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Comment by parkingrift | Hacker News Reader

>I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.

You're kidding yourself with that. You gave Facebook literal eyes into your home through an internet connected device. If you don't think Facebook know who you are I have some coins I'd like to sell you.

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I talked to someone who used to be at Facebook's reality lab and they said they have very VERY strict controls on user data and no one just has remote access through Oculus cameras including devs but reputation is hard to shake when tied to a company like Facebook.

That developers not having access is likely. Still there certainly is different data analytics running over it to identify what works and what ads to sell where. Also there mere fact that the data exists can lead to some (ab)use sometime in future. Even if I were to trust Mark Zuckerberg (which I don't, but for arguemnt's sake) this won't give me trust in a successor.

What data are you talking about that's being released from someone who never uses Facebook besides playing Quest 2 once in a while? My location and game preferences? A video/audio of my empty room while I play a game by myself?

Location gives information on financial information.

The information on when you are playing gives information on your job situation.

The kinds of games give insight into personality.

And so on, if you combine with data from other sources (what else happens on the IP address around the same time?) you can get quite a lot.

Oh I’m sure they do. I’m sure Facebook cares deeply about your data and they absolutely would not ever lose it or accidentally give it away.

They definitely don’t see the VR devices as a gateway to another frontier on data collection. That’s why they paid billions for Oculus and then spent billions to sell the Quest devices at a loss.

Ignore the fact that one of basic features of the Quest is to scan your room and build a play area. Just give FB a burner account and you’re set they definitely won’t be able to tie that data together it’s not like they built their entire business around doing that.

This is such a weirdly aggressive comment. I'm not saying you have to trust Facebook but there are much better ways to shake Oculus users down for money than risk getting caught watching people on the toilet through their VR cameras.

Why are you imagining petty voyeurism? I'm imagining more like "scan the room for products recently purchased at non-amazon retailers" or "identify how many worker-consumers are in the room and how engaged they are with The Product"

Data, not video or pictures.

Petty voyeurism will happen (we've seen enough stories about this with Amazon Alexa) but I agree that's nowhere near the main problem with this kind of technology.

I bought all of those products with credit cards, usually on Amazon. I highly doubt that's useful information for FB to mine (and it would destroy their product line if it came out they were doing that).

I just made a mental list of all of the items in my office room where I use Quest and the face I own a Macbook and some high end speakers/chair/desk/monitor and an iPhone is really not that interesting to anyone.

I'm way more concerned by my mobile phone or browser where I actual engage with personal information.

And I am saying you absolutely should not trust the least trustworthy company in tech.

Lol, yeah, sure. Just like Alexa and Nest have "very strict controls on user data and most definitely not remote access to recordings"

You really think Zuck couldn't phone up a random SDE and ask them for a direct feed into a random users home? Sor..sorr..sorry Zuck I can't break policy, even for you the president of Hawaii.

Not to mention they can now Id you based off your retina scan. They can also profile your house and products you use in your house. Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.

The quest 2 does not have an inward facing camera pointing at your iris.

The quest 3 might have eye tracking and face tracking.

"One of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in" - Mark Zuckerberg https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-quest-3-4-eye-face-tracking/

Here is their tech demo for full eye and face tracking for virtual avatars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-tHA8F-zU

What does that have to do with the quest 2 ?

The comment I responded to just happened to be the one which made me wonder how far off the dystopian future was where mega corporations are scanning people's eyes, which is why I went and searched the internet for information and found that that future is actually very close. This made me a bit worried. Therefore I mentioned that piece of information here, hoping that it might reach someone in a position to change that future.

they can now Id you based off your retina scan

There's enough wrong with FB/Meta to not need to go into conspiracies

I presume you're not aware of Facebook's research into eye tracking for VR. It goes a lot further than just identity. I believe their main interest is gauging emotional response for better targeted advertising.

If you look at the original FT article which covered the patents that caused the whole stir [1] (paywalled but I found it in the usual places) you'll see that their patents only cover using eye tracking to render media. A comment in FT's interview with Clegg discusses using eye tracking to see if an advertisement was looked at, like how JS is used to track whether an ad was viewed now. "Gauging emotional response" is really, really stretching it. Meta does enough garbage today, let's not foment conspiracy here.

[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/76d40aac-034e-4e0b-95eb-c5d34146f...

>Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.

I did, and it says that they gave message access to users that authorized it to. Saying "Facebook is reckless with data" because of this makes as much sense as saying that google is "reckless" with your data because people are constantly downloading shady flashlight apps and granting them location permissions.

What is the threat model exactly? That someone will have access to Facebook's entire credit card DB to connect a random email to my real identity AND be able to hijack the cameras/microphone to spy on me? So basically a nation state or Facebook? I can't see a private hacker getting that sort of access nor bother to get me.

I use it maybe an hour or two a week now (used to be way higher) and when I'm not using it it sits in a case in a closet. I dont see any value of getting images of my office and audio of an empty room.

I'm really struggling to see how this affects my privacy. I dont even play multiplayer games where I'm ever talking.

also last time I tried, facebook demanded ID to sign up an account

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