Facebook Data Collected By Quiz App Included Private Messages (nytimes.com)

In addition to the public profile data of up to 87 million Facebook users, political data firm Cambridge Analytica also reportedly harvested people's private messages, too (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The New York Times reports: On Monday, Facebook began informing people whose data may have been compromised by Cambridge Analytica through an app developed by the researcher Aleksandr Kogan. In its notifications, Facebook said that while the information harvested was largely limited to what was on people's public profiles, "a small number of people" also shared information from their Facebook timeline, posts and messages. Facebook did not specify how many people's messages were gathered and said it was taking as broad a view as possible when notifying people that their data may have been taken.

Comments

Missing from this whole controversy,

[jenningsthecat]

is reporting on what happened to all the data collected on people who either never joined Facebook, or left it years ago. FB has made it its mission to collect all data possible on EVERYONE, but it seems only people who have been knowingly drinking that Kool-Aid are being notified and offered sympathy. What about all the private data scraped from people who never belonged to the club, and who therefore never signed on to have their lives on display to the highest bidders?

Seriously, it's starting to look as though the only real solution is to shut down FB, and destroy all copies of the data in their hands. There's still that huge trove of data that's already been let loose in the wild, but going nuclear on Zuckerberg's ass, (and all those investors too), would make the rest of these jerkoffs think twice about playing fast and loose with people's privacy. Sometimes pillaging and burning down a castle or two is the only thing that brings the kings and lords back into line.

Private Message

[AHuxley]

A message that has valuable private data sets.

The users actually thought private messages had something to do with privacy?
Its social media, everything is for sale.

We are Big Brother.

[Capsaicin]

I was just considering that the other day: party A and party B discussing party C on social media--party C NEVER having been on any form of social media.

It extends beyond simply "discussing." Take for instance name-tagging of friends in photos shared on FB (or on Apple Photos etc), which amounts to submitting a (usually) non-consenting third party's face into a facial recognition database.

The new surveillance state is distinguished from those hitherto existing, by the enthusiastic participation of hoi polloi in their own* surveillance [*as individuals and as a people]. Not only do we willingly carry tracking devices on our persons, we employ them to photograph, film, otherwise record and then publish on "social" media, snapshots and impressions of unwilling bystanders all neatly geo-located and time stamped. We amuse ourselves with shared videos of "public" altercations, without fearing for our own privacy --indeed, ensnared by too simple a division of public/private we are locked out from conceiveing of varying levels of privacy in the world outside our room, without even enjoying it in there.

In an age where everyone always carries a tracking and recording device, everyone is granted the opportunity, at any time, to be an informant.

Re:We are Big Brother.

[jenningsthecat]

In an age where everyone always carries a tracking and recording device, everyone is granted the opportunity, at any time, to be an informant

Obviously, I agree with your entire comment. But I'd phrase that last part "everyone is granted the status of informant". It's not really 'everyone', of course; but the vast majority of smartphone users are spying on the people around them, simply by being in proximity while having WiFi, mobile data, and location services active.

It occurs to me that mobile phone usage and tracking is a kind of disease vector, and could be modelled with the same techniques and math used for epidemics. And the only vaccine, (and it's only partially effective), is to simply not carry a phone around.

Re:We are Big Brother.

[TheRaven64]

There's a more passive form. Things like the Facebook app request permission to access your contacts. Facebook then spams everyone that you know who doesn't have an account already, and may associate all of the information that you have about that person (name, address, email address, possibly date of birth, maybe picture) with their profile of that person. I'm pretty sure that this is a violation of the GDPR, so it will be interesting to see what happens when that comes into effect.

Re:Facebook collected it all

[Torvac]

and everyone knew it, still people are suprised now.

Re:Facebook collected it all

[TheRaven64]

They don't give the information to anyone. They sell the information to some people. And periodically they just leave it lying around where anyone with a tiny amount of technical knowledge can grab it. But they don't give it to anyone!

Re:Why All The Fuss?

[TheRaven64]

In English Common Law countries, the legal test for whether a contract is valid is whether a 'meeting of minds' has occurred. A signature is typically not legal as a result of any statute law, but is considered legally binding because of a body of case law that argues that it is a strong indication that a meeting of minds has occurred, though with some caveats (a witnessed signature with each page initialled is, for example, considered to be stronger evidence and for some contracts the lack of such a thing would be considered surprising). There is very little case law regarding click-through agreements and so any court would likely weigh the case on its merits individually. Facebook would have to prove in court that a typical reader who clicked on the agree button understood the terms, or at least was able to understand the terms. I suspect that they'd have a hard job doing this.