New York Attorney General To Investigate Facebook Email Collection (nytimes.com) 38
The New York State attorney general's office plans to open an investigation into Facebook's unauthorized collection of more than 1.5 million users' email address books, according to The New York Times, citing two people briefed on the matter. From the report: The inquiry concerns a practice unearthed in April in which Facebook harvested the email contact lists of a portion of new users who signed up for the network after 2016, according to the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiry had not been officially announced. Those lists were then used to improve Facebook's ad-targeting algorithms and other friend connections across the network.
"Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers' information while at the same time profiting from mining that data," said Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, in a statement. "It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information." The attorney general's investigation will focus on how the practice came about, and whether or not the email contact collection spread to hundreds of millions more people across the social network, according to the two people. Nearly 2.4 billion people use Facebook each month, with 1.56 billion people visiting the site at least once every day.
"Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers' information while at the same time profiting from mining that data," said Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, in a statement. "It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information." The attorney general's investigation will focus on how the practice came about, and whether or not the email contact collection spread to hundreds of millions more people across the social network, according to the two people. Nearly 2.4 billion people use Facebook each month, with 1.56 billion people visiting the site at least once every day.
Since the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
This site has documented almost every single privacy transgression of this guy since the beginning of the company. The same guy that everyone knows stole the idea for the company, calls users dumbf*cks, and sells the data of those same, over a billion, users without their consent. You want change? Make the fine against the company and the founder $50+ billion, force the founder to sell his voting shares to below majority, and remove him from the CEO post.
Anything less is just jawboning and more of the same.
Gee ... CFAA charges? RICO charges? (Score:1)
So, basically, Facebook is an organization which has conspired across state and international borde
Re: Gee ... CFAA charges? RICO charges? (Score:5, Informative)
Try this little thought experiment, sign up a new facebook account with a fake name and use a throw way gmail account, spend about 10 mins looking at the content, dont join anything. Never access it again.
Affter a few days you will start getting mails on that account suggesting friends that you probaly actualy know. This is because they have linked your temp account and your normal account via tracking of browser cookies, even if you use a completly private login to your system so that none of the browser cookies etc work, they track your ip address and the browser fingerprint.
Its all a bit creepy, and totaly without consent.
Re: (Score:1)
If your friends are the only persons coming close to your house Facebook will easily detect it no matter how spooky you are about hiding your cookies and identity. On the other hand I live in a town being a touristic destination and I am getting a lot of annoying false positives about friends living in some cross-planet locations. Looking at their profiles I often find that have just made a trip to a pl
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, you know, the New York Attorney general probably oversees one of the largest economic zones on the planet and investigates really large cases.
Maybe if Trump and Zuck weren't basically committing crimes they wouldn't be getting investigated ... Trump did use his "charitable foundation" to p
Zuck vs. Assange (Score:2)
Assange is in jail pending one count of attempting to crack a password, an alleged violation of the CFAA.
Zuck is looking at at least 1.5 million violations of the same Act.
No doubt Justice will be blind in these similar cases.