I don't use Facebook myself, so maybe this isn't news to any that do. The paper this morning (The Times) had an article saying the newest Apple IOS, due for release tomorrow, includes the ability to allow you selectively allow/disallow Bluetooth to specific apps.
Beta users in the last couple of weeks have discovered popups saying "Facebook wants to use Bluetooth", and many weren't aware it ever did.
The article went on to say that Facebook have been tracking you via your phone (yes, we know), but interestingly, also using Bluetooth to communicate with any other nearby Bluetooth users. Then they work out who is who from all the other things they know, and log and record how long you spend in the company of that/those users, as well as where you all are to a very precise degree.
Maybe I'm a bit naïve, but I hadn't realised they were THAT intrusive. I don't see any value in facebook for me even without that trackery, but if I were using it I'd be taking stock at this point.
I expect everyone else will say "oh we know THAT, get with the coffee"? Or maybe The Times made it up, or there's some pudding eggery.
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Its not every user on bluetooth you pass, only those with who you are paired. And most of them happen to be headphones or speakers.
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That wasn't the impression the article gave. But I read the paper in a pub with a lovely coffee, so can't look at it again. I'll have a google in the morning to see if I can track it down. There's no googling in this house after 8pm so can't do it now.
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I'm not convinced pairing is required.
AIUI it is not at all difficult to extract the Bluetooth MAC address by "sniffing" (creating an insecure bluetooth connection) Further peer to peer communication would require pairing to overcome the Bluetooth security provisions.
...but, the MAC address is probably all you need to trawl - this can be associated with the host by all manner of methods, including that of Facebook having Bluetooth permissions on the other device and having passed the Bluetooth MAC address to Facebook.
Big Data is frightening if you dig. I won't let Facebook anywhere near my devices, but I'm sure other things are nearly (just) as bad.
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>Big Data is frightening if you dig.
I upgraded a Hadoop cluster for a UK internet provider. If anyone believes the "No personally identifiable information is collected" clause I have another bridge for sale.
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>> I'm not convinced pairing is required.
But the mac address you have trawled, would already have to be known to facebook and harvested previously anyway, All you get is two facebook users meeting, which lets face it, happens on facebook anyway. Its just two insecure users meeting.
The fact you use social media is sufficient to turn you into a product,
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More insidious is that third parties use Facebook APIs which provide tracking info (not just location). I was reading about one which was for sanitary products for ladies, and another of the morning after pill, so Facebook data (wherever/whatever that is) would be able to fairly accurately insinuate when a woman's period is and if she had sex last night.
There were other examples but that was the one which made me think a bit. (Uopu keep hearing in court cases how they know exactly what browsing someone has been doing - but I would imagine that's more likely to come from the ISP, so a VPN would help to obscure just straight browsing - although a cookie can tell quite a bit about you).
Also when the neighbours and family all went up to Birmingham a few weeks back it would have been able to make links between people previously unlinked. It could probably have worked out who was "bride" and who was "groom" -side. It knew which hotels people stayed at, how they got there, where they ate and shopped - and all without anyone posting a single word.
But them Google has quite a bit of that, even without Facebook ( - Google timelines have been mentioned before here).
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I'd not come across those, they look handy. But I'm not sure that they fully protect you. From the Facebook one
"Facebook still will have access to everything that you do while you are on facebook.com, including your Facebook comments, photo uploads, likes, any data you share with Facebook connected apps, etc."
I found the Buzzfeed article in it which says
"The data sharing with Facebook happens via Facebook’s Software Development Kit (SDK), which helps app developers incorporate particular features and collect user data so Facebook can show them targeted ads, among other functions. When a user puts personal information into an app, that information may also be sent by the SDK to Facebook."
So I don't think it's always clear what is a Facebook connected app.
Here is the full Buzzfeed article www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/period-tracker-apps-facebook-maya-mia-fem
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Had another look this morning as the story is now easy to find with a Google, reported all over. It looks like tin-hattery, mostly, lots of "could" and "it's possible". FB have, of course, denied they do anything untoward.
Add in the story from last April, when there was a splurge of stuff about how FB gathers data on you even if don't have a FB account. That looked like tin-hattery, mostly, and FB, of course, denied they were doing anything untoward. It's just "fundamental to how the internet works".
It's fine.
uk.reuters.com/article/uk-facebook-privacy-tracking/facebook-fuels-broad-privacy-debate-by-tracking-non-users-idUKKBN1HM0EA
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Getting a proper perspective on this needs a thought experiment, conducted by a suitably competent body of people, on what the Stasi could (and undoubtedly would) have done with this data had they had access to it.
I suspect that if we had that body's report we would all be behaving very differently.
If Google and FB were headquartered in Russia, Putin would probably have 'nationalised' them already. I'm pretty sure Trump would see nothing wrong with sidelining the legislature either if he thought he could get away with it. Even our own prime minister has shown that he isn't completely above the idea.
When it happens, no doubt dressed up in the stars & stripes or the Union jack, and 'saving' the country from the evils of abortion and gay marriage, or the wrong coloured people or communism, it will be far too late to worry. When I hear "taking back control" I shudder.
This probably counts as invoking Goodwin, but I recommend viewing the BBC's "Rise of the Nazis" which relates the means by which Germany became a totalitarian state despite having a system of government not very unlike our own, with the legislature having supremacy, and separation of the judiciary.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00084tb/rise-of-the-nazis-series-1-1-politics
It's a bit long-winded but quite detailed, with contributions from various historians.
In the UK, the executive can now suspend (albeit temporarily) the rule of law in a national emergency. Given recent events, I bet it has at least occurred to Bozo's advisers that they could probably create such an emergency.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 19 Sep 19 at 10:11
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I think the point is that it would potentially associate Facebook users who don't use the platform to communicate with each other, and could not otherwise be associated.
Given Bluetooth range, that association would be physically close (don't snigger) and big data uses such info in all sorts of "imaginitive" ways.
In the early days of SWMBOs Fiesta we had advertising messages break through on Bluetooth a couple of times at the same locations.
I researched at the time how that could be done but forget now. It certainly involved Bluetooth power levels way above legal, though.
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>> I think the point is that it would potentially associate Facebook users who don't use
>> the platform to communicate with each other, and could not otherwise be associated.
You dont need to communicate, you only need to have viewed the same facebook post or browsed a group, to be associated,
You know the "everyone is only 7 steps removed from everyone else" theory?
That was pre facebook, its about 2 degrees of separation on there.
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My first girlfriend, who I have had no contact with in 38 years, neither of us live in Europe any more, in her case for 38 years popped up on my Facebook a couple of months ago as "Someone you may know". . We have no mutual friends or anything linking us that I can think of, we have never lived in the same city. She married so her name is different, she is an Australian citizen, not British.
Obviously there is a link, but I have utterly no idea what it might be.
I don't care beyond wanting to know, if you see what I mean, but I think coincidence can be ruled out.
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you think we can rule out bluetooth spoofing?
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As far as we can work out the closest we can have been together in that time is 200 miles. And more likely a couple of thousand.
As opposed to a couple of months from now when we will most certainly be within Bluetooth range.
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Maybe she's been stalking you... :-)
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She did the Sydney Morning Herald "Worst Ever Boyfriend" quiz?
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38 years? thats a lot of child support payments.
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On Sunday I was looking at an issue in the house and I said to the missus we might need to lift the skirting boards and some flooring.
Later that evening I was on Facebook and one of the ads that popped up was for upvc skirting boards. I have never, in my life, been googling or searching for skirting boards.
Is FB clever enough to pick up a broad Scottish accent through the phone?
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Some of the 'coincidences' are uncanny :S
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Facebook tracking - Zero
