Creepy

[Andre Garzia]

>
Hello Folks,
After a quick query on how facebook does its magic/voodoo, I come to
the following blurbs:

"It looks like what is happening is that you’ve chosen the “opt-in”
suggestion feature on Facebook. You might have blown past the checkbox
or maybe not have noticed it signing up but Facebook has a feature
that asks if it can scan your email address books (Yahoo, Gmail, etc.)
to find friends in your address book that are also on FB, or to make
suggestions. Facebook, however, has no access to MySpace. That would
be like Target having access to Wal-Mart’s customer lists— by their
nature, MS and FB are competitors.
So, how did the picture of your friend end up on FB? Either she is on
there and you didn’t know, or someone else has her picture up there (a
mutual friend?), or you have a picture of her associated with her
email and FB “suggested” that you invite her to join.
Also, since the scan-your-address-book-for-friends feature is opt-in
on FB, you may want to change your account settings to exclude that
option. However, since a scan has already been performed, it may be a
bit after the fact.
Hope this helps!"

and this one:

"Sorry for the delay, work has been a bear in the IT world the last
two weeks. Ok, to check and see if FB grabbed your email address book
(and it does grab the address book associated with the email addy you
use to sign up UNLESS you UNCHECK the box. Sneaky, eh?) you want to
sign in to your FB account and click on “Friends” at the top. None of
the dropdown choices, just the label “Friends” next to Profile. The
second option down should show what FB is scanning to look people up
and suggest folks to invite. Turn it off or opt out— I’m not 100% what
it says as I opted out from the get-go. Lemme know if you run into any
trouble…"

and that means that it does not read your computer address book
(javascript can't access that, I think flash can't access that either,
if it can, then it's a configurable option, I am sure). What FB
appears to be doing is accessing your email account and scraping for
your online address book there.

Ok, this is also creepy, I am now, officially worried.

:-/


>
> Mark Wieder wrote:
> > I believe Facebook by default uses your computer's address book.
>
> How does FaceBook obtain this information through the browser?
>
> Sounds like a very serious security exposure in browsers.  After all, if FaceBook can do it, any site -- and any hacked site -- can do it too.

--
http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code.