Slashdot Mirror
How Facebook Outs Sex Workers (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Gizmodo report: Leila has two identities, but Facebook is only supposed to know about one of them. Leila is a sex worker. She goes to great lengths to keep separate identities for ordinary life and for sex work, to avoid stigma, arrest, professional blowback, or clients who might be stalkers (or worse). Her "real identity" -- the public one, who lives in California, uses an academic email address, and posts about politics -- joined Facebook in 2011. Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all; for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a different name. Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook's "People You May Know" recommendations, Leila (a name I'm using in place of either of the names she uses) was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients. Despite the fact that she'd only given Facebook information from her vanilla identity, the company had somehow discerned her real-world connection to these people -- and, even more horrifyingly, her account was potentially being presented to them as a friend suggestion too, outing her regular identity to them. Because Facebook insists on concealing the methods and data it uses to link one user to another, Leila is not able to find out how the network exposed her or take steps to prevent it from happening again. "We're living in an age where you can weaponize personal information against people"Kashmir Hill, the reporter who wrote the above story, a few weeks ago shared another similar incident.
Don't use Facebook.
AC, because I moderated already.
Both are real problems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...and this is how it knows who you associate with. In later versions of Android (and perhaps in iOS), you can deny permissions to read your contacts, but the app will likely work hard to get around that.
If you have contacts on your phone that you don't want Facebook to know about, then you must not load their app
- only access them through a dedicated, privacy-focused web browser (or an equivalent sandboxing app).
I like FaceSlim on F-Droid. I would never, ever run their app. That thing is a monster.
A decade ago Facebook sent me an email, suggesting that I create an account (as I didn't have one) and also telling me that I probably knew three different people - one that I worked with, one that I socialised with and one family member.
None of those people had the same email address for me.
I wonder if the UK DPA or upcoming GDPR legislation will let me force Facebook to reveal their matching algorithm - see Article 15 paragraph 1(h) of the regulation (PDF at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal... )
analyzing and publishing public information is not an invasion of privacy, even when done on a massive detailed scale using new technology.
facebook is a public place, created to exploit user information for facebook investors' advantage, with no privacy whatsoever, don't use it. don't put yourself at the mercy of exploiters running facebook, if you care for privacy.
case would be different when non facebook users are exploited by zuck and gang, that too happens. that should be criminalized with prison. .
I come from a middle eastern Muslim country. My views about religion and other issues will surely anger people I know. To vent, I made two accounts on facebook, one for my friends, and one where I express my views including religious ones under a separate identity.
On the 'anonymous' account, I just put my first name and at worst, extremely general hints about my life , since I assumed no one I know will see it. I used a separate, anonymous, e-mail for this account, and used to access it from a separate browser. The only link was probably my IP address / user agent, or maybe I tried to view my profile from the other account, but that's it.
I was once chatting with a real-life Muslim friend and she started making hints about statuses I post on my other account. Nothing serious happened, since shes a terrible Muslim herself, but this could have easily put my life in danger had this been known to other people. I learned to NEVER trust facebook with my privacy ever since this happened.
Stop being on Facebook.
Except Facebook will remember you even if you delete your account.
Except Facebook will remember you even if you have separate accounts.
Except Facebook will find out who you are if you have friends and family on Facebook. Especially if they mention you by name in a Facebook post.
Except Facebook is probably tracking you right now because of all those little "like" buttons you can see everywhere.
Except Facebook... Oh, fsck it, I give up.
Frankly, who needs the NSA when you have Facebook? Oh, wait, they are probably working together right now.
Wasn't there a story about that creep Zuckerberg wanting to become President of the United States of Facebook?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Both are pretty serious problems and ones that massively would benefit society if changed. Of course that would require people to a) get over religion and b) get over the quasi-religious belief that people with a lot of money are somehow "good".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When I was going to install signal because of all the good things I heard about it, my phone presented me with a *massive* list of permissions the Signal app wants:
- read sensitive log data
- find accounts on the device
- read your own contact card
- modify your own contact card
- read calendar events plus confidential information
- add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners' knowledge
- find accounts on the device
- read your contacts
- modify your contacts
- approximate location (network-based)
- precise location (GPS and network-based)
- read your text messages (SMS or MMS)
- receive text messages (MMS)
- receive text messages (SMS)
- send SMS messages
- edit your text messages (SMS or MMS)
- directly call phone numbers
- directly call any phone numbers
- modify phone state
- reroute outgoing calls
- read call log
- read phone status and identity
- write call log
- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
- read the contents of your USB storage
- modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
- take pictures and videos
- record audio
- view Wi-Fi connections
- read phone status and identity
- send WAP-PUSH-received broadcast
- receive data from internet
- view network connections
- create accounts and set passwords
- pair with Bluetooth devices
- send sticky broadcast
- change network connectivity
- connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
- disable your screen lock
- full network access
- change your audio settings
- read sync settings
- run at startup
- set wallpaper
- use accounts on the device
- control vibration
- prevent device from sleeping
- toggle sync on and off
Needless to say, I backed out.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Kind of.
As a self-identified right-winger, my first concern with prostitution is the inherent risk of abuse, first due to the social stigma, which puts the sex worker at risk of abuse by law enforcement, pimps and other rent-seekers, and clients. Removing the stigma is, or should be, out of scope for government intervention. Government can reflect society and culture, but when it is used to dictate or shape society or culture, it is no longer freedom, and our nation has become something it was not intended to be.
This is why, as described in a recent incident, police officers defending engaging in sex with anyone other than their spouses (or partner) while on duty as innocuous are flat-out lying. Being a police officer, on duty, they have an inescapable position of authority, and there can be no consensual interaction with any citizen without the obvious risk of becoming an enforced interaction. The gun on their person forces that. Even taking the gun and badge off solves nothing, however, because they can defer that forced interaction until 'later'. A police officer on duty, and probably even off duty, can use their position of authority to force others to comply with virtually any demand, and their only risk is not exposure, for we see too many reports of this happening, but the unfortunately rare imposition of undesirable consequences. these happen too rarely to be a deterrent on many forces...
And this is only the law enforcement risk to sex workers. their clients can take advantage of a real imbalance of power. Until society removes the various stigma associated with the work, this is a risk where the work is held in such low esteem.
Now, the question of whether prostitution is a moral or ethical profession is one to be left to the culture and society. resolving that could make the work safer.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
data analytics that would make even the STASI say, "whoa, that's going a little too far"...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Close. The real problem is carrying a cell phone with the Facebook app on it, signed in with your account, while doing things you don't want Facebook knowing about. All they have to do is correlate the GPS locations from multiple devices to detect that two people are repeatedly in the same location at the same time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There WASN'T two accounts-- she DID NOT HAVE an account for her professional work.
Seriously, how hard is it to read a damn article before taking the know-it-all route.
According to the summary(That you obviously didn't read), she only has a FB account that's linked to her real life identity.
Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all
There is no other account for FB to conclude is owned by the same person.
Whatever is happening isn't what you think is.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
That's what they SAY they need it all for. Do you really believe the cover story? Come on. All that data is valuable and can be sold. That's why there are ten zillion permissions.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The criminalization of prostitution doesn't fix any of those negative aspects. Decriminalization allows us to tax it. When we tax something we keep records and make requirements/offer services to the workers in that industry. Those requirements/services would be aimed at reducing the issues you're speaking of above. There will still be illegal prostitution, but legalization would greatly diminish that.
Prohibition didn't solve the evils of alcohol, they exacerbated them. The war on drugs hasn't stopped drug us, it's simply exacerbated the negative affect it had on society.
The first-order vs. higher-order stuff you're prattling about above is not directly connected with party affiliation. Stupid people only think about first-order affects. There are stupid people on either end of the spectrum.
Meanwhile, please point me to one member of congress presenting a "proper solution that provides far more balance and tries to avoid unintended side effects" for the ills of sex workers and their clients. By which I mean a solution other than "more prison, bigger guns."
Hmm... as a self-identified left-winger; I'd say you nailed my position more or less perfectly as well. So I'm not sure the split her is left vs right at all.
I do generally favor legalization; for practical reasons. It is going to happen whether its legal or not, and they are already in a highly vulnerable occupation at the best of times... explicitly making them criminals too just makes them more vulnerable.