Facebook & The Value of Privacy

16 minute read | Last updated 31-Jan-2019 |  Privacy, Social Media

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Bad Robot Transcript

Hello everybody. How you doing today on this episode of the show. I want to talk to you again about Facebook. I mean, I don’t want to talk to you about Facebook. But I feel like I have to talk to you about Facebook here. It is 2019 rolling into February and yet again Facebook is in the headlines for bad behavior this time.

It’s around some of their research efforts. Now, you’ll see the various headlines talking about stealing data talking about tricking people into this day. I’ll give you the skinny because I don’t think any of those headlines are really accurate. Basically what has happened is that Facebook has created an Android and an IOS app and they are compensating people as part of market research to install these applications.

Now, they’re doing it a little bit underhanded leave because they’re going through third parties who specialize in getting people to volunteer for research, but they’re not necessarily A revealing or being fully forthcoming in disclosing who they are and the purpose of this data right now. Sometimes that’s okay because that would taint the data itself depending on the research that you’re doing.

But when it comes to Facebook we all know. Call out what they’re trying to do with this information. And it looks like this is a replacement for what they were doing underhandedly with the onavo VPN that got pulled a few months ago. So this case they’re compensating people for their data and the way they’re Gathering that data has raised some eyebrows and they are using the Enterprise distribution method from Apple.

I’m on Android everybody quite familiar with the fact that you can load Android apps from almost anywhere on Apple. Most people only go to the app store. They’re only used to be up for a while. There is actually another way to install applications that is called Enterprise distribution. Essentially you was a company go to Apple and get out what’s called a root certificate a trust certificate saying, you know marks company.

I am kid now deploy applications to anybody who trusts that certificate so then I would go to my users to say if you want to use your iPhone’s on our Network you trust a certificate then you can download all these internal apps and that way you don’t actually have to put your applications on the apps.

I’m so for something is purely internal that you never want to see at out to customers of the public. That’s the way to do it. That’s the accepted way to do it course because I will still controls this this mechanism the other ones who issue the certificate there’s a bunch of rules around how you’re supposed to do this and what applications you can actually do and it’s designed purely for within your organization on Facebook and apple are going to back out at duking it out again because I would Facebook is done through this research.

I said trust this root certificate which gives the any applications that lever text him get a significant amount of privilege on the phone. I’m so they get to see a lot of things that you would normally get warned about on as a user. If a number I have another application actually did make it to the App Store review process and tried to gain all these acts as you would get a bunch of morons on your phone through this map that you don’t actually do it.

So there’s a problem there. There’s a problem the application that I trust apple is going to sort that out and they are going to hold up to their normal standards because they’re excellent at applying that for our own Safety and Security and the protection of our The challenge years that Facebook was getting users to sign up through various market research companies and sometimes they were being clear about their vomit.

Sometimes they were not being clear about their vomit. There’s some shady ethical questions there besides perspective. Sometimes you can’t let people know what’s going on. But this was not at all for science. This is purely market research and getting the inside scoop because they were targeting 13225. So they’re trying to replace the day they were getting from the onavo VPN which was basically like what cool stuff.

Are you using on your phone? Because we want to make sure that we can either by that company or build their own Tech or start helping advertiser’s Target you because there’s something cool out there and something new and up-and-coming. Let’s get ahead of the curve so well, but not at all.

I need it all this out of the way to raise the biggest eyebrow that kind of popped up when I was reading through all this information was having a discussion with my friends and colleagues around this. 20 bucks people were voluntarily giving up a massive amount of data about themselves for 20 bucks a month.

We have a privacy problem. It’s a perception of our own value in own work because twenty bucks turns out to be on the high end if you tried to sell something like your credit card number, let’s say, you know, you’re crazy or you’re you’re trying to be enterprising cybercriminal and you’ve got a credit card number with expiry date with the CVC number off the back with a full address its clean.

It can be used to break up a couple charges. That might might get you 10 to $15 depending on who it’s from in the in the credit limit things like that. That’s the high-end something like your Netflix account might get you a dollar or two and the rest of it turns out your date has not that valuable in the individual packet where data Brokers were Facebook make a ton of money is on the aggregate.

It’s on figuring out your behavioral patterns based on using your data to demographically profile. So knowing that, you know, middle-aged man in the great white North Style with a family like to buy the following fix or liked Take the following actions are more than you know, they’ll like sci-fi versus drama or whatever the case may be so we can Market Sci-Fi movies and books and things like that to them.

That’s where the money comes in your valuable. It’s the pattern of your behavior. So the question comes down to how much do you value them? Because that’s what really jumped out at me was that this is a disproportionate amount of compensation a disproportionate in mid- the value that you can provide to a company is part of an aggregate right there making billions and billions and billions what to use an individual is the $20 worth it to give away that much information about yourself.

So if I handed you $20 will it snow? Let me start this again? Let the little thought experiment would you be comfortable if I handed you $20 of telling me everything you’ve done for the last month? Right writing it down over the course of a month and telling me everything you’ve done right what you had for breakfast what time you get off? What time you went to work? What you had for lunch who you talk to what you talked about.

You know what movie you saw what books you read? What you got up to in the evenings. Would you be comfortable doing that for $20? Probably not but feels like a gross violation and why I like what’s the benefit to you for $20 is not worth it, but people seem to jump on board and let Facebook ad through third parties pay them up to $20 for the digital equivalent to that and I think that is a an alarm Bell for me as an advocate for privacy is an advocate for Securities that there is a disconnect in the perception in the understanding of what is actually going on online and I think it’s time to start doing something about it now and that’s apropos for this week.

We started off with international data privacy week. I think we really need to put a foot snap for her feet down. We need at 4 foot to put her feet down. I try to be dramatic and it backfired but I think this is a real issue is that you know, there’s a disconnected how much we think we’re giving up versus how much were giving up how much we should value our own information and data monetarily and how much we could actually get compensated by it at for it and how much people are making money.

Top of that information. I think we really need to tighten things up. We need to disclose last online. We need to put a hard rule down for companies to how they treat our information and we got a long long way to go. Let me know what you think online here.

I hit me up at Markin. CA are at Mark NCAA Market. C is my website always you can check us out there and is always by email for podcast listeners. Everybody else me at Mark and. Sav is a big issue big topic. We’re going to be talking about it a lot this year.

Hopefully we can make some progress and swing things back towards us the digital citizens of the world. Hope you are set up for fantastic day and we’ll see you on the next episode. Hello everybody. How you doing today on this episode of the show. I want to talk to you again about Facebook.

I mean, I don’t want to talk to you about Facebook. But I feel like I have to talk to you about Facebook here. It is 2019 rolling into February and yet again Facebook is in the headlines for bad behavior this time. It’s around some of their research efforts. Now, you’ll see the various headlines talking about stealing data talking about tricking people into this day.

I’ll give you the skinny because I don’t think any of those headlines are really accurate. Basically what has happened is that Facebook has created an Android and an IOS app and they are compensating people as part of market research to install these applications. Now, they’re doing it a little bit underhanded leave because they’re going through third parties who specialize in getting people to volunteer for research, but they’re not necessarily A revealing or being fully forthcoming in disclosing who they are and the purpose of this data right now.

Sometimes that’s okay because that would taint the data itself depending on the research that you’re doing. But when it comes to Facebook we all know. Call out what they’re trying to do with this information. And it looks like this is a replacement for what they were doing underhandedly with the onavo VPN that got pulled a few months ago.

So this case they’re compensating people for their data and the way they’re Gathering that data has raised some eyebrows and they are using the Enterprise distribution method from Apple. I’m on Android everybody quite familiar with the fact that you can load Android apps from almost anywhere on Apple. Most people only go to the app store.

They’re only used to be up for a while. There is actually another way to install applications that is called Enterprise distribution. Essentially you was a company go to Apple and get out what’s called a root certificate a trust certificate saying, you know marks company. I am kid now deploy applications to anybody who trusts that certificate so then I would go to my users to say if you want to use your iPhone’s on our Network you trust a certificate then you can download all these internal apps and that way you don’t actually have to put your applications on the apps.

I’m so for something is purely internal that you never want to see at out to customers of the public. That’s the way to do it. That’s the accepted way to do it course because I will still controls this this mechanism the other ones who issue the certificate there’s a bunch of rules around how you’re supposed to do this and what applications you can actually do and it’s designed purely for within your organization on Facebook and apple are going to back out at duking it out again because I would Facebook is done through this research.

I said trust this root certificate which gives the any applications that lever text him get a significant amount of privilege on the phone. I’m so they get to see a lot of things that you would normally get warned about on as a user. If a number I have another application actually did make it to the App Store review process and tried to gain all these acts as you would get a bunch of morons on your phone through this map that you don’t actually do it.

So there’s a problem there. There’s a problem the application that I trust apple is going to sort that out and they are going to hold up to their normal standards because they’re excellent at applying that for our own Safety and Security and the protection of our The challenge years that Facebook was getting users to sign up through various market research companies and sometimes they were being clear about their vomit.

Sometimes they were not being clear about their vomit. There’s some shady ethical questions there besides perspective. Sometimes you can’t let people know what’s going on. But this was not at all for science. This is purely market research and getting the inside scoop because they were targeting 13225. So they’re trying to replace the day they were getting from the onavo VPN which was basically like what cool stuff.

Are you using on your phone? Because we want to make sure that we can either by that company or build their own Tech or start helping advertiser’s Target you because there’s something cool out there and something new and up-and-coming. Let’s get ahead of the curve so well, but not at all.

I need it all this out of the way to raise the biggest eyebrow that kind of popped up when I was reading through all this information was having a discussion with my friends and colleagues around this. 20 bucks people were voluntarily giving up a massive amount of data about themselves for 20 bucks a month.

We have a privacy problem. It’s a perception of our own value in own work because twenty bucks turns out to be on the high end if you tried to sell something like your credit card number, let’s say, you know, you’re crazy or you’re you’re trying to be enterprising cybercriminal and you’ve got a credit card number with expiry date with the CVC number off the back with a full address its clean.

It can be used to break up a couple charges. That might might get you 10 to $15 depending on who it’s from in the in the credit limit things like that. That’s the high-end something like your Netflix account might get you a dollar or two and the rest of it turns out your date has not that valuable in the individual packet where data Brokers were Facebook make a ton of money is on the aggregate.

It’s on figuring out your behavioral patterns based on using your data to demographically profile. So knowing that, you know, middle-aged man in the great white North Style with a family like to buy the following fix or liked Take the following actions are more than you know, they’ll like sci-fi versus drama or whatever the case may be so we can Market Sci-Fi movies and books and things like that to them.

That’s where the money comes in your valuable. It’s the pattern of your behavior. So the question comes down to how much do you value them? Because that’s what really jumped out at me was that this is a disproportionate amount of compensation a disproportionate in mid- the value that you can provide to a company is part of an aggregate right there making billions and billions and billions what to use an individual is the $20 worth it to give away that much information about yourself.

So if I handed you $20 will it snow? Let me start this again? Let the little thought experiment would you be comfortable if I handed you $20 of telling me everything you’ve done for the last month? Right writing it down over the course of a month and telling me everything you’ve done right what you had for breakfast what time you get off? What time you went to work? What you had for lunch who you talk to what you talked about.

You know what movie you saw what books you read? What you got up to in the evenings. Would you be comfortable doing that for $20? Probably not but feels like a gross violation and why I like what’s the benefit to you for $20 is not worth it, but people seem to jump on board and let Facebook ad through third parties pay them up to $20 for the digital equivalent to that and I think that is a an alarm Bell for me as an advocate for privacy is an advocate for Securities that there is a disconnect in the perception in the understanding of what is actually going on online and I think it’s time to start doing something about it now and that’s apropos for this week.

We started off with international data privacy week. I think we really need to put a foot snap for her feet down. We need at 4 foot to put her feet down. I try to be dramatic and it backfired but I think this is a real issue is that you know, there’s a disconnected how much we think we’re giving up versus how much were giving up how much we should value our own information and data monetarily and how much we could actually get compensated by it at for it and how much people are making money.

Top of that information. I think we really need to tighten things up. We need to disclose last online. We need to put a hard rule down for companies to how they treat our information and we got a long long way to go. Let me know what you think online here.

I hit me up at Markin. CA are at Mark NCAA Market. C is my website always you can check us out there and is always by email for podcast listeners. Everybody else me at Mark and. Sav is a big issue big topic. We’re going to be talking about it a lot this year.

Hopefully we can make some progress and swing things back towards us the digital citizens of the world. Hope you are set up for fantastic day and we’ll see you on the next episode.