Sunday, December 30, 2012

What Can Be Learned From the Full Results of a Facebook Subpoena

A friend emails:


The following story is making the rounds on Twitter:

http://superchief.tv/theycanseeeverythingyoudo/

http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/phlog/archive/2012/04/06/when-police-subpoena-your-facebook-information-heres-what-facebook-sends-cops.aspx

It's not new (dated Apr 10, 2012 and Apr 06, 2012), but I found it interesting:

....something neither it’s reporters, or the general public, had never seen before: The full 
results of a Facebook subpoena.

This is some scary stuff; for the first time, we can now see EXACTLY what Facebook sends
when the Police, or a judge, ask them to hand over your information.

The interesting part is not that FB shares with the police all the information you deliberately disclosed, but also every page you visited on its website while logged in.

Now the blog post doesn't discuss this, but a lot of websites offer their visitors the ability to comment on their site using their FB credentials. So if you visit a website that uses this FB functionality while you're logged in to you FB account, FB could technically log (and later share with the authorities) that you visited that website. It doesn't stop there. Basically anytime a website includes something that's located on FB's servers (like those "Like" buttons) and you visit that website while you're logged into your FB account, FB could link your FB profile to that visit.

Like I said, nothing new, but I don't think most FB users realize that even if they don't click the "like" button an a website, FB will still be able to tell they visited that website (if they were logged in to their FB account at that time). Combine that with an overactive police apparatus, shirtless FBI agents, politicians who despise liberty and FB's willingness to hand information over to those in power and you've got something every liberty loving individual should take into account when surfing the web.

10 comments:

  1. I'm glad I don't touch Facebook. Sorry to sound like an old fuddy-duddy stick-in-the-mud, but this "social networking" thing was never of interest to me. And I was suspicious from the beginning, or at least since that group photo appeared of Obomber, Zuckerberg, the clown from Google, and all the other government-apparatchiks sitting around the table (and plotting God-knows-what).

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    Replies
    1. Yep, I had a FB account for a couple of years, but once I saw the nerd toasting Obama's totalitarian plan, I shut it down.

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  2. Reminds me of The Onions story a while ago:
    http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

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  3. This is an excellent reason why people should use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for their Internet access.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCilUMbNfRE

    And for obvious reasons, never trust a VPN that does not accept bitcoins. Hence why we at HowToVanish.com recommend Private Internet Access.

    http://www.howtovanish.com/privateinternetaccess

    And there are open source private decentralized social networks out there like Diaspora or tools like Retroshare.

    https://joindiaspora.com/
    http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The issue with a VPN service that you describe is that it becomes a central point for data on your browsing habits. Some VPN providers will sell this data as their business model while others will provide it to 'business partners' or even law enforcement upon request.

      Also, in China using a VPN is more and more difficult because they will shut down encrypted traffic that appears to be web browsing by using deep packet inspection. I can use SSH to manage a server outside of China, but if I use that same SSH connection to browse the web, the connection gets shut down.

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  4. I had a Facebook account for about 24 hrs. It creeped me out so I shut it down the next day. Services like that are a part of The Matrix, if you know what I mean. So many drones don't realize they are being privacy invaded, data mined and tracked by these insidious social media corporations. They are evil. There, I said it.

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  5. What's really tragic is that a private entity like FB having this information in a free, civil and just society might get annoying but not scary. Sure you get more spam, but you don't have to worry about the inquisition or the inquisitors...

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  6. Sorry but I find it pretty crazy to be complaining about stuff like this while using the Blogger platform. You realize that Google openly works with the NSA, right?

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    Replies
    1. WordPress is a great alternative to Blogger/Google.

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    2. Word Press is worse. They shut down an earlier version EPJ, when I documented that Michelle Obama was at the conference where she allegedly made anti-white comments.

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