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Comment by KaiserPro | Hacker News Reader

Well, I assume he's out to sell something.

1) He says you should delete your facebook account. It's too late, the data is already there. Deleting does nothing.

2) "By company-ending I mean Facebook would never recover from the consequences of so much user data being dumped online for all to see" utter conjecture. there are petabytes of data, dumping that online is hard. Exfiltrating unnoticed is hard.

3) "This is potentially so bad that it could be called the Great Facebook Hack of 2018. But again, we don't know how much stuff was stolen. Yet." Again conjecture. This could be called the "great facebook spotted a hack on two account and stopped it before it got bad"

This is pointless punditry from someone who literally is nothing to do with facebook, has no contact with people close to the matter, and is just guessing.

yes, that much data in someone's hands is bad, but so is google, and the legion of databrokers and ad spinner.

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>1) He says you should delete your facebook account. It's too late, the data is already there. Deleting does nothing.

facebook monetizes data by using it for selling targeted ads. by not using facebook, they can't sell you more targeted ads, which is something.

While true, a vastly more useful approach is to poison the well and give them false data.

I question whether this is really more useful. You'd have to show that advertisers noticed that data was fake, and that they cared, and that they cared enough to pull FB advertising.

To do that, you'd have to get a whole lot of people putting up false data, and to do that, you'd have to make it very easy to do. Which would probably make it detectable (you think your fake data tool will stay off their radar?).

>1) He says you should delete your facebook account. It's too late, the data is already there. Deleting does nothing.

Prevents being hacked again in the future?

>This could be called the "great facebook spotted a hack on two account and stopped it before it got bad"

Pretty sure there is already a floor on the number of accounts higher than 2

Honestly I'd delete my Facebook if there were anything of value on there, or if I cared about being impersonated on that platform, but neither of those things are true.

Yes but your account can be used maliciously and still impersonate you. Your account can be used to sway elections and so on. I don't feel comfortable with that, but if you do then it's okay.

My account can't be used to sway elections, Facebook can be used to sway elections. I have no Facebook clout upon which a hacker could build anything of value.

1) Clearly this mitigates future risk. Which is obvious.

2) Yes it is conjecture.

3) Yes it is conjecture.

4) I'm basing it on what Facebook has told us so far. They are still investigating. But then I said that in the thread.

5) Saying it's bad because it's also bad elsewhere doesn't negate a single thing.

Thanks for the feedback.

1) no, not effectively. The data still exists, and forms the kernel to link to other systems, ie Instagram, whatsapp and what ever has any sort of Facebook integration.

if you keep any facebook affiliated service active, facebook will still maintain a profile on you.

The only way to stop is to find all your facebook apps, and IDs give formal notice for stopping use, and then issue a request to stop processing your data. They can still hold on to some nuggets of info for "anti-fraud" purposes, for example if you've paid for anything, or used marketplace.

Then you need to change browsers(possibly wipe your computer), change phone, do not import any previous data and start again.

once you've done that, you need to find your newly created unique ID, one for advertising and such and ask to stop processing on that too. Bonus points for using pihole or similar to block facebook owned domains.

so no, its not _obvious_

2 & 3) offering wild conjecture undermines your actual work. its base punditry, you provide a _valuable_ service, but pandering to hyperbole takes away from this. If you have an inside source, then that changes things, I'll sit up and listen.

4) without a source or inside insight, its just noise, again, you provide a _critical_ service, and I want you to continue, but it _must_ be based on fact or credible sources. I moan be cause I care, honest.

5) valid point, logical fallacy on my part.

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