This week in computer security

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Chien perhaps will. Some others don't like streaming. Even less than social networks. ;)
 
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Zuckerberg has been summoned to Parliament. But until society really appreciates the danger of these data harvesting practices, it's all just theatre.
 
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It should be renamed to the Facebook scandal.

Cambridge Analytica just do what the media, organisations and governments have been doing on a daily basis for thousands of years: targeted propaganda to manipulate the masses.

They just focus on elections and make better use of use data analytics and behavioral dynamics then others (or do they?).

They aren't the only one doing that and politics isn't the only thing being manipulate.

For example, my dad, who worked for GM, told me that they (GM) bought data to know car models distributions in cities and people finances in the area to target their publicity. That was more than 10 years ago…
 
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The key here is the focus on harvesting people's emotional tendencies, which is far easier to use to manipulate people, and using that information for political propaganda witout those people's permission. That is why this scares me compared to old-fashion marketing just to increase sales.

For me at least, subverting the democratic process is much more frightening than convincing people to spend money.
 
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"Days ago, the New York Times and Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that Cambridge Analytica used data, including user "likes," that had been inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.

On Tuesday night, Britain's Channel 4 News broadcast a report in which Nix — secretly recorded by the undercover reporter — said that his company played a major role in securing Donald Trump's narrow victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-cambridge-analytica-ceo-20180320-story.html
 
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According to the Guardian and the New York Times, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan produced an innocuous-looking personality testing app for Facebook whose real purpose was to identify the sorts of marketing pitches one might be susceptible to — ones that played to people's anxieties, for example, or alternatively to their sentiments. He then gathered data not just from the roughly 270,000 people who used the app, but from tens of millions of their Facebook friends, all without the friends' knowledge or consent, according to the news articles.

The story gets worse, however. Kogan reportedly turned over the Facebook data he had harvested to a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to help it build profiles that it could use to sway voters on a massive scale. The messages could be tailored precisely to the weaknesses of a narrow group of voters, and each pitch could be confined to a single group to avoid putting off voters with different sensibilities.

As Christopher Wylie, who worked at Cambridge Analytica from its founding until 2014, told the Guardian, "We would know what kinds of messages you would be susceptible to, and where you're going to consume that. And then how many times do we need to touch you with that in order to change how you think about something."

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-facebook-privacy-trump-campaign-20180320-story.html
 
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What he explain there is how GM were doing their targeted publicity a decade years ago. They just didn't have Facebook back then, but census, their own dealers sales and financial data.

And these marketing company are not just hired to sell products, they are also hired to sell laws, policies, social changes, etc.

Anyway, always remember that everything you post and do that is electronic is gathered and sold without your consent* to someone else. Even your credit card transactions…

*I actually bet that the "without your consent" is consented most of the time, people just do not read the Term of Services.
 
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This IS a new thing. Data harvesting on this scale with the aid of facebook was not possible in the past. Also, the ability to so easily target individuals with specific ads designed to trigger them was not possible before the internet. Customized snail mail was possible, but not practical. It's rather naive or disingenuous not to recognize that.
 
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When I work for an agency that required a clearance; I once scoffed that the classified information was silly since it was commonly available. It was explained that it isn't the pieces of information that require classification but the collection of data.
 
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Editorial in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...vacy-to-facebook-and-other-sites-so-willingly

I used to work in tech when I was younger, in the belly of the corporate beast - Citigroup and Disney. I knew then, as did most people I worked with, that private data was a free for all. I remember once asking my boss, in a pub, did he realise the kind of data that even a casual contractor could steal. He really didn't give a monkey's. The degree to which short term opportunism dominates the corporate world is as bad as advertised.
 
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Yea I should have said this earlier - facebook is to blame for making it easy but users are really stupid with some of the data they make available on-line and elsewhere. I try to put very little personal information in computer form (age on forum registrations) for example. Obviously in some places I have to provide personal information (banks); but i also try to use different email addresses for different sites. For sites I don't care about my passwords are pretty weak but for sites with real data they are much stronger.
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I am amazed at the information i can find on facebook. I frequently find real addresses, real ages, statements when people are going or on vacation and so forth. It is insane.
 
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Facebook and sites like it are the complete devils, in my opinion. They bring nothing of value to balance the amount of risk you are taking by making such personal information so readily available for just anyone to access. They remind me so much of a cancer that you are choosing to infect yourself with.
 
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I don't agree. I think social interaction via the network is not totally bad thing. I remember when MUDS first came out in the late 80's early 90's and we used them to talk to folks in europe (when the first came out mostly grad students and a few upper classman at university had access).

the problem isn't facebook per sey but people. They go too far.

Facebook and sites like it are the complete devils, in my opinion. They bring nothing of value to balance the amount of risk you are taking by making such personal information so readily available for just anyone to access. They remind me so much of a cancer that you are choosing to infect yourself with.
 
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