How to join Facebook without giving up all of your and your friends’ privacy

http://paul.henrich.me/posts/2015/02/facing-facebook.html

by _ouxp • 11 years ago

30 18 11 years ago

paul.henrich.me

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

A family member who was wary of facebook asked me how to join facebook while maintaining a semblance of privacy, so I wrote this. Tried to make it accessible to someone with average computer skills.

As an aside, I joined facebook to write this, and I was blown away by how good facebook's recommendations for friends were, presumably just based on other people's uploaded contacts (Facebook made me confirm a phone number).

amirmc• 11 years ago

"I was blown away by how good facebook's recommendations for friends were..."

Search online for 'Facebook shadow profiles' to get an idea of why this was so good. It's more than just your phone number.

Edit: And you also say "Use a different app for instant messaging" but (since you're going for the privacy approach) that should not be WhatsApp and photos should not be via Instagram. Most people have no idea that these are both Facebook properties.

throwawayaway• 11 years ago

thanks for this, as someone that is emigrating shortly I may have to bite the bullet and swallow my high horse and join up.

most of my cohort have already emigrated so not sure I will join, as I survive without it. currently use emails of various lengths - from a sentence and a html link - to quite wordy ones.

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

I've been mostly doing email/twitter/IM, and am not sure I'll stick with this facebook account. But I thought I couldn't really write this guide based on my experience from > 2 years ago when I quit.

jbinto• 11 years ago

Just because you opt out of letting Facebook (or Linkedin) see your contacts, does not mean your contacts have done the same thing.

e.g. If you are someone@example.org, and others have someone@example.org in their address book and they let Facebook see it, they've got you already.

For this reason I use a dedicated email address for each social media account.

Also, while I'd normally recommend 2-factor authentication, giving these guys your phone number is a really bad idea if you value your privacy. Try to limit it to firstname lastname and one throwaway email if at all possible. If you're really paranoid, you can get a VOIP gateway that supports SMS for fairly cheap, certainly for cheaper than buying a burner phone.

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

Yeah, I should have mentioned I set up a new email account for this. But, I wanted to write up this guide so I acquiesced when they asked for my phone number.

legacynl• 11 years ago

In your article, you also mentioned the facebook-app needing tons of permissions; Normally you wouldn't be able to deny an app these permissions (the alternative would be not installing the app), however there is a Xposed module called XPrivacy what's able to do exactly this. This way you can still install facebook while not giving it access to your contacts/location/microphone/etc. Sadly it doesn't work wit ART (So no Lollipop support).

http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy

shapov• 11 years ago

I am a little confused by the post. You walk us through a way to create an account, and then you go on to advocate basically not using the platform, and opting out for comparable compartmentalized solutions for photos, messages, etc...

My question is, at the end of the day what value is facebook bringing to us? Does it become a glorified contact list at that point, or is there something I am missing?

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

I know that whether I use facebook or not, other people do. So, it's the newsfeed and a contact list at least.

This is aimed at the average computer user, who doesn't know what third-party cookies are, who doesn't know what retargeting means, who doesn't realize what giving facebook their email password does. It's a way to give that person tools to pick the degree to which they expose themselves, when the default is 100% exposure.

Basically, a family member asked me this question, and I thought it would be useful to write up for them. I figure folks on HN have the tools to figure out how they want to deal with FB and other services, but they may also want a resource to help friends and family who aren't so tech savvy.

If you are interested in the rationale for my objecting to 100% buy-in on facebook and have 40 minutes, I can highly recommend Maciej Ceglowski's talk at Beyond Tellerand 2014, the internet with a human face: http://vimeo.com/102717446

Sarkie• 11 years ago

HTTPS for the blog itself?

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

Thanks. It's high on my priority list. I want to make sure I do it right. I ended up launching the blog without it because the first commit in that repo was like 2 years ago and it just sat on my disk until last month.

th0br0• 11 years ago

Regarding the apps, however, I'd argue that the PrivacyGuard functionality of ClockworkMod and so on can severely restrict their "spying" functionality as far as making it unusable.

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

Interesting, thanks. I've been hoping that Google will overhaul the permissions system for Android (most people won't install a fork) to make it more granular/at time of access.

Mz• 11 years ago

Reading this is making me want to delete my Facebook account -- again -- even though I basically don't use it currently and it has next to nothing in it. Wow.

uptown• 11 years ago

Good tips, but one (or more) of your friends probably already uploaded their phone's address book to Facebook, so as careful as you are - social sites likely know more about you than you personally provide.

thyrsus• 11 years ago

Firefox allows multiple profiles; I have one named "Facebook" that I don't use for anything but Facebook.

_ouxp7• 11 years ago

Interesting idea. Chrome has this too.

toufka• 11 years ago

There are enough (good) browsers out there, that you can just dedicate one of them to those services which are intent on sucking up all your personal habits. Makes it easy to not confuse the issue as well.

How to join Facebook without giving up all of your and your friends’ privacy

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