Stillness in the Storm

An Agent for Consciousness Evolution

Users Discover ‘Horrifying’ Truth About Facebook as Feds Launch Probe

By Leave a Comment

Spread the love

() As the fallout from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal continued on Monday with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) announcement that it is conducting a long-overdue probe into the tech giant’s privacy practices, many Facebook users are only now discovering the astonishing and in some cases downright “creepy” reach of the platform’s data-mining operations, which form the foundation of its business model.

Related Facebook Stock Tanks after Data Breach Report & Facebook Is Reportedly Under FTC Investigation Over Its Handling of User Data

Source – The Antimedia

by , March 26th, 2018

After a New Zealand man named Dylan McKay called attention in a viral tweet last week to the alarming fact that Facebook had collected his “entire call history” with his partner’s mother and “metadata about every text message [he’s] ever received or sent,” other Facebook users began downloading their archive of personal data the social media giant had stored and discovered that McKay’s experience was hardly anomalous.

Based on the stories of a number of users who shared their experiences and data, Ars Technica concluded in an explosive report published on Saturday that Facebook has been scraping call and text message data from Android phones “for years.”

While the social media giant insisted in a statement that it only collects such data with permission—which is usually requested during the process of installing particular apps such as Messenger—Ars noted that this claim “contradicts the experience of several users who shared their data,” including McKay.

“While data collection was technically ‘opt-in,’ in both these cases the opt-in was the default installation mode for Facebook’s application, not a separate notification of data collection,” Arsreported. “Facebook never explicitly revealed that the data was being collected, and it was only discovered as part of a review of the data associated with the accounts.”

In an article on Sunday, CNN tech reporter Sara Ashley O’Brien documented what she found after downloading the data Facebook had stored during her 14 years on the site, and it sounds remarkably similar to that of McKay and countless others.

Facebook “had the phone number of my late grandmother who never had a Facebook account, or even an email address,” O’Brien wrote. “It preserved the conversations I had with an ex—someone with whom I thought I had deleted my digital ties. It even recalled times I was ‘poked,’ a feature I had forgotten about.”

Others took to Twitter to relay what they found after diving into their data:

https://twitter.com/mat_johnson/status/977317787520720896

https://twitter.com/mekosoff/status/978318265020768256

https://twitter.com/CraigsOverItAll/status/976964219936493573

This heightened scrutiny on the expansive nature of Facebook’s data-mining operations—which form the core of its business model—comes as Facebook is frantically attempting to assure the public that it actually cares about the privacy of its users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a public statement last week admitting that his company had made “mistakes,” and the tech giant launched an “apology tour” over the weekend featuring full-page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the London Observer promising to “do better.” (Facebook threatened to sue the Observer ahead of the publication of its report on the Cambridge Analytica scandal.)

According to polling data conducted in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, it appears that Facebook is going to have a difficult time regaining lost trust. A Reuters/Ipsos survey published on Sunday found that just 41 percent of Americans “trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information.”

Stillness in the Storm Editor’s note: Did you find a spelling error or grammar mistake? Send an email to [email protected], with the error and suggested correction, along with the headline and url. Do you think this article needs an update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at [email protected]. Thank you for reading.

Source:

http://theantimedia.com/truth-about-facebook/

Notices and Disclaimers

We need $2000 per month to pay our costs. Help us one time or recurring. (DONATE HERE)

To sign up for RSS updates, paste this link (https://stillnessinthestorm.com/feed/) into the search field of your preferred RSS Reader or Service (such as Feedly or gReader).

Subscribe to Stillness in the Storm Newsletter

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

This website is supported by readers like you.

If you find our work of value, consider making a donation. 

Stillness in the Storm DISCLAIMER: All articles, videos, statements, claims, views and opinions that appear anywhere on this site, whether stated as theories or absolute facts, are always presented by Stillness in the Storm as unverified—and should be personally fact checked and discerned by you, the reader. Any opinions or statements herein presented are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, or agreed to by Stillness, those who work with Stillness, or those who read Stillness. Any belief or conclusion gleaned from content on this site is solely the responsibility of you the reader to substantiate, fact check, and no harm comes to you or those around you. And any actions taken by those who read material on this site is solely the responsibility of the acting party. You are encouraged to think carefully and do your own research. Nothing on this site is meant to be believed without question or personal appraisal.

Content Disclaimer: All content on this site marked with “source – [enter website name and url]” is not owned by Stillness in the Storm. All content on this site that is not originally written, created, or posted as original, is owned by the original content creators, who retain exclusive jurisdiction of all intellectual property rights. Any copyrighted material on this site was shared in good faith, under fair use or creative commons. Any request to remove copyrighted material will be honored, provided proof of ownership is rendered. Send takedown requests to [email protected].

What is our mission? Why do we post what we do?

Our mission here is to curate (share) articles and information that we feel is important for the evolution of consciousness. Most of that information is written or produced by other people and organizations, which means it does not represent our views or opinions as managing staff of Stillness in the Storm. Some of the content is written by one of our writers and is clearly marked accordingly. Just because we share a CNN story that speaks badly about the President doesn’t mean we’re promoting anti-POTUS views. We’re reporting on the fact as it was reported, and that this event is important for us to know so we can better contend with the challenges of gaining freedom and prosperity. Similarly, just because we share a pro/anti-[insert issue or topic] content, such as a pro-second amendment piece or an anti-military video doesn’t mean we endorse what is said. Again, information is shared on this site for the purpose of evolving consciousness. In our opinion, consciousness evolves through the process of accumulating knowledge of the truth and contemplating that knowledge to distill wisdom and improve life by discovering and incorporating holistic values. Thus, sharing information from many different sources, with many different perspectives is the best way to maximize evolution. What’s more, the mastery of mind and discernment doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is much like the immune system, it needs regular exposure to new things to stay healthy and strong. If you have any questions as to our mission or methods please reach out to us at [email protected].

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.