Downloaded my Facebook data and it has the call history with my partner’s mother

https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976369275324678145

by bkfh • 8 years ago

503 149 8 years ago

twitter.com

jerrre• 8 years ago

No problem, it's just meta-data \s

taneq• 8 years ago

You'd get along great with the Australian government. /grr

swarnie_• 8 years ago

Could this be data sharing between Facebook and Whatsapp? FB was asked to stop that practice around the end of 2017

dyl2• 8 years ago

My particular case was not related to WhatsApp (OP of the tweet here) as I had never installed or used WhatsApp until yesterday.

giancarlostoro4• 8 years ago

I think they mean your partners mom or your partner had WhatsApp.

pbalau2• 8 years ago

Can you reply to [0]? Copying here:

> You know, you're going on about the data that fb has... and yet you've just shared other peoples names all over the internet. (Unless you've changed them, as the font seems different in the photo?)

[0] https://twitter.com/i400s/status/977102139263782912

7Z7• 8 years ago

Are you on Android?

wongmjane2• 8 years ago

There does not seem to be an option to link a WhatsApp account to a Facebook account (other than associating phone numbers). So it does not seem to be the case

soziawa3• 8 years ago

They do that automatically through your phone number and device identifier which they have access to.

NiklasMort• 8 years ago

and this kids is why you a) don't use Facebook apps and b) don't use your real name on FB (or really anywhere if not absolutely necessary)

dvfjsdhgfv• 8 years ago

This! People think it's just a "Facebook problem". It's not. Many services work in a similar way, FB just one of the high-profile ones. After the initial enthusiasm, at least tech-savvy folks think well before installing a new app and giving your real name (or even an e-mail address that you actually regularly use) to any company on the internet.

chillwaves3• 8 years ago

And why I delete my Reddit account and re-image my computer every few months. And why I use a VPN.

You don't have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you.

24gttghh• 8 years ago

You don't delete your HN account every few months it seems ;)

wruwew8uu9• 8 years ago

FB has already inferred your identity from the graph structure and by referrences to you in conversations by family and friends

oblio3• 8 years ago

Heh, I didn't have a Facebook account until several years ago. At some point I heard some coworkers discussing about something posted on Facebook, a post was about me. So I decided I'd make an account.

One of the first screens was that list of suggestions for people to add as friends.

Guess what? Even though they had almost no info on me, from me, the list had almost everyone I knew, even neatly sorted by level of interactions across the time.

I had just activated the "shadow" profile they had on me from everyone else...

weavie2• 8 years ago

Could it be the email address you signed up with was in their contact list?

oblio3• 8 years ago

That would explain the list, but not the sorting.

dyukqu• 8 years ago

It's probably an access point/ip based thing.

If you make a new friend(s) and visit them (before adding them on FB) and use their home wi-fi to access to FB, they will almost instantly appear on the "friend suggestions" list. I experienced this (and heard about from people I know) several times when I used to have a FB account.

disiplus2• 8 years ago

i deleted my facebook acc years ago, but people keep using my gmail when registring for facebook, i dont know how is facebook allowing that. i though after some time without verifying the email facebook would disable the account, so i filtered those to not go to my inbox. but facebook never did that. so i had to contact them to disable the account and verify that this is my email address and not from the person that registered it. they removed then my email for that account. after half a year somebody else registered the email again, and im getting again emails from fb and now im filtering it to go to spam directly. it makes me angry.

QasimK• 8 years ago

I've had this problem with multiple other services including Facebook, Skype, Dropbox and Snapchat and sometimes the service just assumes "yeah that's that guy's email, we don't need to verify it". Makes me angry too :)

cornholio3• 8 years ago

The verified solution to this is to recover the password for that account, login, remove phone, change the password and the profile picture to that of an ass.

You will never be bothered since they can only use an email once, and it will nicely throw a wrench into any massive surveillance machine by associating your email with a completely foreign social graph. It's also what the original user probably intended - I mean, he did use your email address, did he not?

time0ut2• 8 years ago

My only Facebook account has entirely fake data. I use it to coordinate events with a dozen real-life friends. Facebook still manages to suggest new friends that have no obvious relationship to anyone I am friends with. I've never put their apps on my phone and used an email address I created just for Facebook.

It is creepy, but I can't help but step back and marvel at the technical achievement.

inetknght• 8 years ago

entirely fake data.
I use it to coordinate events with a dozen real-life friends.

These two statements are mutually exclusive.

bryondowd2• 8 years ago

My guess.. the friends you are coordinating with have your number in their contacts list, which they then allow FB to see. FB associates that number with that group of people, and also separately associates your 'fake' account with that same group of people, since you're using it to coordinate with them. Now, if anybody else has your number in their contacts, FB might decide to show them to the 'fake' account, since they know somebody associated with the group you associate with. Three degrees of separation from your friend -> your number -> your friend group -> your 'fake' account

oldcynic• 8 years ago

a dozen real-life friends ... used an email address I created just for Facebook

Faking data doesn't work when they have a significant shadow profile with 'votes' from many of your friends. I imagine some of your dozen real life friends have your real email in their contact lists. You giving a fake one might just set a flag that your 'vote' is not to be relied on!

Correlating with a dozen people posting events, activities etc probably reveals rather a lot about time0ut.

natecavanaugh3• 8 years ago

For me it's only a little creepy, but not surprising. I constantly think of Snowden and just how much our completely (ostensibly) private data actually says about who we are and what we do.

And then we're creeped out that an app that we allow to monitor our lives can know so much about us.

And I love FB, because I know that being online means sharing information. If I wasn't okay with sharing it, why in the world would I put it online with some other party controlling it?

jonathanstrange2• 8 years ago

I "deleted" my FB more than 8 years ago, but since it was not possible to actually delete the data it was only disabled. In January I decided to re-activate it to get in touch with old acquaintances. Surprisingly, all of my pictures, contacts, and other interactions were there. Even a pending friend request was pending for 8 years.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, though, because FB stated clearly that you cannot delete your data. I just didn't believe they would keep it for so long. It felt weird.

Edit: Just a fun addition, I also made a fake account to promote Youtube videos against FB's EULA. To get more viewers I thought it might be a good idea to make arbitrary friend requests and must have had a certain tendency to click on attractive women. Curiously, at least half of them accepted immediately. One week later I got spammed with friend request of two kinds:

(a) Asian manufacturing sites offering all kinds of machinery and services. Most of them from China, but also some in other countries.

(b) Women posting half-naked pictures of themselves on FB, apparently doing that for a living.

None of them were my target audience. I guess successful FB marketing is more complicated.

Neil44• 8 years ago

That's interesting because refusing to delete personal information is going to be directly contrary to GDPR in a few months, the penalty for which will be 4% of global turnover.

oneeyedpigeon2• 8 years ago

I "deleted" my FB more than 8 years ago, but since it was not possible to actually delete the data it was only disabled. In January I decided to re-activate it to get in touch with old acquaintances. Surprisingly, all of my pictures, contacts, and other interactions were there. Even a pending friend request was pending for 8 years.

There's a bit of a mixed message here. When you reactivated your account, you wanted to get in touch with old acquaintances. Yet you expressed surprise when your contacts were still there, even though you presumably wanted them to be. Was that a pleasant surprise? Or you were reactivating your account only with the intention of starting from scratch 100%?

ebikelaw• 8 years ago

When I deactivated my facebook account to see what happens, literally nothing changed. Everybody else still thinks I'm there, they can send me messages, etc. When I reactivated my account by logging in, it was as if I had merely logged out.

dzmien• 8 years ago

It is absolutely possible to delete your Facebook account and profile permanently. It is harder to find (I had to search the help section for "permanently delete" or something), and they give you two weeks to change your mind. Of course, they still have tons of information about you, but I am tired of hearing people claim that you can only deactivate your account.

I deleted mine two years ago, but not before downloading my data. I haven't ever gone through it, but now I am interested to see if they included call logs and stuff.

your-nanny• 8 years ago

I've deleted and restarted account. Does not have old data.

renaudg• 8 years ago

I'm assuming you deactivated, not deleted, your account.

dazc• 8 years ago

I only have an account for advertising with no personal info. The associated email address isn't used for anything else.

I often get friend suggestions for people I know but had, more or less, forgotten about.

Recent example was my sister's sister-in-law who I haven't seen or spoken to for at least 10 years.

ubermonkey• 8 years ago

That's super creepy, but you can see how they get there.

I had a moment some time ago when it started suggesting I connect with people that I know from a private listserv I've been on for years.

Except I'm subbed to that listserv with a different email address from the one I use for Facebook, and I have no real-world interactions with these people, or friends in common. It was surreal.

Once I realized that someone on that list probably used Gmail, and shared their Gmail contacts with FB, it made more sense. Different email addresses don't do much when your name isn't very common, and the addresses vary only in domain.

lloeki• 8 years ago

I had just activated the "shadow" profile they had on me from everyone else...

This is one of the reasons I created (and don't delete) my FB account. I'm not really adding information to the system, can have a view of what it thinks it knows about me, and can (foolishly) attempt to subvert and game it somehow using disinformation.

JauntTrooper• 8 years ago

I decided to download Instagram the other day. I wanted to be somewhat anonymous so I created a profile with a generic username, didn’t attach my email, and didn’t allow it to download any contacts.

When I signed in, the whole suggested friend list included people I knew. Family, old coworkers, ex-girlfriends, people I haven’t spoken to in 10+ years...

The only explanation I can think of is that I had used my phone number to sign up, and they scanned all their users to see who has my phone number stored in their phones.

I got super creeped out and deleted my account. Funnily enough, I had the exact same experience with Twitter last year too.

arkh• 8 years ago

The only explanation I can think of is that I had used my phone number to sign up, and they scanned all their users to see who has my phone number stored in their phones.

Simple. Those services ask permission to access the contact list of their user so they can "check if they already have them in their system". And while they're at it, they just keep everything. Permission included so they can store new contacts when you add new ones.

emehrkay3• 8 years ago

Instagram’s suggestions are out of control. It recommended that I friend the receptionist at my old dentist’s office. I didn’t even have Instagram when I went to that dentist. I can’t even figure out how it would connect us. Even if she had my phone number in her phone and made the decision to share her contacts with Instagram, I didn’t share my number with the service. I used an email that she wouldn’t have. Maybe I browsed a website with Facebook tracking while in the office and it knew my location and made a guess, but I don’t believe that it recommended anyone else from that building. Strang

canadianwriter• 8 years ago

Remember how it asks you to upload your contact lists? You probably say no, but others say yes and do it. They got this "people you may know" from THOSE people uploading their contact lists. It's kind of weird to call it a "shadow profile" when it's simply connecting those dots.

cryptoz2• 8 years ago

It's kind of weird to call it a "shadow profile" when it's simply connecting those dots.

Is it kind of weird to call a shadow a shadow when it's just connecting the dots from yourself to the ground? What do you mean it's weird to call it a shadow profile? Just because you know how they do it does not make it "in the clear" or something not-shadow-like.

A shadow profile is a profile unknown to the victim and likely unknown to their friends. Facebook creates huge datasets of information about people without those people ever signing up for Facebook or even hearing about it. That's a shadow profile and it's creepy.

jasonellis• 8 years ago

It's considered a shadow profile because they create a profile that nobody can see that aggregates data about the user. It's more than just the mutual contacts.

When people upload their contacts to Facebook to "find friends by phone or email" Facebook takes the phone numbers and email addresses of people who do not have Facebook accounts and associates them with a shadow profile. If multiple people upload contacts and have this same phone number and email address of a person, they can associate any other data uploaded (obviously name, birthday, address, other social media profile URLs?) with the same shadow profile. When the person creates an account using an email address or phone number tied to the shadow account, they already have a reasonable amount of data on the peson, including every user who has them in their contacts and others on those social graphs so that they probably know what school the user went to and current/past employers.

wongmjane2• 8 years ago

Not surprised. Facebook/Messenger Android App can read phone call log.

Somewhere in their Messenger Android app indicates they might be planning to provide a dialer and support voice calling. It makes the excuse of reading call log more justifiable /s

JumpCrisscross• 8 years ago

Can the iOS WhatsApp app read call logs? I block it from my contacts et cetera but am not sure about call logs.

xuki2• 8 years ago

No they can’t. No 3rd party apps can read call logs and messages. 1st party (Apple’s) can.

ikawe• 8 years ago

iOS doesn’t offer that capability. The closest thing is CallKit which allows a voip app like WhatsApp to write calls into the system call log.

ElectronShak• 8 years ago

But i think if you have friends & family that use android devices,..you are still in the loop.

xuki2• 8 years ago

Here's how: Facebook requested those permissions on Android and scrapped them. Users (includes technical people like OP) just blindly click "Yes" on every pop up.

Even if you're super careful with your permission, Facebook can still construct a good profile of you via the people you're communicating with.

ocdtrekkie5• 8 years ago

Android has not, until extremely recently, required apps to request permission for things at runtime. Android 5.1, which is what was in use here, I believe, did not. Installing Android apps for most of Android's lifetime required granting it all the permissions it asked for.

Slansitartop2• 8 years ago

Android has not, until extremely recently, required apps to request permission for things at runtime.

Or allowed permissions to be selectively denied. I think that was introduced in Android 6.

cornholio3• 8 years ago

The Android Facebook messenger is pure cancer. It will hijack the default SMS application and scrape all available information to the mothership. I mostly stopped responding to Facebook messages and refuse to acknowledge it as a legitimate way to contact me.

But if you absolutely need to use the messenger, I recommend using a Hermit lite application, that hocks into the web version of the messenger and leaks no more info than any other web Facebook session.

You can use Hermit to replace many proprietary bloated apps, and even create pseudo "apps" for sites that don't feature one, like this site, with a nice icon on your desktop.

ocdtrekkie5• 8 years ago

I think the issue is not the Android Facebook messenger. It's Android. Because you have a platform that not only permits apps to do this, but an app store that approves apps which does this.

I am hoping to get my own data from Facebook and check it against when I switched to Windows as a mobile OS. As it stands, only two built-in apps, People and Messaging, have access to my call history.

cornholio3• 8 years ago

The app store approves these apps, while at the same time denying other apps, like Adblock, that work directly against tracking. I have to void my warranty on a phone purchased at full price, with no plan, before I am allowed to install it from F-Droid.

Cue in the «soviet Russia / product sells you» jokes.

kalleboo• 8 years ago

Android also has absolutely useless permission categories. Supposedly lots of apps legitimately ask for "read phone status and identity" just so they can e.g. pause a game when a call comes in. The same permission lets them scrape all kinds of info like phone # and IMEI. Which is the app doing?

Android just looks like a privacy nightmare.

opayen• 8 years ago

The user can always refuse access to SMS, contacts and other sensitive features on Android. I have Messenger on my Pixel, it's working fine without having access to all of that.

908087• 8 years ago

You can use Hermit to replace many proprietary bloated apps, and even create pseudo "apps" for sites that don't feature one, like this site, with a nice icon on your desktop.

Do you really need another "app" for that? Why not just use a browser and save links to your home screen for the sites you want to access directly? As a bonus, you can install plugins like uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes and prevent the browser from leaking data to Google Analytics and 500 other data harvesting centers every time you load your "apps".

Slansitartop2• 8 years ago

Maybe so you can silo cookies and the like?

nostalgeek• 8 years ago

The Android Facebook messenger is pure cancer.

Not only that, but these apps are often installed by default on android phones and can't be removed by the user without rooting the phone. there is no guarantee Facebook is not scraping data even though the user doesn't have a Facebook account.

sfifs• 8 years ago

You can generally disable these default apps.

helb• 8 years ago

I use Messenger Lite for a few years now. It's certainly not perfect, but it's… less cancer-y i guess. At least it's less bloated and doesn't hijack SMS.

Can the Hermit-wrapped web messenger send notifications?

tinalumfoil• 8 years ago

Thank you for telling me about hermit. I've spent about 10 minutes with it and I'm already considering replacing about 5 apps with hermit versions. It has the type of functionality that IMO should really be standard in Android.

EDIT:one thing I noticed which kills a lot of the appeal for me is cookies appear to be maintained between lite apps

adtac• 8 years ago

I'm surprised more people don't know of mbasic.facebook.com

tom_mellior• 8 years ago

Is there any difference between that and m.facebook.com? I do use the latter on my phone to avoid installing a Facebook/Messenger app. But its usability is... limited.

forgot-my-pw• 8 years ago

Not just the Android app. Facebook and Snapchat are notorious for having bloated apps: http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-th...

agumonkey• 8 years ago

God I miss the landline phone days

kindohm• 8 years ago

Facebook can't be the only app that has collected this data, can it? What about every other app that requests permission to see that data?

soziawa3• 8 years ago

What about every other app that requests permission to see that data?

Of course they'll collect and save it somewhere as well.

sgift2• 8 years ago

Two month to go. End of May GDPR will start the end of this.

Fiahil• 8 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree. Deleting inappropriate (facebook) data collection is what GDPR is made for.

pbhjpbhj2• 8 years ago

In the EU only though. Facebook have enough resources to keep separate versions and manage people who are geographically mobile.

soziawa3• 8 years ago

In the EU only though.

That's enough for me.

simaracode• 8 years ago

Not just EU, any EU citizen or dual nationality with EU passport holder. So plenty of people from other countries too.

znpy• 8 years ago

My "main" account has been disable for years. I have a secondary facebook profile that i used to use like once a month to keep in contact with maybe 4-5 friends (as in facebook friends) and many others via a group that we have in common.

Since I moved in my current city about 5-6 years ago, there was no connection to my previous city. Yet Facebook managed to understand who one of my cousins was and suggested I added it as friend. SCARY.

Lewton• 8 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16652387

Previous submission that was massively flagged for some reason

Edit: might have been the misleading title

bocahrokok• 8 years ago

I guess it might be the reason why my facebook showed ads that always related with what i search in google/non facebook apps.

cmac2992• 8 years ago

thats probably the facebook pixel or the facebook sdk doing this, not the facebook app

bdreadz• 8 years ago

I haven't ever had a facebook. What I find more chilling is why would my phone be giving over all that meta data? I'm just wondering then what other apps are just collecting that data and what security setting can be enabled to say that data shouldn't be shared! wtf.

fhood• 8 years ago

Android + Facebook is a bad combination at the moment. I don't believe this can happen on iOS which doesn't even have an option to allow an (external) app to view things like text messages or call history.

HugoDaniel• 8 years ago

Can anyone confirm if they also do this for Instagram and Whatsapp ? Is it a whole group policy or is it FB specific ?

The future sucks

justaguyhere• 8 years ago

I rarely use FB and have never had their app on my phone. But I use whatsapp.

Anyone knows how much info whatsapp is vacuuming up?

fwdpropaganda2• 8 years ago

Anyone care to explain how we can get this data?

I tried going to facebook > settings > download data, but that's only data that I manually uploaded to facebook.com (posts, messages, photos, etc).

cryptoz2• 8 years ago

It probably comes as soon as you install their app on an iPhone or Android device.

fwdpropaganda2• 8 years ago

I get it, but my question is how do I download this data from facebook? I would like to see what they have on me.

jolmg• 8 years ago

I hope Facebook won't suddenly remove this data from their export, if they haven't already, because of the attention it's getting.

pknerd• 8 years ago

The question is, why does Facebook wants to know each bit of our lives and fetch details which might be harmless for us. For instance, Facebook might want to know how do I talk or walk or turn around and build a persona of mine? Ads, well that's obvious but ONLY Ads? I don't think so.

vivekd• 8 years ago

I don't know why people are down-voting you, you make an excellent point - what benefit could having phone and text meta-data possibly have for generating targeted advertising?

Tarq0n• 8 years ago

Do you think that the social graph is itself valuable information? Data like this allows Facebook to assign weights to the edges of this graph.

John_Cena• 8 years ago

Resale. Suits at my company did not like our innovation idea until we let them know how the fiscal windfall we stand to make just by selling data.

crispyporkbites• 8 years ago

I agree, targeted ads are valuable but when you’re getting this granular the computation, network and storage costs start to exceed the marketing benefits. It’s unlikely to increase conversion by much, and almost all companies and brands that could take advantage of this at scale are going to really struggle to actually implement a campaign that does this (because it’s hard to figure out and test what to target).

They are more likely collecting this data to use it to convince CMOs to continue plowing money into Facebook ads, even though they’ll never actually use it. The power that comes with being able to control the population through government relationships is a long term strategy to avoid any government sanctions, nationalisation, taxation etc.

diimdeep2• 8 years ago

I still use Moves App[1], since Facebook acquired it in 2014, last update in 2016. Is there alternative?

Moreover: >>> We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide, understand, and improve our Services.

[1] https://moves-app.com - background location logger and step counter

kbyatnal• 8 years ago

Check out Gyroscope

diimdeep2• 8 years ago

Moves is so clean and simple. Gyroscope is too much glorification. There is much cleaner https://exist.io

hpyhpyjoyjoy87• 8 years ago

Has anyone done this for node yet? I don't want to download ruby onto this computer. Thanks!

Downloaded my Facebook data and it has the call history with my partner’s mother

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