Facebook walks back statements on data collection and its Portal in-home device | Hacker News Reader

Facebook walks back statements on data collection and its Portal in-home device

recode.net

78 pointscoloneltcb12 comments

I wouldn't trust anything facebook says at this point.

Just yesterday my wife deleted her facebook account and left a private message about how to contact her to some of her friends. She has never entered her phone number into the details and she has an unlisted/secret phone number due to working in the equivalent of the norwegian IRS.

A few hours after making this private post she started getting phone calls from england from "Microsoft support" regarding her the infection on her windows computer (she is using linux btw). She has never ever gotten spam calls on that number before. It might be coincidence and it is anecdotal but it seems very far fetched as this number is about 10 years old.

For the record I would personally not trust any company to put a device that records activities like that into my home. Not from facebook, google, apple or amazon. It's time to cut the online crap and start having things locally again.

Have you considered that one of her friends she sent the message to may have malware on their device?

It's probably not facebook. Your wife's friend may have certain apps installed that have access to her texts, both incoming and outgoing, and they are likely phoning home her data and selling phone numbers to scammers. I've seen this where I've been texting my wife and then soon after get text adverts based on certain words we were using.

That's certainly a possibility, but is it possible for other (malware) apps to scan private facebook posts? This was not a sms or anything like that, but a regular private facebook post made from her computer.

If anybody added her as a contact in their phone, such an app with contact information permissions would get that information as well.

Facebook is way too comfortable at saying things that are 100% not true, and then walking them back after the fact.

I'd call that a constant disconnect between the executives (who told them in the first place) vs marketing.

Executives say what they need to, to make the shareholders happy; and the marketers need to clean up the mess, after the shareholders stopped paying attention.

Funny how this doesn't require executives to take responsibility for anything other than profit.

The term is lying. They lie constantly, consistently, and without a qualm.

I love how they just reiterate to "we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices", whatever the hell that means. It doesn't even say "Messenger", it says "Messenger-enabled devices".

I guess it really boils down to what your definition of "is" is.

Why anyone would want this in their home is beyond me.

I understand why people would want this in their home, but I don't get why they'd trust Facebook to sell it to them.

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