Comment by convery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by convery | Hacker News Reader

Ye, Facebook is Facebook, which is creepy.

Some friends asked me to sign up for it because they wanted to use the messenger service for a groupchat. When I registered it immediately propagated my profile with information about my highschool (10 years ago) and suggested a lot of people I knew from back then as well as some devs I've collaborated with on Github. All this from a new email.

So I went into the settings and changed all privacy settings I could find, and was suddenly banned for "suspicious activity". To unlock the account they demanded my phonenumber, surely only for 2FA. But because my friends kept nagging I gave them it so I could chat with them.

After about 10 minutes of chatting I got banned again for "suspicious activity". This time they demanded a recent photo of my face to confirm my identity. But also said that I shouldn't worry because only their servers will see it. So I just sent a photo of some random from a local magazine and they replied that it was not me in the image.

So although I've never posted any photos online, never used the email, never posted my phonenumber online. They know everything about me, including what I look like. Can't imagine what data Google has if Facebook has all that..

They probably asked your friends if the picture was you or not; they'd almost certainly be willing to do the verification if told it was to "prevent someone from impersonating you".

I thought they did that, but my experience has been quick, so I cannot imagine anyone got asked. I suspect it was either an automated process, or some human looked at my photos and decide whether I am that person. I believe it would be both, so facial recognition can be trained and perfected. I'd lean to say if this was all automated, they probably did a "Google image" search and came to the conclusion it could not have been the user.

Well, even here you seem to be posting from two different accounts. Even I get the feeling of 'suspicious activity' with your story.

Or you know, you are talking to another person that has had the same experience.

Please do not accuse me without any proof. I only have one account. You have no idea what you are talking about. Do not insult people like that. You can look up my public profile. I am done talking with you.

Wow, that escalated very quickly.

Joe-Z probably thought you were Convery because your comment seems to flow from his seamlessly, I made the same mistake.

This applies to a lot of people too because there is a cluster of people who agree/think alike, and there is a cluster who aren't relatively to the other group. The way he said it is actually very insulting and condescending, pretty much ready to attack me and accuse me for something I did not do. I am glad you are being honest with me how you felt in the first place. That would have been a better way to express one's doubt. Although I am not famous, just a nobody HNer, I hope people would at least do a little research on my profile first before accusing me playing a persona game.

From what I understand Facebook has "phantom" profiles for people who aren't on Facebook but who have friends who are.

"Shadow profiles" is the term that made it into the news: https://www.dailydot.com/news/facebook-shadow-profiles-priva...

it's possible they rejected your photo because they did a reverse image search and it matched the magazine?

Facebook allows you to tag people who aren't on facebook in photos - so maybe it was using those photos for comparison.

This. I went through the same process - Facebook rejected a photo from a really obscure magazine, so I asked one of my friends to send me an image they already uploaded to Facebook. FB quickly accepted that one.

How would they know it's not his photo in the magazine?

I'd guess the population of magazine models who want minimum-information access is an acceptable false negative rate for Facebook.

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