Facebook bug disables women's accounts, asks for government ID, fix in process | Hacker News Reader

Facebook bug disables women's accounts, asks for government ID, fix in process

readwriteweb.com

18 pointsTerretta24 comments

And this is one of the reasons that I don't like the idea of facebook being my universal log on for lots of different sites. It takes things from mild irritation at having to find another way to waste time, to a potentially major problem when I can't access services that I use every day.

I agree. Facebook having complete ownership and control over my identity is a scary thought. The site is far too reckless and cavalier with its banning of people, business sites, apps, etc. I've read far too many accounts of banishments without any given reason or response to complaints...

FTA "It's hard not to wonder if the issue could have anything to do with yesterday's announcement of a new messaging system on the site that would work using your Facebook username for an @facebook.com email address"

I don't like when blogs do that: the link between female accounts-only disabled and Facebook's new messaging system is pretty weak. The only reason they make the link is to have people read that other story about Facebook. TechCrunch does that all the time and I find that slightly annoying. It feels like the kid who brings up unrelated stories just to show he knows stuff.

Actually, that's not at ALL why I wrote that. I wrote that because I found it hard to not wonder if the two things were connected. Suddenly, user names are becoming @facebook.com email addresses.

I also wrote this line before Facebook ever responded to our questions (which they did just a moment before posting) and didn't remove it. Before the explanation, Boy Genius Report was speculating that it was a hack because of the request for a government ID. A quick Google search showed that a government ID request seemed to be a standard thing when Facebook wants to reactivate certain accounts, so I figured that wasn't the case and postulated that perhaps it had to do with Facebooks latest change...its messaging system.

The only reason I ever put links into a story is so that if you don't know about that, and it's readily accessible, you don't need to search for it. :)

It will be a cold day in hell before I send a copy of my ID to facebook. WTF are people thinking?!

There are worse threats.

It took me less than 15 minutes to find a decent photo of you, what I think is your work address (zip 60603), possibly your home address (number is 519) and phone number (726 in the middle). I didn't come up with your date of birth but I can make a pretty good guess about your wife's (digits add up to 2011) and the date of your wedding (adds up to 2022).

I'm sorry if that completely creeps you out. I tried not to give anything personal away here and that's all readily available online.

That's not from a scanned copy of an ID that Facebook would hopefully attempt to protect.

I work in infosec, so none of that surprises me. But voluntarily sending something like my drivers license is completely insane.

Correct on zip code, but not surprising since I work in public sector. My salary is published if you look hard enough.

Edit for full disclosure: correct on zip and wife's bday, wrong on others. Off by one on annivesary

Wow, that might be a little creepy but it's very eye opening. Especially as maukdaddy lists "information security" as his business, so is presumably not too reckless with his details online.

I'm assuming you started with his HN profile, googled his name, found what appears to be his blog and took it from there?

Maybe these days having a common name is a good defence against ID fraud!

I'm not too careful with my birthdate or anniversary. LinkedIn is a huge source of information leakage, but the business and networking value outweighs that. You could datamine my twitter and find most important dates and events.

We could start a betting pool on the number of years until the government makes it compulsory.

As someone who remembers BBSes and Usenet flamewars, I can't emphasize enough how bad an idea it is to have your real identity linked to everything you do.

It also makes it very difficult if you ever need to go on the lam, because they'll know every place you might go. Every friend and relative. Whether you're trying to avoid a gambling debt, a stalker, or the government.

This is impacting a friend of mine. Suddenly disabled with no explanation.

I told her to submit a login/password bug, if only to get it read by a human over there. And to decline sending a photo ID if asked.

How does Facebook validate government IDs without actually having them? Anyone with Photoshop can be anyone they want.

only women were affected. Facebook's got several anti-woman policies (for example banning pictures of breast-feeding, and prohibiting domestic violence survivors from using pseudonyms) but in this case they're blaming a bug. it would be it would be interesting to hear more about what the actual issue is.

I frequently get friend requests from fake profiles on Facebook (sometimes as many as 2-3 per week). They always list themselves as having gone to my high school (which is why I am positive they are fake, since I went to a tiny high school), and they always are attractive-looking women. I do not list my sex on Facebook, but it is possible that the bot recognizes my first name as male and therefore friends me with a female profile, and that there are other spam profiles which are male, but I am almost certain this is not the case since I see in my news feed whenever one of my high school friends falls for the spammer, and they are again always female profiles. So I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of spam profiles on Facebook are of females.

The most widespread method of stopping spam in any form is to use flags to train an machine learning algorithm that picks out particular patterns in spam. These algorithms don't have political agendas, they just pick out common characteristics of spam. It is therefore entirely unsurprising that any such spam detector would learn to only flag women, and therefore to be expected that a bug in that algorithm which generated false positives would affect only women's profiles.

The reason you are downvoted is not because you are trying to highlight women's issues (I got 50+ karma for calling out another comment as sexist against women a few weeks ago), but because you were quick to imply a sexist motive for behavior that most any hacker would have immediately recognized as a natural consequence of how poorly-performing spam-detectors behave.

a spam detector that's biased against women certainly could account for this behavior.

why don't you see that as sexist?

They don't ban breastfeeding images, they ban images of breasts. They don't ban domestic violence survivors from using pseudonyms, they ban pseudonyms.

It is easy to make a subset of a policy appear discriminatory. For example, Facebook ban black people from creating multiple profiles. Clearly racist, until you consider they ban everyone from creating multiple profiles.

it's easy for people to find ways to justify a discriminatory policy as even-handed. you're right, though, they also ban pictures of guys breast-feeding.

At least that's who vocalized having been affected. For all we know, the disabled majority could have been Men, but didn't care enough to complain about it on Twitter.

But they care enough to complain on the behalf of their female friends and relatives? Possible but unlikely, I think.

oh look, once again i mentioned gender and got downvoted. funny how that works.

You didn't get downvoted for mentioning gender. You got downvoted for strawmans.

i didn't propose any explanations why i got downvoted, just observed the pattern.

it sounds like you're saying that any time i mention gender, people see it as a strawman, and so downvote it. why do you think that is?

I don't understand: What constitutes a fake Facebook account? Why does Facebook need to establish your real identity? Serious question, as I am not a Facebook user.

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