problem because of the bad things, not the ads. At the time the primary concern was "what should facebook be doing about de facto empowering hate speech and (actual) fake news?" and that's a tricky problem that I don't think has a resolved answer, and I sympathize with those that empower communication and only later realize people have more desire to trash things than apply rational caution. Since then much more has come out about some FB practices (and Google), and the question of whether ads-as-your-primary- revenue-source is too much incentive to be "evil" is being implicitly raised, but is likewise not yet resolved.

That said, I do think there are lines to draw and lines not worth drawing. There's very few jobs that don't end up supporting bad things. I don't think it's right to pretend that if you aren't doing it directly that you AREN'T supporting such things...but I also think it's sometimes unrealistic to make your situation worse to deny an indirect support. Deciding where that line lives is an individual decision, and one I have to regularly re-evaluate. To expand my point in the previous post, the news coming out about FB practices definitely made me feel like I'd have been uncomfortable even if I wasn't working directly in ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _> They found that when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user's account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks._

I have always been suspicious of the aggressive "give us your phone number to secure your account" campaigns that so many sites/apps are running. And I think this is a HUGE disservice to users.

At first I was like, cool, companies are being responsible and encouraging good security practices, good on them. But there was something a touch too.. aggressive and "marketing-y" about it. It raised my spidey sense. Maybe the form and frequency and placement of them just was too familiar to previous campaigns to grab your email for "opt in" spam.

All of these companies should be shamed to high hell. Getting people to adopt 2FA is so important and here they are _shamelessly_ exploiting it to market to you for undisclosed purposes.. well, buried in the privacy policy, but you know how that goes. The prompt is 100% about securing your account and nothing mentioned there about using it for targeting.

Seriously F these companies for breaking user trust.

ALSO: Did Zuckerberg lie to Congress?[1]

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow- profiles-h...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles- hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I am becoming anxious to see some action out of the DOJ Anti-Trust division against Google, Facebook, and Amazon, etc. These tech behemoths effectively own most of the consumer internet and they use their muscle to either acquire or force out the majority of other players. More regulation is not going to cut it (or else it would have already).

In America (and most places), law normally lags quite a bit behind the events of the day. Standard Oil destroyed markets unchecked for several decades in the 1800s. No individual or company could withstand their market power. Then the government divided it into dozens of vertically integrated companies, which allowed for a wave of new market entrants, better deals for consumers, and higher standards of living for more people.

We are obviously at that breaking point now with the tech behemoths and their sprawling, impregnable market power. It is time for antitrust action against Facebook and the gang.

<comment><USER37> I think we need proper privacy measures, since the misuse of data is not necessarily an "antitrust issue". For instance, would breaking up Facebook really mean that the newly formed constituents respected privacy? And would antitrust enforcement against Google or Facebook reduce privacy exploitation by smaller entities?

I'd argue that it would not -- 1,000 small Facebooks could still violate privacy. Creating privacy legislation is the only real way to achieve proper privacy guarantees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> When people suggested phone 2fa was a data collection scheme they were hushed and called tinfoils.

<comment><USER39> People still do that when you point out that using a phone number as a required identifier (WhatsApp, Signal, etc.) gives every 'free' service a near perfect unique identifier that's the same for all services used by that person. Ideal for cross-service collation.

Who wants a social security number when you've got someone's phone number?

<comment><USER40> Except that a phone number is as quickly and easily disposable and changeable as an email address or any other identifier?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I talked with the lead engineers from a company back in 2014, that shall remain nameless, that bought private profile data from Facebook, ran it through a bunch of algorithmic mumbo jumbo, and sold the aggregated data to marketing firms. They acted like this was really cool and awesome, much like the wide-eyed cultists. It was very creepy, and I backed away slowly even though this place was looking for more engineers.

This kind of thing has been going on forever, and I've told people this. 99% of people don't actually care, though.

<comment><USER42> Are you sure the "private profile data" wasn't aggregated _before_ it was sold? Either way, selling private data is not something Facebook is actually known to do much (outside of misunderstandings by confused activists/journalists). If you contact me (info in profile) I'm very curious to understand more.

<comment><USER43> Maybe they bought it from someone violating the terms of setting up a Facebook app? I can't stress that this shit's illegal but I also can't stress how the Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that Facebook had almost no way of regulating this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> You can personally decide not to use Facebook, which is good. But you can't convince everybody to do that. So if you or your family members do use Facebook, _at least_ install an ad blocker for all of them.

Not for privacy, but to deny them revenue. I block Google ads on every single site I visit, period. I don't care if the advertising is non-obtrusive. If it's being run through Google, part of that revenue is going to fuel Google's tracking. I support creators directly instead. And if creators refuse to give me a way to support them, that's not an excuse to expect me to contribute to Google's bottom line.

Huge props to the people who are working on blocking trackers and protecting privacy. I'm very glad they exist, and I don't think their efforts are worthless. But, it is _currently_ a losing battle to fight these companies on the privacy front, because the tracking model is so profitable that they will always be pushing more resources into it than we are. Collectively, the people fighting for privacy don't have enough resources to win.

But there's an easy, completely legal solution to that problem; the one thing companies haven't figured out how to get around is ad blocking. And a good ad blocker will block even native ads. For a company like Facebook, all of this boils down to getting you to click on ads. If enough people target that chokepoint, then the advertisers will start pulling out of the system, and there'll be less financial incentive for these companies to undermine people's security and privacy.

And we have evidence that this works. Even Google, which is the powerhouse for getting their ads to actually show up, is starting to devote more resources into trying to figure out how to stop mainstream people from installing adblockers. That's where all the autoplay stuff came from, that's where the acceptable ads initiative came from. They desperately want your roommate to say, "I'm not going to mess around with these weird Chrome extensions or whatever, that's too complicated. Chrome blocks this stuff itself, anyway."

Install adblock on every browser you get access to, tell ordinary people who aren't on HN to use it, and let the advertising industry kill itself. Make it very obvious to companies that buying ads on Facebook is a complete waste of time because even non-technical users just won't see them.

<comment><USER45> > You can personally decide not to use Facebook, which is good. But you can't > convince everybody to do that. Pretty scary.

Which means Facebook has a shadow profile of you even if you don't use it at all: [http://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows- ab...](http://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-about-you- even-if-youre-not-on-facebook-94804)

<comment><USER44> Yep. And I don't know a way to get around shadow profiles.

We should try to find one. I fully support the privacy fixes people are proposing. I think that's really important. But it's pretty obvious that Facebook is winning right now.

However, the only thing that Facebook cares about is getting you to click on an ad. So even if you can't stop Facebook from getting a shadow profile on you, at least you can make that profile worthless by blocking ads literally everywhere that Facebook can think to display them to you, for you and your family/friends.

And you can be public about it to ensure that when Facebook goes to companies and says, "we have all this data for your next campaign", somebody in the sales-pitch meeting raises their hand and says, "yeah, but nobody looks at your ads."

<comment><USER46> The workaround is called GDPR. A shadow account is illegal with that.

<comment><USER47> The standard official Facebook response to this is that you do not own your "shadow profile" since it's a profile made out of data gathered from other people and companies, and thus they can not let you control it. In other words "it is not your data".

I doubt that holds in court, but as mentioned in the article, there are people in the EU who for months have tried to get Facebook to provide the shadow profile data on GDPR grounds, and Facebook has yet to allow it.

It seems like Facebook can afford to stall, they've got more knowledge and power than a single EU citizen can have, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

\----

To be honest, I think Facebook is in breach of _multiple_ GDPR articles _simultaneously_ here, which is quite a feat in itself.

They're in breach of:

\- Privacy by Design (a.k.a. Privacy by Default)

\- Right to Access

\- Right to Be Forgotten (which is older than GDPR..?)

\- Data Portability

Then again, Facebook is not alone. I'm pretty sure there are very, very few companies on the web that are not in breach of GDPR at least in spirit, if not in letter.

<comment><USER48> >I doubt that holds in court

There's a zero chance that holds in court. If it were possible to have a negative chance it would have a negative chance of holding in court.

Data protection does not in any way relate to "ownership" of data.

If the data are personal data then you are forbidden from processing that data unless you have one of seven lawful bases enumerated in the GDPR, and where the data are sensitive then those bases are reduced further.

<comment><USER44> So this is an interesting scenario that I've seen people bring up before, but I've never been completely clear on the answer. Let's say I'm using an online virtual assistant with auto-replies and stuff like that, and I upload your contact information and phone number so it can help me manage my schedule/emails/etc...

Under GDPR, the company I just gave that information to doesn't have your permission. So, let's say that later on, you go to the company and say, "hey, delete any information about me." For them to comply, they can't keep on syncing your contact information in my address book, right?

I guess, how does GDPR handle a situation where a separate customer is going to Facebook and saying, "hey, let me put in that I'm X's cousin"? Should Facebook block that person from specifying the relationship in the UI? Or would that just fall under "essential for business"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> As an FB Marketing API developer, this has been available for several years . The way it works, advertisers can send their phone list to FB for ad targeting. However, phone hashes are sent, not clear ones.

Personally, as long as the user has an opt-out and opt-in options, I don't think ad targeting is necessarily an unethical pattern, the blurring lines of ads and recommendations would be actually a pattern that users might like. Would you rather use Netflix or Spotify without recommendation engine?

<comment><USER50> Thanks for the info - didn't think of this angle (i.e. advertising sending a list of numbers to target, and facebook tying that to their cookie ID they have on you). There I was wondering how this works in a browser since browsers don't know your phones number (right?).

> Would you rather use Netflix or Spotify without recommendation engine?

100% yes.

Personally for me the term "personalisation" is becoming a dirty word and I am becoming uneasy when I hear it mentioned in design docs and product launches etc. I dont want to see what some algorithm thinks I want to see. Instead I would prefer to see the real, unfiltered, unfettered data. I think the whole Fake News outcry started me thinking about it in a more deep way.

Imagine if you went into a fancy restaurant for some special occasion and the waiter took a look at you as you walked in and brought you a "special" menu based on some decision they made silently in their own head about what they think you want. Rightly you'd want to see the _full_ menu and not just what they think you want to see. Sure I'd welcome them pointing out some highlights on the menu, but I'd apprecaite seeing the whole thing before making up my own mind.

As a result now I use DuckDuckGo exclusively and have Firefox set up with Google Container[1] to keep the Google cookies separate from everything else (I dont use facebook at all so their cookies are entirely blocked as 3rd party) as well as the usual uBlock Origin, privacy badger et al. I am even toying with the idea of moving away from my gmail that I've been using since 2004/05.

1 - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google- contai...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/)

<comment><USER51> > Personally for me the term "personalisation" is becoming a dirty word and I > am becoming uneasy when I hear it mentioned in design docs and product > launches etc. I dont want to see what some algorithm thinks I want to see. > Instead I would prefer to see the real, unfiltered, unfettered data. I think > the whole Fake News outcry started me thinking about it in a more deep way.

That's also a corruption of the meaning of "personalisation." Personalisation is about _me_ making choices to adapt a product to _my_ preferences, it's not about _the product_ making choices about how to interact with me.

Real personalisation would be having the (sticky) option to shut the algorithm off and "see the real, unfiltered, unfettered data."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> All my personal details on Facebook are (and have always been) false. My phone number is the number of a hotel in Monte Carlo. When Facebook nagged me to give them my mobile number for 2fa I ignored them. My friends thought I was crazy. I know it's not exactly gracious of me but feeling very self righteous right about now.

<comment><USER53> So you're stuffing it full of false data, but still connected to people who aren't stuffing it full of false data?

That seems like a lot of effort for no real payoff.

<comment><USER54> This is basically the only reason I don't "delete" my Facebook account. I have so many family members and friends that I cannot realistically prevent putting pictures and the like about me on Facebook.

At least I can see some of what Facebook has about me instead of none.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The other really stupid thing, besides generally hurting the adoption of 2FA forever, is that they probably did it for hardly more than scraps, compared to their conventional add targeting capabilities.

Maybe I am completely wrong about this, but I'm pretty convinced that almost all of the ad spending for that feature would have reached Facebook's coffers anyways had it not been available.

<comment><USER56> At Facebook's scale even the scraps can be worth millions.

And the sad truth is that the vast majority of people will not be deterred by, be aware of, or even understand the fact that Facebook is abusing their phone number in this way, so as far as Facebook is concerned it's a small bump in the long road to increased profitability.

<comment><USER55> > At Facebook's scale even the scraps can be worth millions.

Sure, but the same is true about negative headlines, the effect is just more difficult to quantify.

Maybe it's a general world view problem within Facebook, but usually these things are the result of one overly ambitious person or group optimizing the singular bonus metric of their own little fiefdom at the cost of corporation- wide commons. Big organizations need to be extremely vigilant in their defense against internal foes who won't blink an eye costing the company billions for a gain of millions add long as the latter will be attributed to them while the former won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > A spokesman also told us that users can opt out of this ad-based repurposing > of their security digits by not using phone number based 2FA.

That's one way to encourage people to use 2FA App, I guess.

<comment><USER58> Note however that to enable any other type of 2FA you first have to give them your phone number. You can delete your phone number afterward, but it's too late, they have seen everything.

<comment><USER57> Interesting, thanks for letting me know. I don't have an account. I understand _why_ they require you to verify a phone number though, for the exact reason this article explains.

<comment><USER58> The phone number isn't for your protection (it's actually really terrible for 2FA), it's for Facebook's protection. It's an anti-bot mechanism to require a unique phone number for each account, or no more than 5 accounts per number or so.

They also refuse VoIP numbers for authentication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Didn't we have this discussion already earlier this year and they told us it was an unfortunate bug and that it has been fixed?

Yes. Yes. We did: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17022162/facebook-two- fac...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17022162/facebook-two-factor- authentication-sms-notifications-security-bug)

<comment><USER60> not relevant

<comment><USER59> I think it is relevant: back in february they made us believe that them using 2FA phone numbers for marketing purposes was a bug and today we learn that them using 2FA phone numbers for marketing purposes is a feature.

So either they lied in February or they have changed their minds. Either way, I think there is value to bring this very similar discussion back to our minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Facebook gonna Facebook. It's long past time to consider regulation of an ethically bankrupt corporation.

<comment><USER62> Why have costly government regulation when users can just quit?

Plenty of other online and offline ways to connect with the people in your life.

<comment><USER63> Users cannot "just quit". Facebook probably has a profile for my grandma who never touched a PC in her whole life.

<comment><USER62> Many people can't quit because they are addicted, but there is an option to permanently delete your account and it takes about 5min. I'm not aware of Facebook creating profiles for people that haven't signed up for their service. If so, that should definitely be illegal.

The government should have bigger fish to fry than trying to regulate the distribution of information that you have and continue to willingly provide to a company. If you don't like it, sure government could jump in and make Facebook just how you like it, or you could delete the info you don't want them to have. The later sounds easier on everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I only use Facebook like every month now but it _always_ asks about my phone number. It also asks me to enable a log-in short-cut every time.

This last time, they crossed a line: they _pre-filled the field_ (I do NOT have this set up in the browser), meaning they _already figured out my number_ (probably by scrubbing some friend's phone) and just want it confirmed. To hell with that. I would _not_ be surprised if every spam call in existence can be traced to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER65> Inaccurate headline. Being targetable is different than them "giving access" to the information. The actual information is not shared with anyone.

<comment><USER66> Though you can probably gat at least an IP address, and if you create a nice looking fake e-shop with something your target may want, ... they may give you the rest.

Phishing ads on FB may be less obvious than sending them a phishing link over e-mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It's also entirely what I expected, hence why I haven't given Facebook my number. Not sure why anyone is surprised by this to be honest.

<comment><USER68> Facebook probably knows your phone number anyway because your friends have likely shared their phone's contacts with Facebook.

<comment><USER69> Or if you use Whatsapp. Their privacy policy makes this pretty clear:

 _As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings. This includes helping improve infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our Services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities. Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads._

Bizarrely, whilst general everywhere else, the policy specifically calls out banner ads to make it clear that they won't use them until they do, at which point they'll stop saying they don't:

 _No Third-Party Banner Ads. We do not allow third-party banner ads on WhatsApp. We have no intention to introduce them, but if we ever do, we will update this policy._

[https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-affiliated- co...](https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-affiliated-companies)

<comment><USER70> > We do not allow third-party banner ads on WhatsApp. We have no intention to > introduce them, but if we ever do, we will update this policy.

I wonder how do they come up with this kind of language? Do they write a short text that gets filtered several times by multiple teams of lawyers and comes down to this? I cannot honestly imagine a sane human being writing such intricate bullshit, even on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> It should be already well understood that free services aren't free. To me the moral issue of the story is how Facebook isn't upfront about "the cost" of the services they provide.

You want to use facebook to get in touch with friends? We all now know that you will be targeted by ads customized with every piece of information that you reveal (and some bits that you are not even aware you are revealing...)

Assume that an extra layer of security is also costing you some privacy. Interesting dilemma...

<comment><USER72> It is not well understood that they are a service.

To many people it is more like a place, and places are free. Sure, _technically_ you can buy a place and own it and charge for access, and _technically_ somebody owns almost all places you might care to go to, but mostly we think of them as free.

The fact that it costs nothing, monetarily, to access… that very thing often makes something seem like it has no cost.

<comment><USER73> I don't understand why people think these services cost nothing monetarily.

All ads are not free, all advertised products already include the cost of advertising in their price.

So everybody are paying for those "free" services whether they use them or not.

<comment><USER72> I suspect most people don't get as far as "thinking" that in a conscious, deliberative, system-2 sense of the word — They see no price tag, so it's free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I always imagined they would probably end up doing this, and that's why I've never accepted 2FA anywhere a site has tried to push it on me. They can't spam me if they don't know my number...

<comment><USER75> Good 2FA does not involve phone numbers.

I use 2FA on sites that support TOTP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Again? Weren't they called out on this about half a year ago already? Did they continue doing this? How irresponsible and total lack of any ethical standard. Its horrible but mostly just sad that users are just a commodity to make profit. So let's trick them to sign up for 2FA to pretend they have more security and then we can send them nice little ads. What a bad company this has become.

</comment><comment><USER77> People of multiple platforms dislike me for discrediting facebook. Simply talking about facts and what they could expect. They think they know it all. Some corps are good some are evil. People tend to forget that an evil person could also be your most trusted and reliable one. I work as a cyber security engineer and the things i have see flying by are crazy. The fact that information is sold without you4 knowledge is real. Its a dark world out there in disguise.

<comment><USER78> What can we do about it? I realize this is probably not answerable in this thread but I find myself asking this question more frequently lately and I still cannot answer it.

would be happy to see this discussion split into an Ask HN: or other, I think this topic should be debated quite a bit more than it is with the goal of attaining real results on fixing these issues.

<comment><USER79> Simple: delete your Facebook account. Many of us already have. Nothing will send a stronger message than people doing this en masse. Even if they don't get the message or don't care, it's the only way to protect yourself from their never-ending privacy violations.

<comment><USER80> This. Though I will say, in my opinion tech companies are more or less wild animals we pretend are domesticated.

Nothing is free.

Facebook continues to do good for people. Twitter as well. These are invaluable communication channels for many people.

I imagine this problem will get fixed about the same time my physical spam mail stops arriving. I'm not holding my breath, given that I can _say_ something to my wife in the privacy of our own home and get a cold call or physical mailing about it a few weeks later.

I try to encourage people to pay for the services they believe in. Whether you love or hate Microsoft for $6.99/mo you can get Office, (decently private) email, cloud storage, and Skype. Hate Skype? Don't blame you but from there you can get a phone number that you can give out and keep your personal number just for family/emergencies.

This sends a powerful message to folks trying to build a better mouse trap. It is _very_ hard to produce a free service that competes with these folks but if we show we're willing to pay for privacy then maybe we'll start to see competitive innovation in that space again.

Now that I have a family it inspires rage that my phone rings constantly from spammers and I might ignore a call that's time sensitive and important.

<comment><USER81> > Whether you love or hate Microsoft for $6.99/mo you can get Office, > (decently private) email, cloud storage, and Skype. Hate Skype? Don't blame > you but from there you can get a phone number that you can give out and keep > your personal number just for family/emergencies.

Microsoft compromises the security and privacy of all of their online services, including Skype, Outlook.com, and Hotmail: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft- nsa-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa- collaboration-user-data)

A much better alternative is to give your money to independent telephony providers that run on, and support, Free Software: [https://jmp.chat/](https://jmp.chat/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I had my mobile phone-number appear pre-filled in an add-your-number-to-your- account prompt on Facebook's mobile website while I never provided it in any way to Facebook myself (in the meaning of: neither added it to my account nor mentioned it ever on the website; I never used their apps at all either) . They had farmed it from one of my contacts adressbook obviously. Not surprising that they'd do that but still a disconcerting feeling to actually see it happen.

<comment><USER83> TBF that might ave been your browser doing the pre-filling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I'm in a wired situation, I opened my facebook account with a phone number, not email, my username is phone number I had ~5 years ago. I lost the sim card ~4.5 years ago, so since then I still use the same login. Every time I login facebook asks me to update my phone number because it's no longer valid, so they probably know it's been recycled and someone else owns the number. Another thing... a year ago, I got a new sim card with new phone number again (I change my number every 1-2 years), and since that time I can't use this phone number to setup 2FA because... someone else on Facebook has this number in their profile!

<comment><USER85> It's admittedly off topic but if you don't mind me asking, what are the reasons for you to change your number every 1-2 years? Doesn't that complicate things with past clients, old friends and maybe even with family?

I changed my number 3 years ago but I _still_ keep my old number active because it occasionally gets calls or text from past contacts.

<comment><USER84> I don't use phones for communication, I much more relay on emails. My friend and family know how to contact me and they know that my phone number might stop working any time. I don't give phone numbers to clients, as I don't want to be disturbed when they want something, instead I respond to emails when I have time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I guess EU users should be fine? GDPR is a masterpiece.

I actually assume that they violate GDPR, but GDPR gives users a sliver of chance to fight back.

</comment><comment><USER87> Wait? Did somebody ever doubt this? I always believed collecting phone numbers for their marketing needs is exactly the reason why do any of the social networks ever introduce SMS auth.

</comment><comment><USER88> The situation is such that this is what's expected of Facebook. It would be a shocker if Facebook didn't do this. Actually, it's quite surprising that it took so long to do this.

Bottom line, Facebook will devalue you as a human and invade your privacy in any manner possible for as long as it can withstand legal pressures and get away with paltry fines. Obviously, all these measures are to provide users with a better experience. That's Facebook's DNA.

</comment><comment><USER89> You'll notice whenever you get the banner to add a phone number for 2FA, it says "add your phone number for additional security _and more_ "

<comment><USER90> I also hate how all the social media apps want to grab your address book to "see who else you know on here". They _all_ do it.

<comment><USER91> At least on recent Android you can deny it. The UI doesn't support it and you need to resort to hacks such as [https://whatsappwithoutcontact.com/](https://whatsappwithoutcontact.com/)

<comment><USER90> For WhatsApp in its initial incarnation I did not mind allowing it access to my contacts since the phone number was the way it identified people and since it was universal.

With these upcoming incarnations I'm not sure I want to use it, and I'll be looking for a simple IM application which just charges a simple fee for service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> The only justification I could come up is that Facebook has grown so big that "one hand does not know what the other hand is doing." The security and privacy folks at Facebook agreed to this kind of abuse is somewhat hard to believe and the most likely explanation is that these features never got fully reviewed and vetted. Either way its a big failure.

</comment><comment><USER93> Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely a scummy thing to do since it's deceptive. That said, I don't understand why everyone thinks this is such a big deal. They already have your phone number from 2FA anyways, and they already show advertisements. What difference does it make that they let advertisers target people based on their number?

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm not sure I understand what's going on here and the article doesn't really explain. What does it mean that they are "using your 2FA phone number"? It doesn't seem like they are texting ads to people. Are they just using the area code to determine where you live?

<comment><USER95> Advertisers can upload lists of phone numbers that represent people they want to see their ads. Facebook matches those up with your 2FA phone number to show you those ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> And yet in April Mark Zuckerberg told the US Congress that he wasn't "familiar" with shadow profiles[1]:

Lujan: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook, yes or no?

Zuckerberg: Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers].

Lujan: So these are called shadow profiles, is that what they've been referred to by some?

Zuckerberg: Congressman, I'm not, I'm not familiar with that.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow- profiles-h...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles- hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/)

<comment><USER97> Quelle surprise.

I bet plausible deniability is that they call them by a different name internally.

Information brokers are so sketchy – it makes me so sad that the coolest tech companies are also some of the sketchiest.

Do you remember back when the internet and web were all so full of promise? Instead we got tech behemoths that would put Standard Oil and AT&T in their day to shame.

<comment><USER96> I wouldn't count FB to be among the "coolest" tech companies. Maybe 10 years ago they had some cachet but today it's just Mega Corp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> On android, if messenger handles SMS, FB knows how much you have in the bank and your transactions.

<comment> saiya-jin having any FB-developed app on your phone is a serious mistake in the first place

<comment><USER99> It's a mistake many people make just by buying a phone. I had an HTC M8 and liked it except that they made it absolutely impossible to remove FB until I flashed Lineage on to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is the kind of thing that is stupidly hard to fight now. Even if you block Facebook's 80,000 domains at your router, your friend's address book dump gives lots of goodies to Facebook and 3rd parties and you can't touch it. Every new thing they try becomes illegal in 2 years "but not yet" so they do it until they can't.

Sometimes it seems like the "Default deny" security concept needs to apply to Internet companies. Instead of having _years_ to screw with data and the Internet until told "no", how about every idea they have is illegal until it can be proven through thorough review that it might be valuable?

</comment><comment><USER100> This is probably the reason Jan Koum left Facebook. He knew the betrayal of privacy promised of Whatsapp was completed by Facebook by doing exactly this.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Facebook has been bothering me for YEARS to enter my mobile number for "account recovery" purposes. My email is fine for that.

Now Facebook is recommending pages and friends to me who I only am connected with on Instagram. Not to mention Facebook notifications are now integrated into IG. I wouldn't be surprised if these were the final nails that made Kevin Systrom leave.

</comment><comment><USER101> This should have been obvious for anyone who is paying attention.

When data collection and advertising companies such as Facebook (and Google) push a feature actually beneficial to users so aggressively – such as 2FA – during the sign-up process; you'd have to be naive to think it's for your benefit.

It's not 2007 any more... tech savvy users should know better than to trust such organisations with any scrap of additional personal information than absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER102> Tech savvy or not, really there's no way any current fb user would be concerned with it nowdays and they will continue to rat you out to the fb apparatus. You know how they say "ignorance is a bliss".

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> I believe that for us to wait for our governments to have to make regulations around our privacy and data is overly optimistic. Since companies like Google and FB exist on a global market the only way to truly bring about any real changes is to take away the very thing that they're looking for, and that's our use of said services. As someone that works daily with the general public trying to educate them on the safety and use of their technology, I often ask what their feelings are on the subject of companies like FB and Google selling their data to anyone willing to pay for it. The response I get the vast majority of the time is that they aren't doing anything illegal so why would they care? My response to that is "Would you let strangers walk into your house and dig through your personal items?". Every time i get the same response. "Of course not!" Well in my mind this is no different. I've read a lot of suggestions on what we feel government should do to regulate these things but we need face facts here. Society is addicted to many of these services. The simple solution would be to just STOP USING THEIR SERVICES. There are alternatives to both of those services. We now know that the data being collected and sold has the potential of revealing information that could be used maliciously against us, and we complain about what's going on. But then many people turn right around and continue to use the free service. I truly feel that this isn't totally an issue with government regulation as much as it an issue with the vast majority of its users being completely addicted to it. If we want to truly make any kind of impact we need to take personal responsibility for these things. And not only that, but as people that are knowledgeable on these topics we need to educate those non-technical people around us just what it is they're giving up when they click Accept on their EULA's and privacy agreements. As much as I dislike what FB and Google are doing at the end of the day they are counting on the fact that the general public won't spend even 30 seconds reading these agreements. If users care so little about the fact that they're making a legally binding agreement why would FB and Google? Most are so concerned with getting access to whatever service they're attempting to gain access to that they just click the accept button with little or no thought about what it is they're agreeing to. Government can't be expected to do our thinking for us.

</comment><comment><USER104> Umm, based on the content of the article, no, Facebook did NOT advertiser access to your shadow contact information.

Advertisers can specifically say that they want to advertise to a phone number THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, (READ: THE ADVERTISER ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE). And Facebook will display that ads to the Facebook account that use that phone number in their shadow contact info.

At no point does advertiser have access to which Facebook account that is.

<comment><USER105> From the guidelines:

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or > phrase, put _asterisks_ around it and it will get italicized.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> We know that social networks are here to stay, and even if people disagree the writing is on the wall for Facebook to have Myspace moment, as soon as an alternate is available.

What will it take for some prominent VCs/Investors to just come together and create a fund to fund FB replacement? If done right, they will make a killing (from a returns perspective).

</comment><comment><USER102> Orwells final warning is chilling and beautiful, in a some kind of perverse metaphorical sense it's strangely relevant to the future of the Brave new world that we are "faced with":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIoAX5bI6S0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIoAX5bI6S0)

edit: typo

<comment><USER107> George Orwell didn't write Brave New World, though.

<comment><USER102> I haven't said that he did, I just meant things probably won't be completely Orwellian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article states that you can give Facebook a list of phone numbers or email addresses and it will put your ad in front of only those people. Does anyone know how small a list you can target? List of one? List of one plus N number of dead email addresses? Therefore a list of one, but more expensive?

</comment><comment><USER108> Honestly, I hate how many 2FA systems want you to use a phone number. There are other ways that are much better.

<comment><USER109> Everybody punts security issues from identification to the next guy. Eventually the only safeguard left between you and the bad guys is a minimum wage salesman working at the t-mobile counter. It's sad to know that all of your primary email addresses, with links to online shopping accounts with credit cards, bank accounts, etc, can all be accessed by spoofing your phone number.

<comment><USER108> I honestly wish sites would use client side certs or auth via a private key.

<comment><USER110> Client side certs mean now every user has a verifiable identity. Maybe you're OK with Facebook knowing your full ID, but is it also OK to tell Grindr, Redtube and Amazon?

Security Keys are better here. The security key can prove to a site that its the same one as before. "Before what?" Well that's up to the site. In most cases it's going to register one or more keys when you sign up to the site, and then check you still have one when logging in. This is completely useless for everything except the one thing it's intended for, a Second Factor during login.

<comment><USER108> You can always generate a new key pair though. I don't necessarily mean a cert signed by a CA. More akin to use a key pair for SSH.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> It upsets me that the "normal" way to keep in touch with people now seems to be to use some kind of big-brother-esque system.

I try and evangelize Signal over WhatsApp and most of my friends won't budge. I deleted my Facebook four years ago, and as a result I have lost contact with a lot of friends.

<comment><USER112> Before this sort of technology keeping in contact with friends wasn't trivial. Both parties had to want to keep it up. And if they didn't, or you didn't, you just lost contact with a lot of people as a normal matter of course. Everyone moved on with their lives, you met new people, and so on.

That there is this artificial world where people can arbitrarily keep in contact doesn't make that sort of non-interaction of occasionally commenting on or liking posts normal or better. It certainly is easy though to search for someone you knew ages ago, add a friend, have the five minute conversation of what's been going on the last five, ten, twenty years and then never really talk again.

In this regard facebook isn't the problem, and your preferred platform isn't a solution. The problem is people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Is anybody still surprised that everything FB touches ends up being an unethical swamp?

</comment><comment><USER114> I work in sysops. Our user base is larger 40+ year olds. It has taken us nearly two years to convince our users to use a phone or email for password resets. We are now moving to 2fa and this sort of stuff only hurts the industry.

</comment><comment><USER115> The big picture here seems to be alluding people. Let's not get bogged down with Symantec's and logistics. It boils down to self preservation, people need to understand who/ what that " self" is.

<comment><USER116> Well Frosty, I for one am glad to see the struggle and gasping for oxygen. As for hope in each generation, I honestly believe #3 is growing stronger each day. We are alive in a great moment in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> >The researchers also found that if User A, whom we'll call Anna, shares her contacts with Facebook, including a previously unknown phone number for User B, whom we'll call Ben.

Why didn't the author use Alice and Bob?

</comment><comment> d--b "Why did you never join facebook?" they used to ask me.

</comment><comment><USER118> No surprise. But what can one do? Btw this is definitely not GDPR-compliant, because consent isn't given for using the phone number this way.

I feel helpless, even though GDPR is in place.

</comment><comment><USER119> At what point are people going to stop being surprised by news like this?

That's their business model, it's what they do. If you use it, treat all data as public. Otherwise, don't.

</comment><comment><USER120> One would think they've learned and will stop. On the other hand, they've been getting away with this type of behaviour so WHY STOP

</comment><comment> EZ-E Does this affects Facebook's "Account Kit"? (toolkit that provides login/register by SMS to third party apps)

</comment><comment><USER121> I really liked it when people downvoted me when I wrote that Google pushing for 2FA phone numbers is doing it to get your phone number. (they don't use it for ads but lately I don't trust them, also 6mo ago I removed my FB)

In the end I gave Goog even 2 of my numbers because I am scared as hell to lose access to my account. I got my Gmail account when it was in 'innvite only' so it is my main account for long time. Have to move out of it soon.

</comment><comment><USER122> Lately FB says when I go on there "Add a profile pic so people know who you are". Huh? I've always one.

<comment><USER123> Ha! I'm being constantly nagged whenever I visit fb (to see if those who can't live anymore without it, didn't want something etc.) to update my details - which I removed long ago; among that, they sometimes "suggest" updating new profile pic, which I haven't change since end of 2014 - when I stopped wasting time there

<comment><USER124> The worst part about these updates is that you have two options - "Yes" and "Not Now". The "No" option doesn't exist in their dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Sadly, I believe Facebook will truly respect their users in the face of backlash.

</comment><comment><USER126> So, Google is not doing this too?

How many of us use 2FA on our Google accounts?

</comment><comment><USER127> Facebook (probably) using everything possible for ad targeting

</comment><comment><USER128> That's what happens when you give a dog a bone

</comment><comment><USER129> This should not be a surprise to anyone. Facebook is all about making money with your info.

</comment><comment><USER130> cambridge, whatsapp founders, instagram founders, 2FA exploit and so on. What's next for Mark? And actually what would be the trigger for people to flee away?

<comment><USER131> Slow boiling the frog. Those who can notice at this point already left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> It's a cycle. Facebook has been doing nasty shit and apologizing for it since 2003. I'm starting to think they aren't actually sorry.

[https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year- apology-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour- hasnt-fixed-facebook/)

<comment><USER133> Right, because _Move fast and break stuff_ is their mantra. I'm surprised that articles doesn't even mention it.

Perhaps _Move fast and hurt people_ would be more honest. I think it's rather catchy.

<comment><USER134> Move fast and break stuff, like a bull in a china shop.

<comment><USER135> I like it! "Facebook: We're a bull in a china shop."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> The url should point to the Gizmodo article; not the sensationalizing tweet.

[https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access- to...](https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your- shadow-co-1828476051)

The actual story is FB enriching your profile with shadow contact information about you when you _or third parties_ provide it with details it wasn't aware about yet. For instance when a friend of yours has your landline number in their address book and gives FB access to the latter; or when an advertiser provides FB with the same as part of targeting an ad campaign.

<comment> B-Con Is this any surprise? Just a few hours ago the Acton article on the front page[0] talked about them doing this in WhatsApp:

> Later he learned that elsewhere in Facebook, there were "plans and > technologies to blend data." Specifically, Facebook could use the 128-bit > string of numbers assigned to each phone as a kind of bridge between > accounts. The other method was phone-number matching, or pinpointing > Facebook accounts with phone numbers and matching them to WhatsApp accounts > with the same phone number.

> Within 18 months, a new WhatsApp terms of service linked the accounts and > made Acton look like a liar.

Companies like this, and Facebook _in particular_ , are desperate to connect identities. Phone numbers are an incredibly useful way to do so. Most people only have a couple of them, their re-use rate is slow, they get entered into forms all over the place, and they're usually valid (because they were provided as a primary method of contact).

In this case advertisers have an identity (and phone number), Facebook wants to match on that value. They're going to do it any way they can.

It may not be ethical, but the carrot is right there and it's naive to think you can give them your identifying number and they're going to turn a blind eye to it.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690)

<comment><USER137> Wasn't one of the conditions to get the deal approved by EU regulators to NOT share any data between services? [0] Did they just restart it because they found reprieve or simply decided to ignore the regulation?

Edit. Also this [1]. Does GDPR suddenly open the door for sharing this data "legitimately"?

[0] [https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902...](https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp- sharing-user-data-facebook-illegal-ico-gdpr)

<comment> B-Con According to the article it was one of the conditions and they paid ~$100-200M (IIRC) in fines for breaching it.

Which furthers my point, that Facebook will jump on any carrot in front of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER138> This is exactly the kind of abuse that GDPR is designed to curtail.

<comment><USER139> Small question: how do you prove it, adequately for a court of law?

I imagine that to prove it, you'd have to make several accounts, with several phone numbers, and somehow demonstrate to a judge that the information leaks through. Not an easy task.

<comment><USER140> It's "easy".

1\. Ask for the judges phone number 2\. Register new account with judges phone number (clean browser, no friends added or pages liked) 3\. See friend recommendations from the judge in this new FB profile.

<comment><USER141> wouldn't be surprised if FB kept a list of regulators and judges whose information is treated differently from the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER142> I didn't give facebook my phone, my email has timed out (and facebook knows it, it deactivated my email) and I forgot my password, more or less intentionally. So the only thing tying me to Facebook is my browser cookie. I have to say, I'm surprised I've been able to keep this account open for years in this state, it's almost as if they really wanted me to stay. But it's possible to keep a facebook account alive with no accurate contact information.

</comment><comment><USER143> [https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/09/facebook-is-giving- advert...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/09/facebook-is-giving-advertisers- access-to-your-shadow-contact-information/)

</comment><comment><USER144> Google has been pushing SMS 2FA a little more aggressively over the past couple of years, too. And I think Apple made it "easier to use SMS 2FA" in iOS 12 for the same reason.

I also said before that this is _exactly_ why Facebook wanted to "verify people's faces for security purposes", too. It just seemed so obvious to me that Facebook would use security as an excuse to get people to put their own 100% accurate face scans into Facebook. It's also because Facebook used the same excuse with the shadow tracking (it's for your own good!), which is as ridiculous as Google claiming Analytics is for website visitors' own good.

<comment><USER145> > And I think Apple made it "easier to use SMS 2FA" in iOS 12 for the same > reason.

Wait. You think Apple is selling your phone number to advertisers?

<comment><USER146> That person is confusing different things.

Apple is making it easier to use SMS 2FA in iOS 12 (automated copy paste)

However Apple itself doesn't use SMS for 2FA.

As for Apple they had your phone number since the launch of the iPhone (!). Never needed 2FA to know it.

And no, Apple isn't selling your phone number.

<comment><USER147> >Apple isn't selling your phone number.

Until they have bad iphone sales.

Given Apple's less than stellar track record toward developers, employees, and customers, Apple will do things for Apple.

<comment><USER148> No dude, Apple has an excellent track record for privacy of customer data. They don't share anything with anyone else, intentionally. It's a walled-in garden. They have always, and continue to, view themselves as a hardware company. They make money on hardware sales. I mean look at their margins. Any such activity, if called out, may lower their hardware sales.

<comment><USER147> You must be new to Capitalism and Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> I'm surprised people didn't know this... this has been happening for at least 4 years through custom audiences. An advertiser can upload a list of mobile numbers or email addresses to target people.

<comment><USER150> Actually this should be an act of "good faith" where you are adding a layer of security to your account and not about making even more harm to your account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER151> Phone numbers were not a secure 2FA anyway, and I've been using the TOTP alternative since it's been available... but I don't really see a problem with them using whatever to show "more relevant ads", if you don't want ads just use an ad blocker.

<comment><USER152> Likewise, passwords fail to protect against a whole class of attacks. I don't know why Facebook still uses them.

<comment><USER151> Phone numbers fail against remote third party undetectable attacks with O(1) complexity. You'd have to use a password like "1234" to fail like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> I was purging my life of all things Google(Facebook went first), so I was changing my email addresses under all my various accounts. An odd thing happened when I was changing my info for my Microsoft account: they texted my as a security precaution. The only problem is that I NEVER gave Microsoft my phone number. I do not have 2FA set up. In my contact details, there is a blank for my phone number. WTF Microsoft.

<comment><USER154> What kind of cooperation level did YOU expect from a $240MM check?

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21458486/ns/business- us_business/t...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21458486/ns/business- us_business/t/microsoft-invests-million-facebook/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER155> I think it's much worse when HTC places ads on your phone via bloatware apps that can't be uninstalled. That's absolutely vicious and hardly ever gets any press time. But, oh, facebook makes a minor little slip up and they even FIX the problem and everyone looses their heads over it.

<comment><USER156> One of the bloatware apps that I can't remove from my phone is Facebook :)

Thanks, Sprint!</comment></comment>


Why the Vasa sank: Lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.up.edu/lulay/failure/vasacasestudy.pdf

<comment><USER2> I just finished Diane Vaughan's excellent _Challenger Launch Decision_ , and it's remarkable how many of the same things that doomed the _Vasa_ were also problems with the Shuttle fleet:

1\. Excessive schedule pressure:

The Vasa was launched with an aggressive schedule that did not allow the shipbuilders to adequately redesign the ship to accommodate modifications requested by the king. Likewise the space shuttle fleet was plagued by schedule pressure throughout its history, with Congress repeatedly turning up the pressure on NASA to establish an operational shuttle fleet.

2\. Changing needs:

The Vasa was originally designed to be a 108 foot ship, but was completed as a 135 foot vessel. Likewise, the Shuttle, originally was designed as a relatively small spaceplane that would sit on _top_ of the booster stack. Additional scientific and military requirements cause the space shuttle to be scaled up into a much larger system that would sit _alongside_ the boosters. In addition, these changing requirements ensured that testing was conducted on an accelerated schedule, further adding risk to the project.

3\. Lack of technical specifications:

This is one place where the Vasa and shuttle narratives diverge. NASA was very diligent about ensuring that technical specifications were up to date and that changes were propagated to the appropriate working groups in a timely manner. These detailed changes and documentation were instrumental in conducting post- disaster analysis.

4\. Lack of documented project plan:

The Vasa did not have a documented project plan, or if it did, it didn't survive into the present day. The Shuttle did have a very well documented project plan, but there were so many changes, few knew what the overall plan was, so the effect was remarkably like not having a plan at all. Unlike with technical specifications, mid-level managers and low-level NASA engineers often did not have a good understanding of what the current "big picture" status was with the Shuttle design.

5\. Excessive innovation:

The Vasa attempted to incorporate a second gun deck, whilst simultaneously attempting to set a size record for the shipyard and the country. The Shuttle incorporated numerous innovations: reusable heat shields, innovative liquid- fueled motors, new electronic flight control systems. These innovations (particularly the heat shield and the liquid fueled motors) were significant timesinks and drew time and manpower away from other parts of the project that were considered "safe" (in this case, the reusable solid rocket boosters). Likewise, it appears that the shipwrights of the Vasa had so many other concerns, they didn't have time to pay attention to basic seaworthiness concerns.

6\. Secondary innovations

This is closely related to the point above. Just like the Vasa required additional innovations to accommodate her second gundeck, the Space Shuttles required numerous secondary innovations to accommodate the new technologies that they were to incorporate. In both the space shuttle disasters, the final, fatal flaw was in a secondary innovation.

In the case of Challenger, the zinc oxide putty that was sealing the gaps between segments of the solid rocket boosters failed, allowing rocket gases to attack and burn holes through the O-rings. In the case of Columbia, the carbon-carbon panels that were shattered by falling ice were there to protect the leading edges of the wings - the original shuttle design didn't have such panels, as the original shuttle design called for the use of heat-resistant titanium alloy.

7\. Requirements creep

The Vasa evolved significantly over it's 2.5 years of construction. The space shuttle evolved even more. It went from a relatively modest astronaut transport system to the be-all end-all space launch system for NASA. That, combined with schedule pressure, ensured that there were outstanding design issues when the system was put into production.

8\. Lack of scientific methods

Here again, the two narratives diverge. Unlike 16th century shipbuilders, 1970s NASA was highly experienced in designing and building rockets. What sank the shuttle was not lack of scientific measurement and method, but a process of normalization of deviance, where increasingly deviant measurements were redefined as "normal" by virtue of the fact that in this instance nothing untoward resulted from the abnormal parameter.

9\. Ignoring the obvious

The Vasa was launched after failing a rudimentary stability test. The space shuttle exhibited hot-gas impingement on it's O-rings on the second test flight. However, in both cases, the solution was to apply a patch and move on as if the problem had been solved. For the Vasa, it was additional ballast. For the shuttle, it was a series of tweaks to putty composition and application technique. In both cases, the tweaks did not fix the underlying problem, and were well-intended best efforts to fix design issues after the system had been built.

10\. Possible mendacity

While the Congressional report does indicate mendacity on the part of NASA middle managers, Vaughan's account absolves these managers of mendacity. She says that the Congressional report misinterpreted internal NASA terms (like "waiver", for example) whose meanings had diverged from their common-language usage.

Despite a few points of divergence, it's striking how parallel the courses of the Vasa and the Challenger are. Both were groundbreaking, innovative flagships and symbols of national pride. Both were designed and built under intense schedule pressure and fluctuating requirements. And finally, both met tragic fates due to fundamental flaws in their design. Our knowledge of scientific principles may have improved over the past three hundred years, but our knowledge of sound project management techniques sure hasn't.

<comment><USER3> Also this: [http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis- the-t...](http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the- themocline-of-truth/)

This applies everywhere. Without a culture that encourages everyone at every position of power to be honest and express their true opinions then you just end up with a system built on deception and false beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article was clearly written by a non-sailor as his terminology is very odd.

The phrase "heel over" is particularly confusing. All sailboats heel on most points of sail. When he says the boat "heels over" at 10⁰.. I assume that means the boat's Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS) was a mere 10⁰? If so, the boat was very unseaworthy indeed.

Seaworthy square riggers would have had an AVS of more than 70⁰ with closer to 90⁰ being ideal. Modern externally-ballasted keelboats have an AVS well in _excess_ of 90⁰, many in the 120-130⁰ range, meaning the mast can be completely submerged and the boat will still come back up if it isn't down- flooded.

Another point that stuck out to me: He said that the additional gundeck in the 17th century lead to a change in tactics from boarding with marines and taking the enemy vessel as a prize to simply outright sinking of the vessel.

In fact, prize-taking remained the dominant goal of naval battle until the late 19th century when exploding ordinance and long-range standoff guns rendered it impractical. Consider the battle of Trafalgar in 1805: The British captured 21 French and Spanish vessels and sank only one.

<comment><USER5> This comment was clearly written by a non-Unicode expert ;)

U+2070 SUPERSCRIPT ZERO (⁰) is not the same character as U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN (°). They look rather distinct on my screen (I assume both characters come from Verdana, the font specified in the CSS of this site).

<comment><USER4> I used Compose-^-0 to generate it. That used to make a degree sign. I guess it makes slightly more sense for it to be a superscript though. I wonder what the new compose sequence for degree is..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those that haven't seen it, the Vasa museum (<http://vasamuseet.se/en/>) is really cool. If you happen to be in Stockholm and are interested in these things, a stop is highly recommended.

<comment><USER7> I can strongly second this, just saw it a month ago. Its hard to appreciate just how big this boat was until you're standing under it. And the 'excavation' process was quite incredible, made possible by the amazing preservation properties of pollution.

<comment><USER8> It is also very surprising that the ceiling height on the ship is something like 160 cm (5'4") - people were that much shorter only few hundred years ago.

<comment><USER9> Just FYI, they weren't that much shorter. Below decks everyone was stooped over. Sometimes the captain had a full headroom cabin depending on the size of the ship, and later perhaps the officers in the wardroom as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great museum that's a must visit, and unfortunately it has a time frame on it. When I was there last year, the guides said it's slowly crushing itself, as a boat isn't designed to support itself out of the water. They don't know how long it has left.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had a chance to visit the Vasa museum in Stockholm, and the Why was explained as follows - the king was an odd fella and builders couldn't question or object his directives. He wanted an extra tall ship and that's exactly what he got. The end.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like an early exercise in Agile Shipbuilding.

</comment><comment><USER12> An improved version of the same document: <http://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/acsd/vt10/SE3.pdf> (with pictures and typesetting)

</comment><comment><USER13> Source, which links to this and other historical accidents: <http://faculty.up.edu/lulay/failure/ME421.htm></comment>