Facebook appoints self world police, promises state attack warnings Facebook has decided it will warn its data-generating, ad-clicking sheeple members when it thinks they are under attack by “state-sponsored actors”. In a post published on Saturday The Social Network TM's chief security officer (CSO) Alex Stamos says the step is necessary “because these types of attacks tend to be more …
Who do we report them to? Themselves? Google? Some other corporate who thinks it's a government? I ask because I realize our (US) government and most others in the world won't lift a finger.
Hmm... I'm already under attack by Microsoft to install some malware called Windows 10. Maybe I can report MS to FB?
I'm sure it's just another way for FB to try and get my phone number
I suspect at least one person in your circle of friends will have granted facebook access to their mobile's contact list so chances are they already know JetSetJim's phone number and are just looking for JetSetJim to confirm it. Ditto for every other app/service that wants access to contact lists.
... but I can't help thinking this is just a ploy to push authentication by cellphone as a necessity to get users' real cellphone numbers for their purposes (such as use as globally unique identifiers for combining information from different sources and to be sold off down the line as such or as a part of a user profile to marketers or anyone willing to pay).
> Once upon a time, when companies asked for a SSN, you could give Richard Nixon's as it was published. I guess we could start giving places like FB, the number of the White House. Or maybe the NSA?
Why not given them their own number? They won't know it when they see it - they're very careful not to give it out, even though they want yours.
There's one on their WHOIS record.
This is probably another attempt to scare The Product (i.e. YOU) into handing over more data and behaving the way they want you to behave.
It's a bit like the warnings they used to put up on links to ad-blockers - they would ask you if you were really sure you wanted to do this, because they thought the link might be "dangerous or spamy".
FB is public data, no? So why would someone need to hack them?
Sorry, not a FB user, so maybe I've messed something. For the moment this sound more like the sort of grandstanding required to distract people from the fact that they just lost a major privacy lawsuit, but that's just me.
“To protect the integrity of our methods and processes, we often won't be able to explain how we attribute certain attacks to suspected attackers.” The CSO also said “we plan to use this warning only in situations where the evidence strongly supports our conclusion.”
Those words could have been lifted directly from the propaganda handbooks of most western governments.
Slapping "state actor" on a security report just encourages xenophobia and really only hides their own weaknesses (after all, it can be excused if a whole nation state was behind the breach, can't it?).
Do they really want to get into stirring up up to 1 billion people just to save face?
to get more email addresses and -more importantly- phone numbers connected to your account.
Clever to go down the scaremongering route. People will fall for it, and Facebook gets even more details out of their users.
It's not only Facebook though. Google keeps suggesting to link a phone to their accounts, and so do many others, albeit less dramatically - for now.
I'm sure that repressive regimes won't be at all suspicious of their citizens who have turned on this login authentication feature that is (supposedly*) designed to keep your government out of your Facebook account.
* I agree with those who say this is merely a ploy for Facebook to get your phone number. A friend of mine got married recently and changed her name, which Facebook allowed no problem, but wanted the change the URL Facebook "helpfully" provides you with as well. Turns out you need to give your phone number to them to do this for some reason....she decided it didn't matter that her URL had her maiden name after all.
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