The scourge of Facebook

[Big Boy]

HaHa - I wouldn't dream of doing anything for profit from Thailand. I'm just amazed that Facebook took it and turned it into an advert for no financial gain, and without asking first. I have managed to get rid of the advert now.

[centermid7]

Not quite!

I'll take one of the 4x please. They are hard enough to find and at 340 Bt I would not care if it had your picture on it. LOL

[buksida]

Facebook faces class-action lawsuit over massive new hack
Facebook is already facing immense fallout from revelations this morning that a hacker exploited a security flaw in a popular feature of the social network to steal account credentials of as many as 50 million users.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/28/1791 ... s-affected


Facebook blocked users from posting some stories about its security breach
Some users are reporting that they are unable to post today’s big story about a security breach affecting 50 million Facebook users. The issue appears to only affect particular stories from certain outlets, at this time one story from The Guardian and one from the Associated Press, both reputable press outlets.

When going to share the story to their news feed, some users, including members of the staff here at TechCrunch who were able to replicate the bug, were met with the following error message which prevented them from sharing the story.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/faceb ... ian-story/


IMO it really is time that this scourge was taken off the internet.

[handdrummer]

The only way Facebook will change is if millions of users stop using it. Consumers have all the power but sit around wringing their hands and waiting for "someone" to do "something."

[buksida]

Stopped using it months ago when they demanded proof of ID.

[PeteC]

php9zUfGZPM.jpg (37.9 KiB) Viewed 929 times

Which Asian Country Has the Most Facebook Users?


Full story: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... T/30355459

[buksida]

FACEBOOK SAYS 50M USER ACCOUNTS AFFECTED BY SECURITY BREACH
Facebook reported a major security breach in which 50 million user accounts were accessed by unknown attackers.

The attackers gained the ability to “seize control” of those accounts, Facebook said, by stealing digital keys the company uses to keep people logged in. Facebook has logged out owners of the 50 million affected accounts — plus another 40 million who were vulnerable to the attack. Users don’t need to change their Facebook passwords, it said.

Facebook said it doesn’t know who was behind the attacks or where they’re based. In a call with reporters on Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that attackers would have had the ability to view private messages or post on someone’s account, but there’s no sign that they did.

“We do not yet know if any of the accounts were actually misused,” Zuckerberg said.

Facebook shares fell $4.38, or 2.6 percent, to close at $164.46 on Friday.

http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/inte ... ty-breach/

[PeteC]

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK: For users, Facebook's revelation of a data breach that gave attackers access to 50 million accounts raises an important question: What happens next?

For the owners of the affected accounts, and of another 40 million that Facebook considered at risk, the first order of business may be a simple one: sign back into the app. Facebook logged everyone out of all 90 million accounts in order to reset digital keys the hackers had stolen -- keys normally used to keep users logged in, but which could also give outsiders full control of the compromised accounts.

Next up is the waiting game, as Facebook continues its investigation and users scan for notifications that their accounts were targeted by the hackers.

What Facebook knows so far is that hackers got access to the 50 million accounts by exploiting three distinct bugs in Facebook's code that allowed them to steal those digital keys, technically known as "access tokens". The company says it has fixed the bugs.

Users don't need to change their Facebook passwords, it said, although security experts say it couldn't hurt to do so.

Facebook, however, doesn't know who was behind the attacks or where they're based. In a call with reporters on Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- whose own account was compromised -- said that attackers would have had the ability to view private messages or post on someone's account, but there's no sign that they did.

"We do not yet know if any of the accounts were actually misused,'' Mr Zuckerberg said.

The hack is the latest setback for Facebook during a tumultuous year of security problems and privacy issues. So far, though, none of these issues has significantly shaken the confidence of the company's 2 billion global users.

This latest hack involved bugs in Facebook's "View As'' feature, which lets people see how their profiles appear to others. The attackers used that vulnerability to steal access tokens from the accounts of people whose profiles came up in searches using the "View As'' feature. The attack then moved along from one user's Facebook friend to another. Possession of those tokens would allow attackers to control those accounts.

One of the bugs was more than a year old and affected how the "View As'' feature interacted with Facebook's video uploading feature for posting "happy birthday'' messages, said Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice-president of product management. But it wasn't until mid-September that Facebook noticed an uptick in unusual activity, and not until this week that it learned of the attack, Mr Rosen said.

"We haven't yet been able to determine if there was specific targeting'' of particular accounts, Mr Rosen said in a call with reporters. "It does seem broad. And we don't yet know who was behind these attacks and where they might be based.''

Neither passwords nor credit card data was stolen, Rosen said. He said the company has alerted the FBI and regulators in the United States and Europe.

Jake Williams, a security expert at Rendition Infosec, said he is concerned that the hack could have affected third-party applications.

Mr Williams noted that the company's "Facebook Login'' feature lets users log into other apps and websites with their Facebook credentials. "These access tokens that were stolen show when a user is logged into Facebook and that may be enough to access a user's account on a third party site,'' he said.

Facebook confirmed late Friday that third-party apps, including its own Instagram app, could have been affected.

"The vulnerability was on Facebook, but these access tokens enabled someone to use the account as if they were the account-holder themselves,'' Mr Rosen said.

News broke early this year that a data analytics firm once employed by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly gained access to personal data from millions of user profiles. Then a congressional investigation found that agents from Russia and other countries have been posting fake political ads since at least 2016. In April, Mr Zuckerberg appeared at a congressional hearing focused on Facebook's privacy practices.

The Facebook bug is reminiscent of a much larger attack on Yahoo in which attackers compromised 3 billion accounts -- enough for half of the world's entire population. In the case of Yahoo, information stolen included names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and security questions and answers. It was among a series of Yahoo hacks over several years.

US prosecutors later blamed Russian agents for using the information they stole from Yahoo to spy on Russian journalists, US and Russian government officials and employees of financial services and other private businesses.

In Facebook's case, it may be too early to know how sophisticated the attackers were and if they were connected to a nation state, said Thomas Rid, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Mr Rid said it could also be spammers or criminals.

"Nothing we've seen here is so sophisticated that it requires a state actor,'' Mr Rid said. "Fifty million random Facebook accounts are not interesting for any intelligence agency.''

[buksida]

Facebook says hackers accessed data of 29 million users
Facebook said Friday that hackers accessed personal data of 29 million users in a breach at the world's leading social network disclosed late last month.

The company had originally said up to 50 million accounts were affected in a cyberattack that exploited a trio of software flaws to steal "access tokens" that enable people to automatically log back onto the platform.

"We now know that fewer people were impacted than we originally thought," Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen said in a conference call updating the investigation.The hackers -- whose identities are still a mystery -- accessed the names, phone numbers and email addresses of 15 million users, he said.

For another 14 million people, the attack was potentially more damaging.Facebook said cyberattackers accessed that data plus additional information including gender, religion, hometown, birth date and places they had recently "checked in" to as visiting.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... T/30356396

[handdrummer]

Only 29 million. I feel much better now.

[PeteC]

Eight months after revealing the links between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA), whistleblower Christopher Wylie is pushing for the internet giant to be regulated -- whether it wants to or not. - AFP


He is scathing about Facebook's "man-child" chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and the arrogance of the company he runs.

"Facebook knew about what happened with Cambridge Analytica, well before the Trump election, well before Brexit, it did nothing about it," Wylie told AFP.

"They knew about Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform, but to preserve the integrity of their reputation, they place their company above their country."

Last March, Wylie revealed that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica took millions of Facebook users' data to build psychological profiles of users. He knew because he had worked as the company's research director.

Targeted political campaign messages were used both in the US presidential election and in the run-up to Britain's 2016 Brexit vote, he said.

Zuckerberg, in a statement issued in March, acknowledged the data breach but said it had happened without Facebook's knowledge or consent. They had acted to ensure it never happened again, he added.

It is a bewilderingly complex story. But the important thing, said Wylie, was to stay focused on the key facts.

"You've got a company like CA whose staff were working in Russia, whose contractors are indicted by Mueller and whose clients were meeting with (the) Russian embassy -- so Russia's everywhere in this."

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

But Wylie's real anger is directed at Facebook and Zuckerberg.

"One of the problems is that they have unfortunately a share structure which enables a 'man-child' to run a company like an authoritarian dictator and no one else can do anything about it," he said.

'Arrogance'

Facebook acknowledged on Tuesday that its engineers had flagged suspicious Russian activity as early as 2014 -- long before it became public.

But Zuckerberg still refused to turn up to hearings held by the British Parliament this week attended by lawmakers from nine different countries.

Instead, vice president Richard Allan had to field questions on allegations that the company had been exploited to manipulate major election results.

For Wylie, Zuckerberg's no-show in London spoke volumes.

"He has built a platform that has created substantive risk to our society and to our democracy and he doesn't even have one hour to give...," he said.

Facebook is now being investigated by several US federal agencies.

In Britain, it is appealing a £500,000 ($637,000) fine handed down by the Information Commissioner's Office for serious breaches of the data protection laws over the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

And earlier this month, it has had to battle the fall-out from a New York Times report that it used a public relations firm to discredit its critics, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Facebook's outgoing communications chief Elliot Schrage took the blame.

'Proper regulation'

"I'm not surprised, having been on the blunt end of Facebook retaliation, that they go after people like George Soros and ... hire firms to make up anti-semitic rumours and fake news," he said.

"It's ironic that Facebook, in trying to defend itself as a platform that's combatting fake news, creates fake news in the first place.

"It really reveals the heart and soul of this company, (which is) exactly why we need scrutiny, accountability and new regulations."

But he gets why people are reluctant to join calls to close their Facebook accounts in protest.

"I understand why people don't want to leave...," he said. "It's now part and parcel of modern day living.

"This is why it's so important to regulate, because just like electricity or water or roads, this is a utility, and that means people don't really have a choice to leave."

Facebook insists it is striving to wield its power more responsibly. Since the beginning of the year, it says, it has deleted two billion false accounts suspected of spreading false information.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it put in place new tools to make it easier for users to control their personal information: and any political advertising now has to identify its source.

But for Wylie, that is not enough.

There needs to be a statutory code of conduct for data scientists and software engineers, just as there are for other professions, he argues.

Architects cannot just decide to leave out fire exits on a whim, he says, so the specialists who create online "addictive spaces" need to be regulated in just the same way.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... s/30359654

[Stargeezer]

I got off FB 3 years ago, use line for messages with family and friends and send pictures via that
method or E Mails. Use Fongo for free phone calls tablet to tablet. Never going back to Face Book.
Geezer

[laphanphon]

Only one device (phone) and one financial site has my personal info.

Everything else, not that I'm concerned, or surely can't be tracked down if wanting, but all other sites I use, are signed in with bogus info.

[STEVE G]

Who spreads the most fake news on Facebook?


WASHINGTON (AP) People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study finds.

The first major study to look at who is sharing links from debunked sites finds that not many people are doing it. On average only 8.5 percent of those studied — about 1 person out of 12 — shared false information during the 2016 campaign, according to the study in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. But those doing it tend to be older and more conservative.

“For something to be viral you’ve got to know who shares it,” said study co-author Jonathan Nagler, a politics professor and co-director of the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University. “Wow, old people are much more likely than young people to do this.”

Facebook and other social media companies were caught off guard in 2016 when Russian agents exploited their platforms to meddle with the U.S. presidential election by spreading fake news, impersonating Americans and running targeted advertisements to try to sway votes. Since then, the companies have thrown millions of dollars and thousands of people into fighting false information.

Researchers at Princeton University and NYU in 2016 interviewed 2,711 people who used Facebook. Of those, nearly half agreed to share all their postings with the professors.


The researchers used three different lists of false information sites — one compiled by BuzzFeed and two others from academic research teams — and counted how often people shared from those sites. Then to double check, they looked at 897 specific articles that had been found false by fact checkers and saw how often those were spread.

All those lists showed similar trends.

When other demographic factors and overall posting tendencies are factored in, the average person older than 65 shared seven times more false information than those between 18 and 29. The seniors shared more than twice as many fake stories as people between 45 and 64 and more than three times that of people in the 30- to 44-year-old range, said lead study author Andrew Guess, a politics professor at Princeton.

The simplest theory for why older people share more false information is a lack of “digital literacy,” said study co-author Joshua Tucker, also co-director of the NYU social media political lab. Senior citizens may not tell truth from lies on social networks as easily as others, the researchers said.

Harvard public policy and communication professor Matthew Baum, who was not part of the study but praised it, said he thinks sharing false information is “less about beliefs in the facts of a story than about signaling one’s partisan identity.” That’s why efforts to correct fakery don’t really change attitudes and one reason why few people share false information, he said.

When other demographics and posting practices are factored in, people who called themselves very conservative shared the most false information, a bit more than those who identify themselves as conservative. The very conservatives shared misinformation 6.8 times more often than the very liberals and 6.7 times more than moderates. People who called themselves liberals essentially shared no fake stories, Guess said.

Nagler said he was not surprised that conservatives in 2016 shared more fake information, but he and his colleagues said that does not necessarily mean that conservatives are by nature more gullible when it comes to false stories. It could simply reflect that there was much more pro-Trump and anti-Clinton false information in circulation in 2016 that it drove the numbers for sharing, they said.

However, Baum said in an email that conservatives post more false information because they tend to be more extreme, with less ideological variation than their liberal counterparts and they take their lead from President Trump, who “advocates, supports, shares and produces fake news/misinformation on a regular basis.”

The researchers looked at differences in gender, race and income but could not find any statistically significant differences in sharing of false information.

After much criticism, Facebook made changes to fight false information, including de-emphasizing proven false stories in people’s feeds so others are less likely to see them. It seems to be working, Guess said. Facebook officials declined to comment.

“I think if we were to run this study again, we might not get the same results,” Guess said.

MIT’s Deb Roy, a former Twitter chief media scientist, said the problem is that the American news diet is “full of balkanized narratives” with people seeking information that they agree with and calling true news that they don’t agree with fake.

“What a mess,” Roy said.

[PeteC]

As that story eludes to a bit is that older people don't like to be told they're wrong. Their minds are set on auto based upon their long held opinions. Then comes the knee jerk to quickly pass along a story that reinforces their thinking, many times without researching its truthfulness....IMO. Pete