Sympathy vacuum.
Anyone who signs up for a site that should really be called www.lookatme.com deserves to be raped in every orifice by fraudsters on a daily basis.
Name and email addresses of Facebook users are available online at prices as low as $5 per million. The dodgy trade was uncovered by Bogomil Shopov, an internet marketeer and blogger in the Czech Republic. Shopov said he approached the social network about the problem. He said Facebook asked him to forward and then delete the …
Anyone who uses their real details deserve it. However, I use a misspelt name, with extra names I do not have, fake address details, numbers and date of birth. I am 87 years old....... Well not really.
But this goes to show that there are allot of people like me, doing the same thing so advertising, should I say targeted advertising is a waste of time.
No to mention my alter ego account in the name of my dog. He has more fun on Facebook than I do.
"There are a disproportionate number of Facebook users born on the first of April".
That may actually be true (based on the people I know who use it as intended)...but that is being cruel.
According to facepalm I (or one of my accounts at least) was born at the beginning of time (Unix time that is) - my birth was the start of a new Epoch (in computing).
I think there is probably a lot of other people also born on 1st Jan according to facepalm - as it is normally the quickest date to select from drop down lists. Are there publicly available stats on birth date distribution for fp accounts?
4pm. Less than 4:1.. Quite frankly I'm pleasantly amazed and relieved.
I thought it would be at least 20:1 in favour of the attention whores in these days of celebrity nothing worship, x factor and reality television.. I can see why the city boys are getting worried about lookatme.com.
Two replies in quick succession to your own post?
When it comes to attention whoring, the poster doth protest too much, methinks.
I'd also suggest that with your casual and easy, off-the-cuff use of words like 'rape' and 'whore', you don't spend much time with women, if any.
Any Facebook app can obtain your details if you use it. These details are allowed to be kept by the applications author by Facebook. These can be used for marketing purposes.
I don't allow any apps to run in Facebook, it's just not worth it. I wonder just how many Facebook users' details Zynga have.
Do what I do:
- Block 3rd party cookies
- Never use a Facebook app or sign up for a Facebook game.
- Block 3rd party cookies
- Never click on an email link from a Facebook "partner". I keep getting these emails from 360photo
- Block cookies, JavaScript, etc. from Zynga.com.
- BLOCK ALL 3RD PARTY COOKIES!!!
Some people already know who their friends are and want to share info/chat etc with just those. They don;t need to give real information to do that. The only time you need to do that is if you want to be FOUND by others.
Also, you sometimes need to have an account just to view some of the other people's information - again why create a real account for that.
I have 4 facebook accounts - none have ANY real information in them.
PS. You may also have noticed that the commentards on El Reg are a mixture of 'probably real names' 'psudonyms/obviosus fake names', and 'anon'.
"So why be on there then?"
Some organisations have followed the trend and moved to FaceBook for a major internet presence. Even with apparently public data a login is sometimes needed to see things on their pages. One of the organisations I support has a closed group just for team members and sponsors. So I have a login with full privacy settings that is used very infrequently. It has a pseudonym that the organisations recognise as indicating my online alter ego.
A friend of mine Pete got a "Friend Suggestion" (not request) on Facebook. he sort of knew this person as his daughter went to the same school as my mate Pete's daughter. But they weren't friends and had no shared contacts either. Non of the girls were on Facebook as they're both very young (8 years old)
So, Pete decided to investigate how Facebook managed to make the connection
Pete then relaised that his daughter had attended a kiddy party at this person's house and he had called him to RSVP and also to let them know he was en route to collect his daughter on the day of the party
So, through the association of two mobile phone calls, Facebook made the connection.
Not leaving it at that, he dug further and found out that his Telco has the right to sell their call logs to third parties, as outlined in the fine print of the T&C's of the mobile contract.
So, somewhere along the line, his CSP had flogged Facebook the call logs and as Facebook demands a contact number nowadays, the Zuckbook database made this very vague association..
It seems that any orgranisation that has heaps of personal data will indeed sell it off or mine it to improve profits. After all, a spreadsheet full of names and email addresses is prime commercial property in this day and age.
I guess it's up to the individual to be viligant when entering any info into any social media site and also to take the time to read the fine print.
Seems more likely that the other guy had a facebook app on a smart phone, which is allowed to slurp your entire contacts list (indeed, has been known to make changes to your contacts list to make the @facebook.com email the primary one), which may have automatically included Pete's number from the logs.
> Facebook demands a contact number nowadays
Demands, but does not get (from me, at least), I just click thru whenever I see that screen. If you must have a personal FB account, only stick stuff on it that you are happy for absolutely anyone to have access to.
Sums up their stance perfectly.
They do not take aggressive action on the personnel responsible for letting the data get out, or the people who decide their policies, controls, etc but WILL get aggressive on 'reports'...i.e. to try and get them removed from public view, spinning responses, discrediting sources and DMCA takedowns, etc.
Grammatical slip maybe...but possibly a Freudian one.
I think Facebook is bloody useful for letting the extended family know what I'm up to without having to go through the tiresome effort of travelling or having to put up with long boring phone calls with Auntie June or cousin Jim, who between you and me likes the odd drink a little too much for my liking!
Just don't give Zuck any sensible data as his pet company are bigger marketing scumwads than Google, and they'll sell your details in the next extraction batch after you sign up. At least Google are up front and they tell you they're harvesting your details for cash, Facebook give you a load of bollocks about being a friendly site for sharing fun with others, then bend you over and sell you off!
How much more useful is Facebook compared to, say, a CC/BCC email list?
Then you own your own damned contact list. Hardly an inconvenience. "Ohai, I want to send this mail to..." *click each user name or select groups/all*
I'm pretty sure people used to use these things called "email clients" that did something surprisingly similar to this at one point, before Facebonk decided to get a whole load of suckers (Zuck's words, not mine) signed up.
"Likes and followers can be ...... translated to monetary profit"
And there was me thinking that it wouldn't be possible to find something even more ephemeral than monopoly money credit to use as the basis of the global economy.
My ghast is flabbered by the sheer chutzpah of it all.
Back in the 80s, almost everyone subscribed to some sort of BBS. ISPs offered free home pages , i.e Geosites and suchlike. People have accounts at MSN, Yahoo, ICQ . . , millions participate in forums. Since 30 years, private data is shared, for everyone to see. If you share too much, it'll eventually bite you, simple as that. It's true, FB makes it easier for the bad guys, but it's not as if fraud was invented after FB went online. It's not that interesting anyway. I could think of a lot of sites better suited to shady activities.
This post has been deleted by its author