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Facebook data on more than 500 mil accounts found online

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Found online within Facebook itself!

It's a bit harder to do these days, but simply, just setup a fake email account, linked to a fake mobile number, and use both to register with Facebook, and you're done. Who care's if you get hacked.... just don't associate your Credit card/Bank details with that account.

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Most people spent the 20th century listing their names, addresses and phone numbers in public phone directories for general utility. Some folk were ex-directory. This mix has just transitioned online.

Users of FB, who considerably outnumber the vocal minority of active refuseniks, are happy with the trade for free use of social media networks in return for access to their data. They place a much higher value on the functionality which they feel improves their lives, keeping them connected with people and information, and offering them validation.

After two decades, I haven't seen much improvement in the quality of personalised ads. I suspect that the data scalping/'AI' model to personalise ads, adds much less value than the industry suggests. The money may be better spent simply producing better adverts. Simpler, internalised ads (Amazon's 'People who bought this also bought these') work much better. I guess folk still like to see 'AI' on the label before they buy their magic snakeoil.

Simply requesting users to create an advertising profile for themselves, based on their hobbies and lifestyle aspirations, may produce a better model than all the iffy 'AI' GAFA can throw at the process. That would allow them to move away from scalping and handling data. And that would permit them to evade the enforced responsibility of censoring and monitoring content by flipping to a distributed topology. FB would never need to see your posts, so would have no role in censoring or blocking them, but could remain ad-funded. It is a better model.

The distributed model can also improve security. Any servers with a lot of user data are attractive to hackers - it is worth the effort to target them with malware. Distribute that data on to users' own systems and you replace a small number of big juicy targets with a vast number of tiny targets, none of which are worth the effort.

If governments do wish to use the endless scare stories about tech that the media run to increase control of GAFA, loot it for cash, carve it up or take it down, it will backfire, certainly in the US. GAFA enforced a degree of global dominance in tech for the US (and for the NSA). If Biden undermines that, a new generation of non-US or Chinese-aligned alternatives will take their place with simpler services and distributed topologies.

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What is happening ???. Please compensate us

Why? Individuals handed their data over to fakebook willingly. If anything it sort of serves them right for being so gullible to trust an organization like fakebook with their personal information. I never gave them anything and would not. I'm not of fakebook but who cares? Why is it even important?

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What is happening ???. Please compensate us.

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including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

Everything a social engineer needs to clean someone out.

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@theFu - I have never used Facebook. They "need" this data because the users' data is the real product.

I am not a fan of Zuckerburg but he deserves credit for being brutally honest when he stated that people that turn over their data are "dumb fu**s".

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

Facebook is a private company and people can choose to participate or not. I choose not to but I have good friends who choose to use it to keep in touch with old friends, etc. There have been times I have been tempted to join for that same reason but I have not done so yet. There will probably be some time, and it will likely be quite soon, when privacy quite literally no longer exists and at that point I may reconsider.

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Any data you give to any social network will be public. If not today, eventually - like this year.

Don't forget this from 2019:

https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/08/facebook_privacy_transcript/

Nothing appears to have changed.

Why does facebook need our name or phone number or location or .... any other data they demand now? They don't. They WANT it and want the real information to bridge the virtual-internet world with the real-we-can-get-paid world. Android and iOS are products from the enabler companies - google and apple.

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Facebook data on more than 500 mil accounts found online

Where else would you find such data - in a printed book? Title needs a rework.

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