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Comment by arilotter | Hacker News Reader

> People give Facebook their access willingly and they know what information they input into Facebook. I don't think this is true. Facebook tracks your activity all over the web on thousands of third-party sites and builds a unique profile to identify you, without regard for you having an account. You can't opt out of this if you don't have a Facebook account.

Some of these "social graph" features will do things like link two people as friend suggestions if they both have your phone number in their contacts book, even if you haven't consented to Facebook building up some information about you.

This doesn't sound like willing access & knowledge of what information you provide to Facebook.

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If you haven't consented to share your contacts with Facebook, but two people have consented who have you as a phone contact, then you're a link. This can be "interesting" when one of the parties has a duty to maintain privacy, like a psychiastrist. See this article: https://splinternews.com/facebook-recommended-that-this-psyc...

This explains a lot of the weirder suggestions I got in college. People I had done a group project with, but never communicated with outside of in-person, would show up as suggestions all the time. I'm sure in each of those cases there was one person in the group who everyone was in phone contact with.

Indeed. Also people do not sufficiently realize how much more can be deducted about the nature of a social relationship other than a mere "Person A knows Person B", if you combine it with the PII you have of both users (and even more if you consider the network in its entirety).

I guess that’s what separates me and you I have more faith in humanity. I think all this false outrage about data being sold on systems that are free to use will die down and people overtime understand that the Internet doesn’t run on pixie dust and fairy magic.

PS by fighting this point you’re merely pointing out that giving more businesses this data isn’t a good idea

"I think all this false outrage about data being sold on systems that are free to use will die down and people overtime understand that the Internet doesn’t run on pixie dust and fairy magic"

It doesn't have to run on companies spying on their users either.

Companies spying on people has existed since the beginning of business. You call it spying we call it market research.

Sam Walton of Walmart would record everything about his competitors legally and illegally as well as clients yet you never see that in the news, why? Because it’s not sexy, it’s not about the internet.

This is why Equifax which was a much more horrible data breach isn’t thought about, yet everyone gets their panties in a bunch about Facebook

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