Facebook is Dangerous

I ran into this article where Eben describes Facebook as analgous to a "man in the middle" attack that a hacker might employ to intercept apparently private communication for nefarious purposes. I think Eben's analogy is spot on: this isn't a technical hack, this is a social hack, and it amazes me how oblivious we are to the increasing damage Facebook is inflicting on our privacy and the danger it can pose to people who are deemed "criminals" wanted by law enforcement.

At the end of the article, the author Dan Tynan challenges Eben's metaphor. I disagree with Tynan, and I want to quickly respond to his points.

Dan Tynan: A true MITM attack happens without either party knowing about it. When’s the last time you used Facebook without knowing about it, or been forced to use it against your will?
Every day. Every mainstream news website, most blogs, and virtually all shopping websites have Facebook "Like" buttons which can be used to track your activity on that site even if you don't touch the "Like" button. You can't go anywhere on the internet without accessing Facebook's servers, whether or not you even have a Facebook account.

Dan Tynan: You have no control over the data the MITM attacker collects. You have some controls over what Facebook collects.
No, you have the illusion of control. Just because you can turn off what you 'share' on your account doesn't mean that Facebook isn't collecting the data and turning it over to anyone who requests it without a warrant.

Action

I think Facebook is garbage. I didn't have an account for years because of the concern I had for my (and others') privacy. The problem is that our colleagues at the law school send out invitations to events only on Facebook. If you don't have a Facebook account, you miss out on invitations to sweet parties.

One way we can start to solve this problem is by refusing to use Facebook to send out event invitations. Can the Student Senate can create a policy that their events will not be publicized on Facebook? Are there Senators in this class that can make this happen? Let's take action to reduce the utility of Facebook on our campus and make it easier for people to deactivate their accounts.

If you think that you can just deactivate your own account and everything will be fine, you are wrong: the scariest part about what Facebook is becoming is their "Photo DNA" which identifies people by pictures that are uploaded of you even if you are not tagged and even if you don't have a Facebook account. That's why it's important to get everyone to deactivate their accounts or at the very least stop uploading pictures to Facebook.

Maybe you don't care if Facebook or law enforcement can track where you are at any given moment. But if the world someday becomes a place where you do care, by then it might be too late to do anything about it.

-- HarryKhanna - 07 Feb 2012