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Facebook's Graph Search: Kiss Your Privacy Goodbye
Nerval's Lobster writes "Software developer Jeff Cogswell is back with an extensive under-the-hood breakdown of Facebook's Graph Search, trying to see if peoples' privacy concerns about the social network's search engine are entirely justified. His conclusion? 'Some of the news articles I've read talk about how Graph Search will start small and slowly grow as it accumulates more information. This is wrong—Graph Search has been accumulating information since the day Facebook opened and the first connections were made in the internal graph structure,' he writes. 'People were nervous about Google storing their history, but it pales in comparison to the information Facebook already has on you, me, and roughly a billion other people.' There's much more at the link, including a handy breakdown of graph theory."
You kissed your privacy goodbye when you signed up for a social network.
What does FaceBook have on me? It has my email address. It has my cell number. Other than that it contains a lot of innocuous posts that I couldn't care less who read.
I have been peppering my FB check-ins with places that I have been to, noting events that never took place, mixed in with real check-ins. I have set my "Lives in" city to somewhere different every day this year. Unless you know me, good luck figuring out what on my FB page is real and what isn't.
Nope, they collect information based on IP address for those not on FB too
Why on Earth would anyone post anything of value on Facebook? A few years ago whent the stories of Facebook's security and privacy concerns began to surface - THIS wasn't a clue? I honestly don't understand how this is news. People who didn't care about it years ago aren't going to care about their privacy now, and those who DO care fall into two categories; 1) They don't use Facebook at all 2) When they do, they post bogus information or omit information entirely because they don't trust the network. Soooooo, how is any of this news again?!
Do not enter your real name on a social network, use a Psuedonym, call yourself something else like you would on IRC, AIM, YIM, etc. Only friend people who you know on their Psuedonym. People. Quit. Putting. Your. Real. Name. On. Accounts.
Be sure and spend lots of time posting something insightful since all this whole submission is meant to do is generate hits from search engines!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Yes people let us live in fear. Fear the bogeyman. Hide your truth. Isn't it obvious this is the path to a brighter future.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Too bad. They know exactly who you really are, and your current, (and probably all past) addresses. Your spouse and family log in from the same public facing IP addresses, you all visit the same restaurants together with your portable devices. Your friends have your pictures, and facial recognition will peg you.
You are fooling no one but yourself.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If a foreign government agency had spent years gathering data, and was mining it for undisclosed (possibly nefarious) purposes, It would be known as a dangerous spy network, would be subjected to infiltration/corruption and possible attack. I completely fail to understand why people tell FB anything about themselves ever, and don't request immediate deletion of all the data held about them. When governments try and spy on someone, they get all upset about it, when FB does it, and freely allows the data to be sold to the highest bidder/anyone who cares to look, people think its really cool and useful. what does it take for people to say enough is enough? Is it too late now, since the data is already gathered? why do I fail to see the upside of FB and its data gathering ilk?
People who post pictures of themself drunk, passed out pants round their ankles in the street are concerned with privacy.
I have never had a FB account, real or fake. Although I have several friends that do, and they sometimes discuss things about me. I wonder how much FB know about me?
The anonymous ship sailed a long time ago for pretty much anybody who has ever done anything public under their own name. I could be easily googled well before FB came along. That doesn't particularly bother me; I don't have any mortal enemies that I'm hiding from, and I'd like any old friends to be able to find me if they want to do so. The rules haven't changed: if you really want to be private for some reason, don't do anything public (and anything on the internet is public) under your real name--for that matter, you might want to consider changing your name to something generic with 100,000 Google hits that aren't you.
Check how unique your browser is:
http://panopticlick.eff.org/
This will show you that logged in FB or not, your browser signs your unique presence for you. No really, you don't even need to have an account on FB to be known by FB. Now add the data collected by other sites and I'm quite sure that FB could automatically fill in your first name field and last name field for you during the account creation.
I wrote this a while ago but I will continue to post it as long as stupid people exist: You Do Not Have A Facebook Page!. Facebook has a page on you.
I signed up to Facebook and occasionally update Facebook's page on me, I find the service quite useful for keeping in touch with people, but I am under no illusions as to why Facebook provides this service. Anyone who uses Facebook with anything they expect to keep private has seriously misunderstood their relationship with the company.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
Yes people let us live in fear. Fear the bogeyman. Hide your truth. Isn't it obvious this is the path to a brighter future.
Interestingly enough, I just did a global birth certificate search, and besides not finding one for a "Barrack Obama" in the US or any protectorate or territory thereof (which we all knew anyway), I did find one listing an official name of "Jmc23". Just "Jmc23". Parents listed as "Run Dmc" and "J-Lo".
There is only one time when you use real information: when you're paying for a service and it has a vested interest in keeping your information off the open internet.
Otherwise, it's time to fill in the B.S. Think of your best friend as a child, and a common object around the house. Those terms are your first name and last respectively.
- Dave Paperweight
but I challenge anyone to think of a single instance of "privacy" that isn't also "dishonest" if you assume that withholding the truth is also being dishonest.
I challenge anyone who can think of a single instance of when the sun didn't come up in the west, assuming that "west" means "the direction the sun comes up in".
0.0.0.0 connect.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 graph.facebook.com
Or, just run Ghostery, which scrubs the whole lot of 'em. Anyone browsing the modern internet without at least an adblocker and a tracker/analytics blocker pretty much deserve what they get.
[...] if you assume that withholding the truth is also being dishonest
9/10... Well played, sir!
Are you saying that fear is the path to a brighter future?
OR
living in a dystopian FB/"We know what you think before you think it" future?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
He's on Slashdot. He's doesn't have friends or family IRL....
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
From my understanding, this new feature still pays attention to your privacy settings. If you don't have your privacy settings set right, that is your fault. If you don't think Facebook gives you enough control in its privacy settings, don't use Facebook. If you have a public Facebook profile with sensitive private information on it, you are an idiot and big companies have been aggravating your data for a while now.
That isn't to say that all dishonesty is necessarily negative, but I challenge anyone to think of a single instance of "privacy" that isn't also "dishonest" if you assume that withholding the truth is also being dishonest.
Why would I ever accept such an idiotic assumption.
By your line of reasoning wearing underwear counts as "dishonest". Having your blinds closed is "dishonest". Peeing behind the bush instead of in front of it where i can see you is "dishonest". Keeping your bank PIN code a secret is "dishonest". Stubbing your toe and thinking "ouch" without saying it is "dishonest".
GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.
Only a complete idiot would categorize any of that as dishonesty. Sure we can all agree that not telling your girlfriend that you banged the neighbor should count as dishonest as you've breached the implicit agreement that is likely in effect to be mutually faithful and then concealed this fact, but simply electing not to volunteer an estimate of how many ounces you urinated this morning is not "dishonesty" by any reasonable stretch.
At first, I thought FaceBook users were a bunch of popularity whores looking for scores of friends and their own reality TV fix. Now, I simply think users just don't make the connection to a bunch of online connections and how quickly and easily their activity propagates to each other.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The real problem, As I see it, is that in the not too distant future:
everyone in the US will essentially be forced to have a Social Network account to be able to function in modern society.
More and more I see all manner of business and government entities handing responsibility over to FB for all sorts of things. It's actually quite disgusting, but not surprising given the (d)evolution of our database driven society. A centralized system of user accounts that almost everything done digitally can use?
When I first saw the subtle changes taking place with FB, things like not being able to contact my local PBS television station unless I used FB , or not being able to enter a contest to see one of my favorite bands unless I used FB I knew it would be only a matter of time until everyone will be forced to have an account.
Currently I don't have one, and never have. However I am part of a group that has an account, and my name and image are located there, so I'm "in the system" as it were.
Once everyone is forced to have an account, then the next step will be for society in general to force those with accounts to update those accounts. There will come a time when via our smartphones those accounts will be updated automatically.
It's almost at that point now:
Who you've talked to.
What you said.
Where you went.
What you bought.
What you listened to.
What you read.
What you think.
Disgusting, reprehensible, wrong
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I think Mr. Alienzed was attempting a lowbrow flyby of sarcasm sprinkled with a dash of dickheadedness(aka Trolling)...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Is everyone really 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
... on Facebook. HeHeHe .... HeHe .... He .. He .. hmmm???
Privacy = DEFENSE. The point is to limit your surface area vulnerable to attack, and it is ALWAYS under attack. Have you ever heard of Cardinal Richelieu?
Good-bye
Think about how many times some moron has shared information about a crime they committed on Facebook. I think they care, but they don't understand how quickly information spreads.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yet Another Reason Not To Do FaceBook.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That defeats one of the most attractive features/purposes of Facebook ... the ability to locate (or be located) by old friends and connections you knew from school, previous jobs, etc.
Don't forget, Facebook basically sprung up from the ashes of the old pay sites like Classmates.com. People were eager enough to locate each other using a site like this, they used to pay good money for memberships. Then Facebook came along and said they'd do the same thing at no cost.
If you really don't want people to know anything about you, why would you ever use a site like Facebook in the first place? (The online games are really second-rate fare, so that's not even a very good reason, IMO.)
I'm not denying there are very real, serious privacy implications to using social networking sites... and I'm just as certain there are govt. agencies heavily backing sites like Facebook as info-gathering tools for their own purposes. But I don't have a big problem with using it in a responsible manner. I understand I'm giving up some privacy by posting info on the site, but I'm selectively about what I offer there. Most of it, I don't consider a big deal for others to have. In fact, most content I put there is along the lines of sharing URLs to other pages of information -- so I'm just redirecting some traffic in those cases. Can they analyze that and learn some of my interests? Yup. Do I care? Nope.
privacy = dishonesty
Am I being dishonest because I don't tell my future employers exactly what I did with my girlfriend last night? Because really, the only people that need to know about that are me and her.
Am I being dishonest because I don't tell the NSA exactly which completely legal political gatherings I'm attending? Because I should be able to do that without the NSA caring about it.
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
I am officially gone from
Unfortunately I might add. There are OG tags all over the place and even see a FB icon next to a username sometimes. What's up with that?
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
Great now everybody knows the reason for my big mouth and ass!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
You mean "Zombie Ryushu" is not your real name??
May Peace Prevail On Earth
There are people, and friends of mine who use Facebook as their only means of Contact.
Interesting link, thanks.
Website that your enter every minute detail of your life along with trackers on millions of websites to tie your browsing habits directly to your account has more personal information than one that passively collects your information through ads and search results.
Individually, those things you describe as "not foolproof" don't in fact have to be foolproof.
Collectively, they are foolproof.
Again, I urge you to RTFA completely.
As of today, the capabilities of Graph Search probably won't hurt you.
Unless you become a "person of interest" and the authorities start serving National Security letters and warrants on facebook for your account info. Then
the sky is the limit, because all of those "not foolproof" things add up, and anything you mentioned in passing or your friends said or posted will be linked.
So behave yourself, ya hear!?
The TFA points out that this capability to link all of Facebook's mined data will be filtered into the API. Perhaps little by little at first. But, following facebooks normal mode of operation, paying customers will soon be able to know everything about you, not just the stuff you posted, but things the friends of your ex-girlfriend said about you.
Ignore it as you wish. You sold your life to them, and they aren't going to forget anything about you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I did that a few years ago, but got kicked off after three weeks because of it. Hence, why I refuse to it, Google+, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It doesn't have to be national security: federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was famous for indicting girlfriends/boyfriends and fiancees of his targets on bogus federal charges regardless of their non-involvement in the target investigation, and threatening them with long jail sentences unless they testified as directed against their SO. He's since retired but that's probably a common tactic of all federal prosecutors, and access to Facebook will give them more of what they want in this area. Remember that plastic water bottle you dropped while hiking in a protected wilderness area? Oops.
sPh
I suspect that Facebook is being funded, if not operated, and at the least has certainly been heavily infiltrated by a US three-letter agency. NSA, CIA, NRO, one of those guys. The amount of information freely offered and the graph connections that have been growing since Day 1 are a staggering resource for spies. As would be a list of people who don't appear in the graphs.
sPh
What part of "don't do written/verbal diarrhea on the internet" and "if you do so anyways, don't use your real name" is all about fear? I mean, part of me is happy about Facebook because it sort of proves the idea that if enough people engage in that sort of written diarrhea dumping every little bit of their life that it becomes such an annoying and boring waste that only a small handful of people (or maybe no one) will bother to follow, hence proving the idea that "the truth will set your free" and "information wants to be free" can be fulfilled.
And then I look at how much (a) Facebook and others are profiting off of this using data mining and such and how nefariously it could all be used and (b) just how much it really isn't being ignored. Facebook started off as a sort of college social club with almost high school-like mentality. Its net result has been to include a lot more people back into that high school-like mentality--where probably through nothing else but isolation that sort of thing ended in high school and so social circles ended up being a lot smaller and of much more limited scope. Of course, perhaps I'd feel a whole lot better if "high school-like mentality" was a positive thing.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Except you miss that Facebook is not tracking the stuff you post... They are tracking the mundane stuff... The stuff you don't even use a username for. They are interested in marketing.. So what news do you read, they can tell a lot just from what you click and what you skip because all the "Like" buttons are "connected".
Eventually your other "secret" life will be connected... But Facebook cares about what they can sell...Toothpaste, boxers, cheezy poofs, ect... So they are looking for demographic markers.. Boy/girl, black/white, 25/35/45, etc... All stuff pretty easy to gather from just collecting what you clicked for an hour.
That really makes the point because I have a plain iPhone freshly updated to 6.1. Even though there is NOTHING about my specific iPhone listed (not leaking ID numbers) by the time they ping version numbers for all the user agent, media and web standards, and the various privacy options turned on or off, it was still 1 in 1 million .. Which means pretty easily tracked.