Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App

This is one of those situations where the mass populace just didn't want to understand, couldn't understand or combination of both, but the mass populace is finally starting to see just how much of this tracking stuff has been going on. I still think it's not enough, though.

It is perfectly possible to crawl pages to get titles and FavIcons client side or using a web service that don't necessarily keep a log of these requests.

Same thing for censoring links. You can have a static list of disallowed domains and do all the filtering client side or have a web service that given a link returns true or false if it should be censored. It doesn't necessarily means it needs to be logged, kept, associated with a user or manually analyzed.

What we're seeing now is that facebook is actively looking at whole messages, that's a step up from the previous instances. It's still unclear if this is all automated or if some are manually reviewed. It's also unclear if these are associated with a user, or anonymized when analyzing them. Are these logged? How long are they kept for? Facebook should be more clear on how this all works. Otherwise we're just left guessing.

They are probably beyond pissed because of the ad revenue loses...wonder how many of them will fold soon?

All this talk started because he hired a top Obama campaign manager as a lobbyist for his foundation, and somehow people got "he obviously wants to be President" out of it.

Steve Weis was involved in its development (previously PrivateCore, Google Security Engineer where he developed 2FA and the keyczar library) and jumped on the defense after it was initially announced. Earlier versions were reviewed externally by some pretty well-known cryptographers.

That being said, meta-data around use of E2E encryption in Messenger is still an issue since it's not enabled by default.

It's safe to assume that much of the data we all leak is being mined for revenue.

The reason for this question is that even though you don't have a cat lots of people do! It's absolutely not a false dichotomy. Either people who have no cats must see cat food advertisements (bad choice), or cat food advertisements must be shown to people who probably have a cat (better choice). There's really nothing in between.

This is the world we live in, and you should prefer to see baby diaper ads vs cat food ads, when you do have a baby but don't have a cat. The statistical number of cats or babies is irrelevant. As you may know, Google is pretty good (not perfect) about not allowing keyword targeting that gets down to individual people so the privacy implications really are pretty limited.

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That said, I have a funny story to share. (About adapting to this world.) I am learning a foreign language and I decided to watch baby cartoons in that language. But before I did, I thought to myself, "Okay if I start searching YouTube for cartoons for 1 year olds, pretty soon Google is going to decide that I'm a new mother and I'll see nothing but baby cartoons in my feed for the next 5 years."

I was sure enough in my reasoning that I went ahead and created a brand new Google account for the express purpose of being able to pollute its YouTube feed. I only watch stuff related to that language learning on that account.

This had the exact effect that I wanted. That youtube became absolutely awesome for spending focused time on my language learning, using all sorts of related videos. It includes people documenting what life in that country is like for tourists and foreigners, it includes foreign-language teachers' channels, it includes related cartoons and films at a good level for me, it includes political speeches from that country subtitled in English. I couldn't be happier with the result.

You know those acknowledgments we've been clicking through for the past few years by Google saying "Hey!! We're doing this. READ THIS"? I think it makes what they do pretty above-board.

As a consumer we're able to adapt to this, but it's not something I have any problem with.

(Disclaimer: I indirectly contributed to Google in the past but not now, I would definitely list it as a disclaimer if it were happening now but I remember that it changed how I wrote about Google especially when I was the most critical of them, so I think it's worth mentioning still. I am a bit nicer when I'm really pissed off at them as a consumer - but this is not the case in this instance.)

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EDIT: I carefully edited this as it is falling to -1. I stand by the sentiments in this comment: they are correct. Downvoters are wrong.

Ads where? Do you just mean display ads on the web? If so, your browser likely ended up on a list for diaper ads by some other means. Top of mind: - Did ever add a baby-related product to a shopping cart on a retail site? - Did you visit baby-related websites?

Less likely, but possible,if your browser cookie was linked to other personal information by 3rd party data brokers: - Do you use a loyalty card at a physical store? Did you suddenly buy baby stuff for the first time? - Did you return a product registration card for a carseat or something like that? The company my resell their customer lists.

I know the implication is negative in terms of privacy, but it has its benefits if it could actually solve problems and provide value to the majority.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....

Given how Target shut that guy up, you have to figure they're doing even more along those lines nowadays.

Your comment is making me feel really, really old. Have people forgotten Gmail's history?

Gmail is not that old. When it was new, what you are pointing out was in the news. It was all over the news. To the point of members of Congress commenting on it. It was heavily debated. Google was very open about the fact that they were doing it. Google was the first (major) email provider to offer 1 GB of mail (well over the usual paltry 50MB that was the norm). Everyone asked "How can they afford it?" And it was very much in the open that it was being paid for ads, and that Google will mine your emails and provide you with targeted ads.

I remember while reading an email on Gmail back in 2004/2005 there was a very obvious targeted ad based on the content of that email.

I honestly do not mean this as a criticism, but I am really, really surprised that a HN poster was surprised by this. That Gmail scans (or scanned) emails and uses them for ads is almost part of their identity. It's like being surprised that there are ads in a newspaper.

There are many jurisdictions were people who are legally underage engage in sexting etc. There's hardly any "universal standard". Never mind areas where "gay" sex illegal etc.

My landlord has access to my apartment, and I certainly don't expect them to just pop in and take things out that they don't like -- I at least expect some kind of notice. You can apply this to basically anything in the physical world, like mail. Having the capability to access does not equate to having permission to access.

"I know a guy that works there, and he says they take privacy very seriously!"

"Facebook is too big to make such a stupid decision like looking into your personal communications!"

^ All of these are arguments that I've heard here on HN. I can't even imagine what people on non-tech oriented sites say.

In The US there seems the trend is if you transport it, you get to data mine it (as long as "it" is digital, and "you" isn't a post service or phone company - not sure about isps). While in Europe the GDPR states that we live in a digital world, detecting that someone made a thousand copies of your data is really hard; but we'll make sure everyone is responsible for helping keep your data safe. Like the mailman and the telephone company.

But yeah, I think a lot of people still assume that a company facilitating private conversations won't have as primary business model to spy on those conversations.

Messenger has been rock solid for me.

I was pretty shocked when FB filtered out a pornhub link I tried to send to my then-girlfriend on Messenger. I thought it was very inappropriate of them to police our relationship like that. We were both adults...

[0]: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/facebook-completely-encrypted-...

> "You can't watch your kids 24/7," reads one poster, which has a picture of Schumer, Zuckerberg, and a shirtless Anthony Wiener outside Facebook's New York offices. "BUT WE CAN."

Are they that desperate to find their daily DeBlasio/Schumer/Cumo 2 min hate? Can they not just call random Democrats Communist to satisfy their readership? Could Sabo possibly find a more tenuous link between Schumer and Facebook?

The fact that Sabo admits to having an unnamed financial backer coupled with the fact that this non-news is reported on in the Murdoch press makes me think this is some sort of guerilla marketing by an underhanded conservative firm similar to Cambridge Analytica.