Sexual abuse tip-off site could be sharing data with Facebook

https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/sexual-abuse-tip-off-site-could-be-sharing-data-with-facebook

by cpach • 3 years ago

173 52 3 years ago

lucakiebel• 3 years ago

„Swedish Radio News reporters have tested the tip-form on ECPAT's website and found that their name, email and telephone numbers were shared with Facebook.“

How the hell does this just happen? Have people forgotten how to build simple forms and just use Facebook?

kevviiinn• 3 years ago

Can't profiles be made private?

mschuster912• 3 years ago

They probably embedded tracking pixels because PR teams wanted to have data on how many people viewed the page vs how many people actually filed a report.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

Why do I get feeling time and time again that developers pick the easy solutions. Not the sensible ones.

Some type of page download counter should not be impossible, and number of reports should also be easy metric. Why do they even think they need to get someone like Facebook involved...

JansjoFromIkea2• 3 years ago

Poor supervision over something like Google Tag Manager resulting in someone on the PR team adding extra stuff without being fully aware of the repercussions

VoxPelli• 3 years ago

100% this, the marketing team wants to have Google Tag Manager to inject random marketing scripts all across the page and management backs them up and then the development team has no insight to or no say in what actual scripts are run on a specific page.

That said: This is a GDPR nightmare and so is Google Tag Manager

somedude895• 3 years ago

The way I could imagine it happens is that they use GTM to trigger Facebook tags, for example to remarket people who have donated to ECPAT, since people who donate are likely to do so again after say a month or during Christmas so that's a perfect audience to have available for an ad campaign. But they have GTM fire FB on every single page out of convenience, since setting up rules in GTM on where to trigger it is work. The tip-off page is hosted on the same environment, so FB triggers by default.

austinpena2• 3 years ago

Something is off here. When PII data is shared with Facebook, it gets hashed before it gets sent. In fact, Facebook warns you if you are “leaking” PII in places like URL parameters that get picked up by their tracking pixel.

If they discover pageview events with PII in them, they throw them out.

I’m not justifying that hashed data is okay… but clear text data is not received or stored by Facebook via a Facebook Pixel, or their conversions API.

throwaway173738• 3 years ago

If facebook had the clear or hashed data anywhere else you’re still leaking it just with extra steps. Hashes don’t by themselves anonymize. If you have access to the original data it’s trivial to recompute the hash and build your association that way. You could assume the data is salted but that’s not always a safe assumption.

flomo• 3 years ago

As of a few years ago, this was not the case. The facebook conversion "pixel" would capture raw form data and upload it to facebook.

b800h• 3 years ago

This isn't a unique problem.

The Scottish health advice system was doing something similar.

https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/11/nhs_inform_loads_face...

rbanffy• 3 years ago

If you have a website where privacy is absolutely essential, you should NEVER include any third party content.

I find it unfathomable someone needs to say that.

gcr4• 3 years ago

Case study: I help run a site that has resources for trans and LGBT people.

With a question as sensitive and personal as “am I transgender or not and how would I know,” it’s deeply important to me that visiting my website won’t accidentally get my users into trouble, even indirectly through tracking or federated cohort ad targeting.

- The only JavaScript is that which is necessary to run the site;

- The site only listens on HTTPS;

- There are no cookies;

- I explicitly opt users out of FLoC to prevent other sites targeting ads to my users based on my site’s content;

- I use a third-party hosting provider that only supplies aggregate passive server logs for a 30-day rolling window, which only shows me the domain name of the Referer, so I can’t know exactly where my users came from.

aboringusername• 3 years ago

The only JavaScript is that which is necessary to run the site

No JS is required to 'run' a site. I can and do use Hackernews without ever requiring JS to be enabled. Everything works via POST, it's quick and simple.

Yes. A Non-JS world is painful, and there are many difficulties, but ensuring your site works with noscript would do the world a huge favor.

chimeracoder• 3 years ago

Do you have a link to this website?

suddenclarity2• 3 years ago

They (Swedish Radio) have done a few stories on Facebook pixel during the last year.

A year ago it was the state-owned pharmacy Apoteket that leaked customer information and their orders to Facebook. Once it was revealed that multiple pharmacies did it, an investigation into three of them was started. Last month SR extended their search and found 100 pharmacies in Europe doing the same thing. Leaking information to Facebook.

I'm sure this is a really common issue because it's so convenient and useful when doing the marketing and analysis. People don't think about the consequences or the fact that it's against the rules of Facebook.

kramerger• 3 years ago

People just don't understand how valuable data is.

For example, Sweden has a Facebook Market competitor that uses Facebook _and_ Google for analytics. Now we know for a fact that Amazon has in past used AWS to spy on b&m and e-commerce competitors, i dont belive for a minute that Meta would be any better.

tpmx4• 3 years ago

Got a link for the Amazon/AWS spying?

jlarocco• 3 years ago

The only way to stop this from happening in the long term is to educate users that companies are spying on them, and tell them about the tools to prevent it.

Depending on site owners and spyware companies, like Facebook, to solve the problem is super naive, and will never solve it. They directly benefit from these "leaks," and so they have no motivation to prevent them.

AlexandrB• 3 years ago

What tools are capable of stopping FB tracking 100%? Right now it's a "cold" arms race between Facebook and people trying to avoid tracking but if more people started trying I think Facebook would try harder to track everyone and things would heat up. The only way to avoid a perpetual arms race (that Facebook will probably win) is to legislate boundaries that Facebook is legally not allowed to cross. We saw this happen on iOS (though at an OS/App Store policy level instead of legally) and it seemed to actually work.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

Is it realistic or sensible to expect every internet user to become a security maven?

uoaei3• 3 years ago

Is it realistic or sensible to expect every driver to know how to use their seatbelts?

robocat• 3 years ago

Rubbish.

Legislation is used to protect vulnerable groups and health data. Strong reasonable legislation is hard to write, and expensive to enforce, but effective enforcement will cause changes to internet sites. Think GDPR.

It is hard to manage cross-jurisdictional issues on the internet. In this case, Sweden could probably design good restrictions since it is a site local to Sweden?

Trying to get everyone to become security professionals is highly unrealistic.

fmx• 3 years ago

I was with you until you mentioned "GDPR" right after "effective enforcement". GDPR is, if anything, a great example of ineffective enforcement.

Sexual abuse tip-off site could be sharing data with Facebook

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