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Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App (bloomberg.com)
Sarah Frier, reporting for Bloomberg: Facebook scans the text and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, making sure it all abides by the company's rules governing content. If it doesn't, it gets blocked. The company confirmed the practice after an interview published earlier this week with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg raised questions about Messenger's practices and privacy. Zuckerberg told Vox's Ezra Klein a story about receiving a phone call related to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Facebook had detected people trying to send sensational messages through the Messenger app, he said.
"In that case, our systems detect what's going on," Zuckerberg said. "We stop those messages from going through." Some people reacted with concern on Twitter: "Was Facebook reading messages more generally?" Facebook has been under scrutiny in recent weeks over how it handles users' private data and the revelation struck a nerve. Messenger doesn't use the data from the scanned messages for advertising, the company said, but the policy may extend beyond what Messenger users expect.
"In that case, our systems detect what's going on," Zuckerberg said. "We stop those messages from going through." Some people reacted with concern on Twitter: "Was Facebook reading messages more generally?" Facebook has been under scrutiny in recent weeks over how it handles users' private data and the revelation struck a nerve. Messenger doesn't use the data from the scanned messages for advertising, the company said, but the policy may extend beyond what Messenger users expect.
... water is wet. Also the sky is blue! See more at 11!
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
The answer is yes. Every single Messenger message you sent is routed through Zuckerberg's office. He personally scans each one, and hits an "Approve" or "Reject" button. He also has a copy of Notepad open on his desktop, and he pastes more interesting messages into the document for later use.
Source: I work for Google.
(Sorry, I should explain, our Google Analytics software has some cool features we use internally, that's why I know what's on Zuckerberg's desktop.)
(Also, close that porn window, your boss just locked his screen and he's coming over to talk to you. You're welcome.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was wondering why Facebook was accessing an unindexed file on my private web server. I figured out that my son sent his friend a link to that file via Facebook.
Everything you do on there, they are watching.
Google has admitted to doing it since gmail first came out
Look, Venn diagram:
Private data: 0
Facebook: 0
Precisely. Had Hillary won, the same talking heads would be crowing about the shrewd "digital strategy".
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
*blocked*
This *might* not be one of them.
Facebook could certainly implement an automatic scanning system that would block certain messages, and they would just disappear unless the sender complained.
The question is, do they?
There should be a common carrier law for messaging apps. Your app either:
1) uses end-to-end encryption so you have no way of reading users' messages, in which case you're a common carrier and absolved of any responsibility for the content of the messages, or
2) you can read and filter the messages, and you're completely responsible for the content of any message that is passed on.
I bet everyone would opt for #1 in a hurry.
I mentioned it to a friend via Messenger a ways back and it blocked the communication and claimed it was malware. Ended up sending my friend an email about it, but lesson learned.
It has been dumbfounding that so many people have chosen these proprietary messaging apps. Before you even hear any stories about how awful they are, the first thing you encounter with any of them, is that they don't interoperate with anything else. That is, if you want to talk to someone who uses that app, you have to use the same app. Simply through this, you know the protocol is undocumented and therefore very likely to be substantially worse than the state-of-the-art 20 years ago.
But people ignore that.
But now we're having some refreshing (and surprising!) moments of honesty. That Microsoft scans Skype looking for dirty words was not only hilarious, but an amazing thing for them to admit. Now we have another one (Facebook, this time) admitting that their app is completely and utterly insecure.
These companies didn't get exposed by security researchers. They didn't get exposed by something embarrassing getting leaked. They didn' get exposed by common sense and people thinking about how they could prove the platforms were secure. They exposed themselves, admitting to the public that their products are worthless. They're telling us, explicitly. What more can you want? If you use these things, it's your problem. Just don't pretend you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The only way this might be bad, is that they're giving people the answers "too easily" so people won't get any smarter and might come to the weird conclusion that if a messaging app isn't secure, the company will own up to it. Well, I totally disagree with that. The people already failed and weren't going to learn anything anyway. So tell them the answer to this quiz, just in the desperate hope that they realize the answer next time. Maybe some day, when people are offered products that apprear to be insecure, they'll treat them as though they realize they're probably insecure. No, not everyone, but a few more percent than last time.
Thank you, Facebook and Microsoft. I say this without irony. I don't know your motives, but your actions are about as close to teaching as anyone could ever expect from you. And you did this teaching to our most disadvantaged students, the ones who most needed it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The only reason people are getting wound up about this is because their favourite talking head on the news told them that Facebook – in a roundabout way – helped DRRUUUMMPFF win the election.
Fun bit of trivia: Facebook actually did lend a bit of assistance to the Obama campaign in 2012 , so it's not like ol' Zuck is strolling around wearing a red ball cap these days... Back when word first got out, the media were talking about how modern the Obama campaign was for using the data.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?