Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Says Russian Firms 'Scraped' Data, Some for Facial Recognition (wral.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
On the same day Facebook announced that it had carried out its biggest purge yet of American accounts peddling disinformation, the company quietly made another revelation: It had removed 66 accounts, pages and apps linked to Russian firms that build facial recognition software for the Russian government. Facebook said Thursday that it had removed any accounts associated with SocialDataHub and its sister firm, Fubutech, because the companies violated its policies by scraping data from the social network. "Facebook has reason to believe your work for the government has included matching photos from individuals' personal social media accounts in order to identify them," the company said in a cease-and-desist letter to SocialDataHub that was dated Tuesday and viewed by The New York Times...
As Facebook is taking a closer look at its own products amid increasing scrutiny and public outcry, it is increasingly finding examples of companies that have been exploiting its global social network for questionable ends.... Artur Khachuyan, the 26-year-old chief executive of SocialDataHub and Fubutech, said in an interview Friday that Fubutech scraped data from the web, particularly Google search and the Russian search engine Yandex, to build a database of Russian citizens and their images that the government can use for facial recognition. "We don't know exactly what they do with it," he said.... At one point in a 30-minute phone interview, he said the Russian Defense Ministry was a client but later said he could not name Fubutech's government clients.
The two Russian companies have been around for over four years, "relying in part on Facebook data," the Times reports.
"At the top of the SocialDataHub's website, there is a single line: 'We know everything about everybody.'"
As Facebook is taking a closer look at its own products amid increasing scrutiny and public outcry, it is increasingly finding examples of companies that have been exploiting its global social network for questionable ends.... Artur Khachuyan, the 26-year-old chief executive of SocialDataHub and Fubutech, said in an interview Friday that Fubutech scraped data from the web, particularly Google search and the Russian search engine Yandex, to build a database of Russian citizens and their images that the government can use for facial recognition. "We don't know exactly what they do with it," he said.... At one point in a 30-minute phone interview, he said the Russian Defense Ministry was a client but later said he could not name Fubutech's government clients.
The two Russian companies have been around for over four years, "relying in part on Facebook data," the Times reports.
"At the top of the SocialDataHub's website, there is a single line: 'We know everything about everybody.'"
Isn't scraping data for facial recognition, such as to identify them in other photos where they haven't been tagged, Facebook's bread and butter?
Seems like having unknown companies all up in your shit is what Facebook users love and voluntarily participate in.
Slashdot seems to be overflowing with Russian trolls. this thread should be illustrative.
Although, I gotta say, this just seems like Facebook deflecting. Blame the bogie man!
Now the "mark on your forehead" doesn't even require opt-in.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
My dogs messed in the hallway. When I confronted them about their unacceptable behaviour, they stated, "We're glad you're home! The Russians pooped in the hallway." Facebook has been in bed with the "Russians" and NOW they're complaining?
Removes users who talk about US news and politics.
Next news cycle is all about Russians looking at images?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
FUBU Tech? That almost sounds like it was named by a GNAA troll. Ugh.
other governments and companies just behaving the same as your government and 3 letter agencies?
"Facebook has reason to believe your work for the government has included matching photos from individuals' personal social media accounts in order to identify them," the company said in a cease-and-desist letter to SocialDataHub that was dated Tuesday and viewed by The New York Times...
Indeed...they must be very skilled & have lots of time too. What won't the Russians do these days?
To make matters worse, it's the New York Times that confirms...
Yeah right...The New York Times.
I am about to have big yaaawn!!
I used to host a photo gallery on the internet. This was when google was fairly young and I wasn't too worried about my privacy.
This was before google-chrome or chromium existed or even Android.
Google found it.
A stalker found it.
Every other web indexer found it too.
Took the gallery off the internet. Learned that lesson, thankfully it was well before social networks were popular.
Next was avoiding photos and asking friends never to tag me in any photos without permission. Not being on FB, TW, IG, G+ or any of the 50 other social networks has been a plus too.
The point, don't be stupid with your data, metadata, or photos.
We (Facebook) Russian scraped some of your data and sold it!
There fixed it for ya.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What I find so funny is that Zuckerberg scraped the student photos off of the school's web site when he created "The Facebook" back in his college days.
Yeah that's why you DONT COLLECT THAT
They do this also, oh wait, they made the platform, it's OK for them to do it right?
How many Chinese "firms" (read: Chinese government) scraped our precious data too?
Oh wait, China is the good authoritarian dictatorship. Not like those evil, sneaky Russians. China is a good boy, they dindu nuffin!
http://www.gate-fast.com/2018/10/aktivitas-facebook-anda-memengaruhi.html
If you want to say it's not the Russians just go ahead and say it's not the Russians. Don't go beating around the bush like that, it's not dignified.
The Man Under the Big Data Cap: Can I Protect Personal Information?
On February 20, within the framework of the lecture project of the Foundation Yegor Gaidar, the presentation of the General Director of SocialDataHub Artur Khachuyan was held. During the lecture, Mr. Khachuyan talked about how personal data of users of social networks, blogs and forums can be used by third parties, as well as how to protect your information. The moderator of the event was the economic observer Boris Grozovsky. Details of the expert lecture are in the “Kommersant” video and transcript of the report.
A lecture transcript
Thanks for joining. I call myself a professional datavore. Because now the main fear of all people is that some evil corporations or some evil state use its data and profit from this. But the good news is that there is no single super-corporation that owns all the information. Yes, Uber knows about your moves, Sberbank knows how much money you spend on potatoes. But there is still no one who would know both that and that. My approach is to find out all kinds of information from public sources. Therefore, today I will talk about what you can learn about a person from open sources, with a couple of interesting examples. And then we smoothly move on to the story of how to protect yourself from preventing all these evil government or corporate algorithms from learning your secrets or using them for their own purposes.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kommersant.ru%2Fdoc%2F3549191&edit-text=&act=url
Somehow, kikebook, who irresponsibly and immorally collected this information without even spending enough money to properly protect it, thinks their the good guys in this situation? That's rich. Zuckerberg and his jews had better pray to their god Lucifer that there is no heaven and hell.
There are much celebrated fact checking investigative IS linked companies and NGOs like Bellingcat. What are they doing other than scraping Facebook pics? Why are they not yet banned?
Yeah, but some idiotic neckbeard on Slashdot and a bunch of bought accounts are saying fake news and modding each other +5 Insightful.
Who am I to believe?
...to do with Russia. Perilous times ahead.
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With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
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