Opuscula Facebook Security Is a farce

IF THE MEDIA IS TO BE BELIEVED — and that may be asking a lot — Facebook has once again been caught with its security down.

If it actually HAD subscriber security.

According to

CNBC (http://tinyurl.com/ycu7pt5v and http://tinyurl.com/yclbafcq)
The New York Times (http://tinyurl.com/yb9sn8hb)
Wall Street Journal (http://tinyurl.com/ybakwbbc)
Wired (http://tinyurl.com/ycomlodn)

Facebook allowed — gave, sold, or traded — a number of organizations to access Facebook subscriber personal information and private postings.

According to Wired.com, Unlike the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a third-party company erroneously accessed data that a then-legitimate quiz app had siphoned up, this vulnerability allowed attackers to directly take over user accounts..

The web site 9to5mac.com (http://tinyurl.com/yca5m3gt) contends that Facebook, subscribers’ information was shared with

Amazon
Microsoft’s Bing
Netflix
Royal Bank of Canada
Spotify
Yahoo

in some cases, allowed organizations to read, write and delete users’ private messages, and to see all participants on a thread — privileges that appeared to go beyond what the companies needed to integrate Facebook into their systems.

The site noted that Facebook empowered Apple to hide from Facebook users all indicators that its devices were asking for data. Apple devices also had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to disable all sharing, the records show.

Apple officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its devices any special access. They added that any shared data remained on the devices and was not available to anyone other than the users.

Since I am not a social media subscriber — no Facebook, no Twitter, no WhatsApp,
Tumbler, Instagram, or Google+ — I’m fairly safe. Not 100 percent; I have email accounts, and the government — which HAS been hacked — has more information that I would care to share.

Do “social media” ask for subscriber’s Social Security information?

What confounds me is why a person’s Social Security number is requested by every Tom, Dick, and Harry when the ONLY people that need it are reporting financial information to the Federal government.

Doctors routinely ask for a patient’s Social Security number. No reason. (I never give mine.)

Social Security was never intended to be a national ID. If Congress was smart — like the media being truthful — there would be a law banning the use of Social Security numbers for anything that is not connected to the Treasury or IRS.

The next time someone asks for my Social Security information I’ll respond: I’ll show you mine after you show me yours.” I’ll bet that ends the request in a hurry.

According to most “experts,” nothing every goes away once it gets into the WWW .

While users may think their personal information and personal comments are secure, they are, sadly, very wrong.

It’s bad enough when a data base is hacked, but worse when the information is sold, trades, or otherwise surrendered to organizations in which the subscriber has no interest.

The only way to assure privacy is to avoid social media and to stop posting your most intimate thoughts online.

In other words,

THINK BEFORE GIVING UP PERSONAL INFORMATION
THINK BEFORE POSTING ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET.

It is just common sense, but perhaps common sense isn’t so common anymore.

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