Q: Recently, there was another large-scale personal data leakage incident on Facebook. This time, Facebook said that it was not a security loophole in the system that made hackers successfully steal the data, but someone abused the mass data capture function to collect a large amount of public information on Facebook. In fact, has Facebook always been someone in an unlimited number of capture of all kinds of information, and whether this problem can be prevented by ordinary users?
Li Jianjun: For a long time, there are different social media companies, in the Facebook host to capture the public information of various users, only in 2019 there was a relevant database was put on some unheard of network forums, thus revealing a Facebook contact function, especially to facilitate social media companies or people with the intention of mass capture of information.
The only way to prevent your information from becoming the target of hackers is to avoid putting phone numbers, sensitive personal information, etc. on the areas of Facebook that can be seen by anyone, and only put them in the areas that must be logged in by friends, so that even if someone collects personal information on Facebook on a large scale, they will only get some irrelevant information and reduce the possible damage.
Q: Facebook has always had a policy to prohibit people from taking information indiscriminately, but why is it that this time there are still up to 500 million pieces of information being put on some unseen online forums?
Lee: In fact, there are many ways to obtain a large number of Facebook user resources, from the most primitive use of manual copy and paste (copy and paste), to the preparation of robot program, the web code into a database of information can be written, to the use of Facebook application interface to obtain information, in fact, there are many ways, this time Facebook company is claiming that someone abused their past a contact person This time, Facebook is claiming that someone misused one of their past contact tools to obtain a large amount of public information of Facebook users. Therefore, although Facebook has a policy against data abuse to protect users and Facebook’s business interests, the reality is that as long as Facebook maintains a web version, it is difficult to prevent people from writing programs to obtain other users’ public information for some odd purposes. For most users, it is more important to pay attention to Facebook’s privacy settings to prevent the leakage of information that should not be leaked. Facebook has done very little to prevent bots written by people who want to do this.
Q: If the information was obtained publicly through the bot program, does it mean that there is no way to delete the information that was leaked?
On the other hand, we don’t know who collected the information and put it on the discussion forum, and the information has been obtained by a large number of people from different parties, and we don’t know what it will be used for. Therefore, if you feel insecure, you can only ask the telecommunication company to change your cell phone number or cancel the affected Facebook account and open a new one to avoid this security crisis.
Of course, if your Facebook account is only used for reading news or distributing news to public channels, it is not necessary to cancel the account, because this incident did not involve password leakage, purely someone in the Facebook mass collection of public information, after the problem of database leakage.
Q: What information on Facebook is not suitable for public disclosure?
Li Jianjun: On Facebook, your cell phone number is never suitable for disclosure, and should not allow others to contact you through your cell phone number as a friend, because there are too many social media accounts require you to bind with your cell phone, the disclosure of cell phone number on Facebook is no different from inviting hackers to access the details of your other social media accounts, in the past, the Hong Kong police have abused the relationship between Telegram accounts and cell phone numbers. In the past, the Hong Kong police have abused the relationship between Telegram accounts and mobile phone numbers to learn the true identity of some of the protesters, so it is a very dangerous thing if your cell phone number is made public on Facebook. If you have your cell phone number in your public Facebook profile, you should hide it immediately to be safe.
Q: What are the other problems with Facebook, besides the fact that it can’t prevent people from collecting data in large quantities?
Li Jianjun: Any large-scale data leakage, Facebook has the responsibility to notify users, as well as provide appropriate advice, but there are many users, after the media reports, through the database established by individual volunteers, only to know that they are victims, Facebook is not considered a responsible company, in this regard, we all know.
Recent Comments