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Comment by GBKS | Hacker News Reader

I've experienced this too when I logged into from a different computer than usual. It's very misleading from Facebook, since it's not a re-authentication, it's just a login. I'm also pretty sure they just use this as a simply way to get their photo archive tagged by forcing people to go through this procedure.

To me this is just another lame move from Facebook to get their hands on personal data for their own advantage. Considering that my benefit from Facebook is to see friends' vacation photos, some random things they do and wish them happy birthday, I don't see the need for Facebook to know much about me.

To sum it up, Facebook needs to take a chill pill.

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I'm no Facebook fan, but how is Facebook getting any additional personal data from you with this move?

They get you to put names on faces in pictures.

Only sounds like identifying already tagged images from the article, no extra information they don't already have.

How can they use that for authentication if they don't already have the data to see if your answer is right?

That's why I'm thinking that they don't use it for authentication. There were quite a few steps to go through, so my assumption would be that some steps are used for authentication and others are used to collect data.

Man, I'm realizing I must sound paranoid about Facebook.

I guess it's possible that they're doing the same thing as recaptcha - for some questions they already know the answer, others they're going to use your answer as a data point.

See my reply to another comment - the data doesn't exist. In some images I was supposed to identify random objects or blanks walls as my friends. So they do use this to train their algorithm and/or complete their database.

Considering the data is already there at the point of authentication I think this is a great and innovative idea. Infinitely better than 'What is your mother's maiden name?' type questions.

The problem is that it's very vulnerable to attacks by people who know me -- they tend to have interacted with many of my friends. I wonder if Facebook deliberately chooses the photos from different clusters of people.

Exactly, good luck in keeping your deranged ex out.

Don't you have to successfully login before getting to this authentication step? So the people who know you would have to know your password first, in which case you're already vulnerable.

I don't think the data exists. In several images, I was supposed to identify a blank wall or a random object as a friend. Pretty sure they use this to tweak their face detection algorithms.

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