#deleteFacebook

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
Wait, I thought the CIA created FB and now Zuckeeberg gets to cash out? :D


A friend posted this on FB and I got a kick out of it...

"It's not a data breach.
When you took that quiz to figure out what kind of cheeseburger you are and you clicked the box, "allow this app to rape and pillage my Facebook account on my behalf" that app logged your (and all your friends) PUBLIC information. So birthdays, favorite Lifetime movie, drunk posts looking for a hotdog, etc. Then that shitty app sold that data, which was probably all in their tiny text terms of service.
So what can you do?
Don't allow shitty apps access to your FB account; don't share anything online you don't want Kim Jong-un to know; quit your job, sell everything and buy a cabin in the woods in Montana, become a doomsday prepper.
Or we can all choose to move back to Myspace. Who wants to be in my top 8?"
 

johngottfredson

Threat Level Midnight
Location
Alpine
I don't post here much... But here and like one other similar forum is the extent of my online presence. And sometimes I feel too connected. I had an old mission companion message my brother on Facebook that he was trying to reach me, and after talking to him about how impossible I was to track down, I was oddly satisfied with that fact.
 

Seth

These go to 11
FB has no shelf life, not that the content isn't there it's just not easily searchable like a forum...

That may be true from a client-side perspective but not from a data mining perspective. Everything is archived and indexed and available to third-party business partners. If the platform is free, you are the commodity. Most use cases are not nefarious and most data is anonymized to a certain extent.

All of that being said, firms like Forrester, use every bit of data they can collect to build multi-axis profiles of you. And sell that to anyone buying.

We had a presentation from them about five years ago where they showed just how accurate they are with there profiles. Data from Visa-Mastercard is combined with public records, credit reporting, business registrations, address, super-cookie data, social media content etc.

They told me all about my buying habits, how often I go on vacation and to where, my income level, how many businesses I had opened, family size and demographics... You name it, they knew it. All of this based on one index, my address.

This data is used by businesses to understand who they are marketing to. They run scenarios to see how potential changes in rates (in this case it was for insurance) would affect sales. For example, if they market via Facebook for customers and target x-profile the risk level is x% decreased. Now if you tune the message for cost or benefit, or social good you see x% higher return. All of that is fairly benign. They just want to market to the "right" people.

Where it becomes an issue is when someone's motivations are bad. The more data you share the worse the potential issues. Keep in mind bad actors can get anything and everything about you at will. Your SSN will cost someone $3.50. That is an accurate number as of four years ago. The only reason you are not targeted is there are billions of people on the planet.

I stopped with Facebook years ago after the terms of use changed. I do miss out on a bunch of stuff as a consequence but I am glad I did.

As an example of what can be done, I have been looking for property for a number of years and every time I find one. I start with research. I am just searching public records trying to find the motivation for sale, how much is owed, etc. Nothing harmful, just trying to see if they are motivated to sell. Even when people are older and less likely to be on social media you can still find them, understand what business they are involved with, how many homes they own and where, the relationship between them and their kids, their kids marital status and possible selling motivation from a divorce of the kids... A real use case. It is all out there.

Bottom line. Think twice about any piece of information you share. Taken in aggregate it still builds a profile that can be exploited.

And lock your credit.
 

Caleb

Well-Known Member
Location
Riverton
what is the best way to lock your credit

Just google each credit agency and "freeze credit", i.e. "Experian freeze credit" and the first hit on each should be what you're looking for. In Utah it costs $10 to freeze for each and $10 to thaw it for an inquiry. When you thaw it, you can select for how long.
 

anderson750

I'm working on it Rose
Location
Price, Utah
Just google each credit agency and "freeze credit", i.e. "Experian freeze credit" and the first hit on each should be what you're looking for. In Utah it costs $10 to freeze for each and $10 to thaw it for an inquiry. When you thaw it, you can select for how long.
This is what we have done. A little bit of a PIA, but after having somebody try to run something through us about 6 years ago, it has been worth it.
 

DAA

Well-Known Member
I've always said, google isn't a search company, they're a data gathering company.

I think Google has always said that too. At least internally. It's what I've always heard, going way, way back to the days when outfits were spending huge money on 'net land grabs without a clue how to monetize. Google was always about the data. Yahoo too. And others. Google just did some strategic things better and became ubiquitous.

- DAA
 

Caleb

Well-Known Member
Location
Riverton
If you read between the lines it's easy to see. However, Google has never acknowledged this fact, certainly not publicly. We have some very close relationships with Google (when you spend more than $100M with them each year, they actually do value you) and even in some of the meetings I've been in with them talking about data gathering/sharing, they stop short of acknowledging that they're a data gathering company.
 

Herzog

somewhat damaged
Admin
Location
Wyoming
Instead of being all talk and no walk on this subject, I finally deleted my account two days ago. Feels good man.

It's weird the habit that I formed going to that site. I had to delete all bookmarks because I kept opening them randomly during the day without even thinking about it. That's a strange feeling.
 

Caleb

Well-Known Member
Location
Riverton
I’ve been contemplating deleting mine for a long time. I don’t really post anything with it ever. The tin foil wearer in me wants to delete all my posts, likes, etc first and then delete my account.
 
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