This Russian Company Knows What You Like on Facebook

As scary as this is, the first thing I will do after reading it is to share it on Facebook. How else can I tell all my friends to be wary of what they write on the FB platform? Meanwhile, I have set my privacy settings to limit sharing my comments as best I can. I urge others to check theirs frequently and to do the same.

Why should we be anymore "scared" that Russian hackers have access to some of our data than we are about the hate our guts for their 'century of humiliation', think they are infinitely superior to the rest of us "barbarians" Communist police-state Han Chinese who have penetrated every facet and institution in our society AND manufacture much of our IT hardware and have in the light of day stolen our nation blind for decades? Is it because Russians are white and so morally accountable, while Han Chinese are "minorities" that our urban and Left wing elites have low expectations about - think Asians and others from the global south are like animals, or US minorities, that they "don't know any better" are incapable of moral reasoning or discipline? Or is it because our 1% conspires with China's Red Nobility to rig-steal trillions from the American working and middle classes and gets its cut of the theft in exchange for committing this treason against our 99%? Probably a bit of both, but mostly its all about the money our 1% makes by using slave labor either overseas or flooded into this country at the rate of 1-2 million desperate immigrants per year.

Facebook, of course, needs to be taken down for a variety of reasons. But, as anyone who has dealt with addicts knows, you can't have a reasonable conversation with them when they are still using.

Something that should happen is a discussion on the morality of capitalism. Not just what we accept as capitalism today. The definition of the term shifts to whatever “capitalists” fancy at any given time. Just stuff enough money into the pockets of Representatives and Senators and all is allowed. Besides spying on us, “capitalists” poison our water and land. They poison consumers directly—corporations don’t have to prove that their products are safe, consumers have to prove that the products are unsafe—while corporations and industries hide their knowledge that the products are unsafe (e.g. the tobacco industry.) In the fight to uncover the facts about a product, corporations wage war of attrition. Corporations lie to the government under oath and hide their earnings. They use every stratagem they can find to hide their lawlessness. Corporate “personhood” only applies to rights and privileges, not to responsibilities. But on the bigger issue is the value of only valuing profit. While this has distinct advantages in the way markets function, profit has very little value in the interpersonal affairs of humans. It doesn’t matter how many dollars you have, it won’t counterbalance the immorality of hypocrisy, theft, lying, double-dealing, inhumanity, incivility, enslavement, miserliness, injustice, malfeasance, etc. Mr. Zuckerberg is a prime example of this moral vacuity; he is rich, what else matters?

“the company admitted that it had granted a handful of companies permission to continue to have access to that data for six extra months. “ Astounding! Zuckerberg can now easily be elected president of the United States. He can help usher in a new period of Illiberal policies and politics, burying whatever had been left of the Enlightenment! Seeing the enlightenment disappear in the rear view mirror is like the silver lining of a cloud, fading to a dark grey night.

Clearly our social longings have been abused and leveraged to divide us, one against the other. The opposite of what our social instincts are there for. Delete or don’t use Facebook! Vote!

As if the dots didn’t already connect so obviously.... Russian millions went through Milner....onward to....Jared Kushner. Behold the pattern...

"Big Brother is watching you" and the United States we knew is dead.

Not on Facebook? If you want to buy something from a company that has offloaded their previous website on to Facebook, and is now ONLY accessible via Facebook, that company does not deserve your business. Dito, companies that don’t provide a phone number and address on their webpage.

Here's a paranoid thought. Does our own Big Brother use Facebook in the way Vaidhyanathan suggests some world dictators might employ it?

Anyone below not afraid of what will be happening in the private Putin-Trump meeting must have some sort of a back channel access to the proceedings, but the connection is murky to the rest of us. Who else besides the White House and the GOP are working for Putin?

FB should have to give up any money it made by allowing such access, including any that was distributed to employees, management, and stockholders - that would be a sign of 'good faith' by Zuckerburg et. al. I doubt that it can (will) be forced because, as far as I know, it was not illegal at the time, or can it be forced as a breach of contract with FB users, or as allowing a foreign power to have access to private information?

That anyone would continue to use Facebook after the revelations already a matter of public record is mind-boggling. Data mining should be a felony, not a business plan.

I never share anything personal in social media apps. Why bother? As an example, I have also blocked using Ghostery Disconnect, uBlock Origin and other tracker blockers, to the point online publications such as nytimes, washpost and others plaintively ask me to unblock ads...everyday on every page. I have written to their tech department, their technology writers and others that I will gladly unblock for nytimes ads, not third party apps. Why don't you all practice what you preach? no answer, do they even read letters from subscribers? If I read a print edition of nytimes, I see only paid ads...on paper, I cannot be "followed." I want the same on nytimes.com (and others.) It is just that simple. I don't want a cookie from hundreds of ad consolidators that nytimes and others use to follow me around the web. It is an insidious practice.

Zuckerberg has been repeating the same false apology to FB users over privacy breeches for years; same canned apology each time he gets caught. FB ACCOUNT DELETED after Cambridge Analytica and my social life is not suffering one little bit.

Astute media scholars, Siva? I cannot thank you enough for this revelation, and the deep comfort I get from knowing more academics are out there protecting we naive US citizens from scary entities that we innocents would otherwise succumb to! What a laugh! Anyone who willingly gave up their personal information to entities such as Amazon and Google and Facebook, run by geek-creeps like Zuckerberg are now bemoaning the fact that these automatons - posing as benevolent leaders of open & free communication - sold their information to even bigger, scarier creeps! It is an unfortunate truth that there are very, very dangerous people - we call them psychopaths in the mental health biz - that hold great power in this world (e.g. the guy in the oval office right now). This requires great vigilance, while still protecting free speech. A very delicate international balancing act, for sure.

Where is Cambridge Analytica's data now? To whom did they sell it before conveniently going out of business? The improper even nefarious use of the consumer data is not over.

Of course, at the end of this article, I have the option of sharing it on - what else - Facebook. The Times has made it easy to just click on the little "f" to relay its articles - just like so many other media organizations do. Is the Times concerned that it would lose readers if it didn't provide that simple shortcut?

People, stop saying "Just get rid of Facebook." You don't have to have an account with them for them to track you. If you are on the Internet, they are following you around taking notes, comparing those notes with ones they have on others and information they have from many other sources--public records and private marketing company information. That is not conspiracy theory. Most webpages have Facebook "pixels" (From their website: "The Facebook pixel is a website plugin that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website. You can use pixel data to: make sure your ads are being shown to the right people, build advertising audiences, and unlock additional Facebook advertising tools.") When you visit a webpage, it tracks you through your IP address (and any other information the website might have on you, especially if the website is an online storefront, etc.--no Facebook account needed--that is just a lucky-strike extra. They leave "cookies" on your machine, and just like Hansel & Gretel's crumbs, they follow your trail around. They peak over your shoulder to see what you do, what you read, where you go, what you buy, in order to figure out what your interests, fears, and general personality traits are and whether they can manipulate you by nudging you in one direction or another.

Every computer technician knows all too well "mail.ru". It finds its way into computers in a malicious way most of the time "attached" to a device driver installation or with a freeware or shareware app. It is a rather aggressive piece of malware that reconfigure your web browser like Chrome or Internet Explorer toward mail.ru search engine for example and many other preferences to its many daughter apps. It can stealthily install a "key logger" to catch your passwords or credit card info while you enter them on your keyboard. It steal your personal info on FB and many other popular social platform. Many antivirus or anti malware apps can't "clean" your computer cause it cleverly reinstall itself after being "eliminated". I've been infected by mail.ru many times and the most efficient way to get rid of it in MS Windows is to use "regedit.exe" and delete all entries containing the string "mail.ru" in your Windows register. After that, reset your browser to default, reboot your pc and you're free.

Good grief! No fewer than four Russia scare pieces in Opinion this morning, and that's just on the front page. You all are really afraid of the upcoming summit meeting.

Nice ads Facebook puts out there in national papers and other places. To Mark Zuckerberg: It simply is not good enough. You made this mess now fix it! Your weak response tells me you are doing next to nothing to make this right. You are almost as lame as Trump is about election meddling by the Russians. Do something about this or we will leave you in droves.

We need to stop using Facebook and stop putting information out there. The horse is out of the barn now, so all we can do is be warily of all of this technology that is not in the interest of the people. Find out who is running ads on Facebook and don't buy their products. We do have rights and one right is not using technology that is not in our self interest. The CEO's of these technology companies are counting their dollars with little concern for people so stop acting as if they are some type of Gods. Vote and be alert

"Responsible, accountable governments must do more to protect us." Or, ya know, stop freely handing over all your data to corporations. "The Cloud" is a euphemism for other peoples' hard drives. The courts have ruled that click-through wrappers are enforceable. Your phone doesn't have enough space to store your infinite history of iMessages. That pause when you page up is for Apple to send it to you. Of course they're "your" data, and Apple is just storing them for you out of the goodness of their heart...

This is old news, but I guess it's important to mention Russia as part of the NYT's fear mongering campaign. Why don't you talk about the user data Zuckerberg recently sold to a Chinese owned company. Facebook has been selling user data not only to Russian companies, but anyone who has the dollars to buy data. Zuckerberg flat out lied to Congress because he was not under oath when he testified. By the way the title mentioning Russia is nothing more than sophisticated clickbait.

European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation haven't protected Facebook users. Zuckerberg sent to European Facebook users their updated terms about General Data Protection Regulation. To my surprise, they said they were going to continue on the same path, and if we in Europe didn't like it, we could quit Facebook. Their goal is not to comply with privacy regulations at all... they would prefer to lose users. Easily said when you have little competition in the world marketplace. Why has no one brought a monopoly suit against them -- they have no competitors. Could it be that do many political players use their data, that they have cautioned others from bringing suit. I'd like to see a competitor to Facebook that charged $5.00 per month (adjusted per country). They would have no ads and sell no data. They would build a fund for poor users from monthly fees, and pay for them. They would be another huge source of data, if hacked, so their encryption would have to change constantly and they would need top-of-the-line equipment., and expert techies. But college whiz Zuckerberg, certainly more interested in money than socializing, has created a monster and shows no desire to stop it, no matter the political harm. On Facebook, they send frequent messages about how only YOU control your data. It's a lie...THEY control your data.

The only way to reign in Facebook is to hit its pocketbook, not just with fines but also its ads selling operations

Surely with all the Russian bots infecting social media with propaganda--we know how Mail.ru, GRU, Cambridge Analytica, and other players Facebook sold its customer information to -- drive division and assisted Trump in gaining office. But why has Trump and our Republican leaders done so little to secure our elections? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610774/heres-how-hackers-could-cause-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/inside-russias-attempt-to-hack-2...

Wouldn't it be more interesting to know what the American Government does with data it collects through the all kind of electronic devices like computers and phones? After all, Russians are limited in their ability to go after American citizens, the American Government is not.

Just delete the app, no one will die without facebook. In the meantime Putin laughs.

It was not just Facebook. Two years ago I did a search on my name and added ru. There was my phone, my address, and more in Russian Cyrillic. I am a "never Facebook" online participant so who and how? It is the whole connection ecosystem targeted by Putin. Be sure Putin's lads and lasses, with bots to help, will target the hyper emotional racists, evangelicals, flag waving angry white males, and return to the past types to build up voter activity to vote against themselves and their country's best interests. Trump's base is Putin's army.

This piece will be certain to bring out Russian trolls - it's like catnip to them.

People have every right to be scared of what is going on with Facebook. But what I don't understand is why anyone still uses it. There are lots of alternative ways to stay connected without selling your soul to the devil. I deactivated my account a long time ago and it amazes me how many people still place their trust in this scam.

I am quite willing to be connected with my opinions; if I was ashamed of them I would not have them. Therefore, the fact that some company in Russia, the UK, or the USA knows what I have liked on Facebook, or what I have purchased from Amazon, or whatever is of absolutely no concern to me. If the fact that I like Laphroaig and MG Midgets somehow makes money for someone, somewhere then more power to them.

It seems that Facebook is doing a good job enabling Big Brother. And I have to confess, I help by using the application. I feel ashamed for being such a fool, and yet, part of me believes the genie is out of the bottle and nobody can really put it back. That is not to say I don't think stronger regulations and more accountability is needed. I do. But we live in an age where cyber-warfare is going to keep running much of the show behind the scenes.