Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A California man is suing Facebook for allegedly scanning the content of private messages sent between users of the site.
The suit alleges that Facebook scans the messages in search of hyperlinks sent between users. "If there is a link to a web page contained in that message, Facebook treats it as a 'like' of the page, and increases the page's 'like,' counter by one," the suit contends. The site tracks when users "like" pages in order to compile individual profiles that allow third parties to send targeted advertisements.
Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-sued-for-scanning-private-user-messages/article/2591806
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Facebook Sued for Scanning Private User Messages
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Tuesday May 24 2016, @10:51AM
He is clearly an idiot if he thinks there is such a thing as private messages on a product he didn't pay for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:06AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:10AM
While I want to agree with you about losing the suit being bad for Facebook, the fact that it's the de facto internet communication mechanism for a very large percentage of the population these days means that even losing badly is unlikely to have much of an effect. (Not that I wouldn't love to see people move on from Facebook.)
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday May 24 2016, @10:58PM
Even if people moved on from Facebook, what good would it do? Most people have demonstrated that they are unprincipled enough to allow scumbag companies like Facebook to ruthlessly monetize so much of their private information, and even more than that, these Facebook-using suckers have shown that they are also willing to surrender other people's information (such as pictures of them, which are then subject to Facebook's facial recognition algorithms) to Facebook. They do this in exchange for petty benefits. So, even if people move on from Facebook, if another service that violates people's privacy and offers convenience comes along, these same people will flock to it. People without principles are easy to bribe and use, and to make matters worse, a grand majority of Facebook users are outright unintelligent.
There will always be an opportunity for companies to make use of unintelligent suckers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @12:23AM
There will always be an opportunity for companies to make use of unintelligent suckers.
Perhaps this is a little off-topic, but certainly fits into the general subject of online privacy.
Absolutely. And a new trend (at least new to me) is corporations forcing you to sign up for their "rewards" program in order to use the features of their websites. Of course, in order to join such programs, you must agree to allow your personal details to be used by the corporations to market all sorts of useless crap to you and quite possibly to be sold to third parties as well.
This has happened to me twice in one week now. The first was Spirit Airlines [spirit.com] which wouldn't allow me to select seats or check bags on their website unless I joined their "rewards" program. If I chose not do so, any activities on my reservations would incur additional $50 per activity charges.
The next was Mariott Corporation [marriott.com] which wouldn't allow me to complete a reservation on their website unless I joined their "rewards" program. Their privacy and data use policies were at least 25-30 pages of fine print. Fortunately, they didn't insist on charging me an extra $50 to speak to a telephone reservation agent.
This is quite troubling. Those who are oblivious to the privacy issues just put up with this crap, and if you actually care about your privacy, you lose the convenience of doing business online. Sigh.
I'm not really sure why so many people put up with this sort of behavior. Perhaps they don't know any better or just don't care.
And for my part, Facebook just doesn't offer enough value to me to give them my personal data and the right to rifle through my life in order to sell ads for stuff I don't want.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday May 25 2016, @04:18AM
>I'm not really sure why so many people put up with this sort of behavior. Perhaps they don't know any better or just don't care.
Why did you? If you want the service, you must accept the abuse. Because, individually, you don't wield enough power to make a difference.
That is why we need laws specifically protecting privacy in ways that can't be easily signed away, because only by acting collectively do we wield enough power to bring wealthy corporations to heel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @05:18PM
Why did you? If you want the service, you must accept the abuse. Because, individually, you don't wield enough power to make a difference.
Same AC here.
Why? WRT Spirit, I'd already purchased a non-refundable ticket before I knew what a wretched hive of scum and villany they were. As for Mariott, I'm staying there because a half-dozen members of my family are doing so as well.
I gave Spirit as much false information as I could and bit the bullet, as they say.
With Mariott, I used the telephone to make my reservation, avoiding the necessity to sign up for their "rewards" program.
You're right that I, personally, don't have enough clout to make these scumbags change their policies.
Had I known what I know now about Spirit Airlines, I never would have purchased a ticket from them in the first place. You live and learn.
As for Mariott, I've stayed in their hotels many times without any of this crap. Interestingly, the reservation agent I dealt with said that he'd only recently started hearing complaints about this. Perhaps if enough people complain, they'll make some changes.
At the same time, I will most certainly vote with my wallet. Spirit Airlines will *never* get another nickel from me. Mariott will most likely not either.
That is why we need laws specifically protecting privacy in ways that can't be easily signed away, because only by acting collectively do we wield enough power to bring wealthy corporations to heel.
Collective political action is unlikely to make any difference whatever, as the last twenty years or so of legislation and judicial decisions have clearly shown.
Which is why I bothered to post my original comment. If others read it and decide not to patronize these greedy fucks, that punishes them. Probably not enough to force them to make any changes, but if even one person decides not to use the services of these corporations, I'll consider it a win.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Lester on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:25PM
No, there won't be any legal consequences. Nevertheless such corporations are more afraid of bad publicity than of courts. So, it's not that bad movement.
I would like to see in facebook, google, etc a title in the top (font size 24px) saying:
"We analyze everything (interests, friends, webs visited...) to learn everything about you for advertising and, later, we sell everything we know about you (more than you know about your self) to other companies"
It would be real fair play with consumer. Not burying that fact in a 800 pages "privacy policy" document.
(Score: 1) by tractatus_techno_philosophicus on Tuesday May 24 2016, @08:42PM
I second that motion. As every pack of cigarettes (here in the United States) requires the surgeon general's warning, it'd be nice to see something similar on massive, data-gathering websites. If mental health and physical health are completely intertwined (and that seems incontestable at this point), why not take digital health into consideration? It would be hard to argue that it isn't just as intertwined with every other facet of most people's being in 2016.
No moral system can rest solely on authority. ~A.J. Ayer
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:10AM
Did you even read the summary? Allegedly, Facebook is not only collecting the information but also increasing like-counters, thus more or less impersonating the user. BTW: Last time I checked, Telegram was free, and still offered end-to-end encryption (as in "private messages"). Although I wouldn't trust with meta-data. Maybe Tox [tox.chat] would be even better.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:42PM
Unless the site is getting a list of name and personal information of the list of people that "fake liked" the link, I don't see how this is a violation of privacy or impersonation. I guess that there are so many more scummy things that facebook does, this seems kind of minor.
Anyhow, you are right unless you are encrypting end to end, there is no such thing as "private messages".
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday May 25 2016, @09:41PM
I don't think the page owner has access to that (although who knows -- they're constantly changing pages and groups and interests and all that, and some membership lists are public while others aren't)...but actually, it's *worse* than that -- all of your friends have access to everything you like. And therefore they have access to everything you send in a message. So if you use Facebook messenger to IM your wife...well, all your old highschool friends now know about that condition you were researching after visiting your doctor. Or some closeted homosexual kid in highschool sends a link to a trusted friend, and Facebook outs them to the whole school. So yeah, that could be far worse than some company trying to figure out what ads to show you...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:44PM
I'm still on the fence about Telegram. Good on em for the utility and encryption but I can't figure out a use for it yet that isn't already well covered. Clue me in?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday May 24 2016, @02:26PM
Main feature of Telegram would be "not owned by Facebook" ;-)
No, seriously: If you look compare to WhatsApp, Telegram client is open source. Which is essential for a private messenger with encryption; there is no other way to ensure that the encryption doesn't have any backdoor and the key is not secretly leaked somehow to Facebook. There are other messengers available, but I wouldn't know of any fully encrypted with a decently huge user-base. Telegram got some good press after Facebook bought WhatsApp, and makes i to the news often enough to stand a chance.
tox is even better, as it is afaik a distributed protocol, which means no-one gets all the meta-data for free. But the userbase is probably tiny now.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 24 2016, @02:54PM
Right but I still don't see a use case when A) I don't particularly care if FB can read the casual and boring things I send over their messenger. B) Anyone on my friends list who I want contacting me off of FB already has my phone number.
Channels look somewhat useful but they're already covered with more utility by other things. Private chats are the only thing I can see that would be worth bothering and they're not quite useful enough in my daily life to harass people into installing another messenger.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:12PM
A) I don't particularly care if FB can read the casual and boring things I send over their messenger.
I care to avoid software with advertising baked in. And something like whatsapp owned by facebook, I'm not going to touch with a 10 foot pole. Even if the communication itself is innocuous I don't need anyone harvesting it for advertising. I don't use facebook. I don't use whatsapp. I also dislike skype.
B) Anyone on my friends list who I want contacting me off of FB already has my phone number.
And that's sort of where telegram fits in. I am interested in software that will let me communicate with people from a desktop/taptop to their phone and vice versa. I prefer to send a messages to my wife via a desktop app than pick up my phone type on that. While she prefers to recieve them and chat back from her phone. My brother prefers to use his ipad.
So telegram's use case for me is that it fills the gap in basic sms in that it can go back and forth to a desktop. Skype and whatsapp both do this too... but the advertising infrastructure behind both is undesirable. I've only recently tried telegram... and its worked well for what i wanted it for. It also syncs messages between multiple devices, so i can wander from my desktop to laptop to phone and the conversations stay in sync... again this isn't novel, but its a feature i wanted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @08:36PM
It will beat tox, or telegraph or any of these other apps hands down.
Additionally there are two routers available for it, traditional java i2p-router, and the c++ based i2pd. The downside to the latter is many 'plugin services' are java based and expect to be run via the i2p-router console directly. On the other hand both can allow IRC, XMPP, and web services as both a server and client, as well as SOCKS and HTTP(S) tunnels for web browsing inside the I2P network. Unlike Tor however it does have 'outproxy as default' built in, and only has one or two outproxy nodes available if you manually configure them (safer for keeping your anonymity, since web browsing will never hit the clear net by default, but more complicated for a casual user to set up if they are expecting tor or tbb style clearnet access.)
As an added bonus over Tor however it DOES have DNS style second level hostnames under the .i2p TLD, with .onion style host(keyhash)names under .b32.i2p or (rarely/never ATM) under .b64.i2p
The network has ~60k nodes at the moment, ~30k of those from Vuze users and 30k from traditional sources. It has a few thousand published .i2p hostnames/services, including wikis, a coin exchange and many websites covering a variety of topics, from personal blogs, to technical resources, and a few git repositories.
While it still has some possible identification attacks, similiar to tor, it has a number of configurable traffic sharing settings to help obfuscate personal traffic within traffic shared over the network. Up to 4 hop per direction tunnels (each hop encrypted seperately, not including application encryption), offering up to 8 hop totals if both service and client are set up for maximum paranoia. It also supports multiple encryption standards for host keys with provisions for future changes and legacy compatibility.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:32PM
No, not stupid.
It's completely reasonable to _expect_ that private communication stays private. It is naive to _believe_ that is actually the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @08:29AM
i didn't pay for pidgin [pidgin.im], does that mean it doesn't support private messaging? what about mirc [mirc.com]? "if you didn't pay for it, it doesn't support private messaging" is a pretty weak argument.
(Score: 5, Informative) by CHK6 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:55PM
Where anyone can sue anyone else for any reason at any time without the fear of recourse. Our judicial system is a litigation dream scape for tort lawyers and class action lawsuits to frolic and run free across the scales of justice. Where making money comes from cleverly weaving truthiness and feeling-facts together to spin a web large enough to carry the cash across the gavel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:52PM
Wow, nice little story you have there. Imagine if it was even true! [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by CHK6 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @02:48PM
Sure volume has decreased, but the rights to litigate remain true.
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=45 [bjs.gov]
I like this nugget.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:03PM
I don't think I want to live in a society where I don't have litigation rights.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:52PM
It is not unheard of for plaintiffs of frivolous suits to be required to pay the legal fees of the defendant, and they can also be counter-sued for wasting the defendants' time and resources.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 24 2016, @04:38PM
-1 Totally ignorant.
America has *always* been this way. You've always been able to sue anyone, for anything. You just have to file the court fees and file the motion. However, you're totally wrong about a lack of fear of recourse. Frivolous lawsuits are routinely thrown out of court, and have always had the potential of the judge forcing you to pay the defendant's legal fees.
It's no different than our "free speech". You're free to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, but you're not free of the consequences of that speech, which would likely involve being thrown in jail. Similarly, frivolous lawsuits can easily get you countersued.
In summary, just because someone sues someone else (or some company) over something doesn't mean it's going to go anywhere.
(Score: 2) by CHK6 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @05:56PM
-1 Lame retort to you sir
You read way way to much into the post and extrapolated to much inference. Yes yelling fire in a theater is both illegal and up for prosecution. Filing litigation suits is not criminal in action. Your post is laughable as you shoot yourself in the foot drawing your pistol.
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday May 24 2016, @06:19PM
Yes yelling fire in a theater is both illegal and up for prosecution.
I realize that's the accepted view of this supposed restriction on our most sacred right of free speech, but it is factually incorrect. Speech is speech, it's protected, and yelling fire in a crowded theater is no less protected than any other - in certain circumstances.
The phrase originated in a court case written in 1919, defending the Sedition Act of 1918 - "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." The two telling parts of the phrase "falsely" and "causing a panic" are often left out. This is simply a blatant attempt by some to propagate the notion that even though the Constitution expressly forbids it, there certainly must be some cases speech can be outlawed. But it's not true.
What you can do is arrest someone for inciting a riot, if they shouted fire (when there is none) and caused people to panic and trample each other in an attempt to flee. That was the point Holmes was trying to make, but has been twisted over time. It should also be noted that his opinion was reversed in recent times. We now recognize the right of citizens to protest wars and the military draft imposed to fight them, something that the Sedition Act forbid. Sedition, in fact, is protected speech, as most free thinkers have always known.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:56PM
What you can do is arrest someone for inciting a riot
Nope. Or you can, but it's unconstitutional if all they did was speak. You seem to have bought into the notion that if other people choose to react to your speech by rioting or panicking, that you are responsible for the actions they chose to take, rather than them being responsible for their own actions. I don't believe that. In the end, you're still arrest someone for their speech, because all they did was speak; they took no other actions.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday May 25 2016, @12:00AM
It's no different than our "free speech". You're free to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater, but you're not free of the consequences of that speech, which would likely involve being thrown in jail.
You're free to criticize the government in North Korea, but you're not free of the consequences of that speech, which would likely involve being thrown in jail or worse.
If you get punished for your speech, you're not truly free to say whatever it is that you said, even if the excuse is that they're punishing you for the "consequences" of your speech. What you really mean is that the speaker is being punished for the actions that other people chose to take in response to the speech, which I find to be quite unjust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @01:33PM
"private messages on facebook" I've not had such a laugh in a while.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 24 2016, @02:31PM
Like any communication, it's entirely possible to send a private message, simply encrypt it with the recipient's public key before you paste the output into the send box.
The fact you've sent a message to someone is known, but the contents aren't.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by WillR on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @09:18PM
Until they throw their computing power at it and find out the geeks just didn't want their conversations overheard. Blah blah blah nothing of interest to anyone else blah blah.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 24 2016, @04:48PM
Like any communication, it's entirely possible to send a private message, simply encrypt it with the recipient's public key before you paste the output into the send box.
Yeah, and good luck with 1) getting your recipient to go learn about public-key encryption so they actually know what it is and how it works, and 2) agreeing on a particular scheme and getting them to use it.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday May 25 2016, @09:50AM
And WhatsApp may even be end-to-end encrypted (I don't recall). But they still have the number of communications, with whom, the frequency, etc. And there were recently reports on using metadata (what they would have) to infer a surprising amount of data. Well, not terribly surprising, because the amount you can glean from a little info is usually quite a lot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday May 24 2016, @05:22PM
> "If there is a link to a web page contained in that message, Facebook treats it as a 'like' of the page, and increases the page's 'like,' counter by one,"
Great, so complete morons, whose pages/posts get forwarded by people pointing out the absolute insanity of the drivel therein, will be feel supported in their insipid ramblings...
I guess that's normal in FB/Twitter, and IRL these days, where being seen is more important than knowing why.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday May 24 2016, @10:09PM
This also opts you into some sort of contract in a way, where because you shared something hilariously bad and totally against your preferences, you wanted to show it off in disgust to others to demonstrate what is a bad example of something... you are automatically flagged as liking it and your preferences shipped off to not the highest bidder, but to all bidders.
Even if one uses the site to keep the peace within the family, participation just makes it worse for yourself in the long run. Receiving crap and sharing it as a warning merely precludes the arrival of more of the same, because you expressed a preference for it.
If I was an advertiser, I'd be the one suing over that, since I'd be the one paying for lists of people that don't even want what I am selling while being told that they actively "liked" it.
(Score: 1) by boris on Wednesday May 25 2016, @02:21PM
Combine this with the fact that FB tells my friends pages I 'liked'. I've accepted that FB is harvesting data about me so I'm very selective with what I tell FB I actually like (usually a charity, or some movie or TV show). If the very act of forwarding drivel via PM tells my friends I like something I don't actually like I will no longer use this private messaging for this.. I don't like FB inferring things about me.