Facebook Founder: "People trust me... dumb fucks!"

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[silverado]

You might want to rethink your decision to keep you Facebook after this.


Image: on the right Mark Zuckerberg, left some random guy he was talking to in IM

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is in some hot water this morning as some transcipted IM messages have just been released from back in 2004. Back then, Facebook was just for Harvard students and Mark was a 19 year-old eating Ramin noodles. But even then, he knew the power of the website he had created…and he knew how he was going to use it.

The following conversation was between Mark and an unnamed friend:

-Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

-Zuck: Just ask.

-Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

-[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

-Zuck: People just submitted it.

-Zuck: I don’t know why.

-Zuck: They “trust me”

-Zuck: Dumb fucks

http://perezhilton.com/2010-05-18-facebook-thinks-you-are-a-dumbfk

[Urameshi-sama]

Just what new information does this add? We already knew Zuckerberg didn't value customers' privacy qualms and the way FB's implementing the weakening of it's privacy policy presumes a belief in customer stupidity.

And this random IM sent by a college student is supposed to represent FB the international company with millions of users and hounded by many privacy organizations?

[silverado]

Yep, because it hits the nail right on the head!

[MintiNF]

Yup. I mean youre putting out important personal info for pretty much anyone to find. And the 'hidden' data goes to assholes what can do whatever they want with it. Dumb fucks

[morten]

Dumb fucks

Lol. Summons up everything perfectly. People are dumb fucks for giving their private data and relationships so easily to a public website that uses their data for earning matter. How else would you name that?

[R3dknight]

That's call Social networking...

http://perezhilton.com/2010-05-18-facebook-thinks-you-are-a-dumbfk
> Perez Hilton?

[MintiNF]

And social networking is for social dumbfucks.

[morten]

I hate how they changed the AnimeA manga online reader into one big Facebook clusterfuck. You can't just put out the Facebook option and every page you look at gets reported to your Facebook account...

"HURR DURR, 30 people liked this"... Facebook has developed into giant internet cancer that can't be removed anymore...

[R3dknight]

well.
I'll give facebook some 3/4 years before the whole masses jumps to another social network sites

[Urameshi-sama]

Look, FB is a social networking site, meaning people who create profiles are doing so with the implicit intention of connecting to other people/services/groups with similar interests or backgrounds. There's nothing immoral or illegal behind that motive, and FB's usage of the data you put up to associate you with products and groups that would be a good fit merely makes achieving that goal more efficient.

The only issue is that most users treat the site too informally and don't realize that everything they put up on the site is stored on FB servers forever and that profile contract terms give them full control over it. Therefore, smart users can still reap big benefits from the site by treating it more like LinkedIn than like a forum or 4chan. As long as you're conservative with the information you put up and use the site purposefully, there's no frivolous danger to you.

Also, there are tools to help you manage privacy settings on FB a bit better. These scripts update your privacy options to limit accessibility of profile info, and being realistic about privacy expectations there help prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot.

Personally, from being on FB, I've received a job offer, an internship offer, been inducted into 2 University clubs, gained some mentors (2 profs) I hadn't met yet at the time, received discounts on food ordered locally, arranged textbook trades or bought cheap textbooks from fellow students, arranged a lot of group meetups for projects/hw for classes (to be fair, I go to a school where students heavily use the site), and been made aware of short-term opportunities offered by recruiters and groups on Campus.

^^I agree on that. I hate how so many 3rd party orgs try to sync or promote through your FB account .

[MintiNF]

Dude i use facebook for random stupidness and bullshit.

[silverado]

Look, once you are on facebook you give your privacy away to FBI and feds, as well as the whole world. Of course it has benefits, but there will come the time when you realize that those benefits come with a big personal sacrifice of personal privacy. It's like posting your own por movie in the internet. You might get an job offer once or twice, but for the later impacts far outweigh short term benefits.

FBI's Facebook Monitoring Leads To Arrest In England

(BBC) Police mounted a major operation to protect pupils at a Merseyside school after they were alerted by the FBI.

Armed police were called to St Aelred's Catholic Technology College in Newton-le-Willows on Friday after reports someone had made threats to kill there.

The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation raised the alarm after picking up a threat posted on social networking site Facebook.

A 19-year-old man was arrested and later released on bail.

More than 1,000 students, some of them taking their GCSEs, were in the Birley Street school at the time of the alert.

All entrances and exits were sealed while police investigated.

'Leaving this world'

The school said it was the FBI who raised the alarm after internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words.

It picked up a posting showing a picture of a gun being held above a scrawled note, which read "tomorrow - last day of school" and went on to mention bullies and "leaving this world".

Headteacher Edward Marr has now written to parents explaining how the situation came about.

He wrote: "Police officers attended school at 0800 am on Friday morning. They had a photograph from the internet and asked if I could identify a person on it.

"It emerged that a threat had been made against the school which had been picked up by the FBI in America and passed eventually, as the school was identified, to Merseyside Police.

"Staff at the school were able to suggest the identity of the man on the photograph and an arrest was made."

Some parents have criticised police over why their children were allowed into classes while officers were investigating a possible armed threat.

Ch Supt Chris Armitt, from Merseyside Police, denied suggestions that officers could have closed the school as soon as they were aware of the threat.

He said: "We received some information between 1am and 2am, that information was imprecise and what we had to do was clarify what the information meant and what it related to.

"Once we were able to identify that school as potentially being at risk, we took steps quickly to get with the school staff."

He added: "They were able to help us identify the possible threats that we faced and we were then able to deal with that well away from the school premises."

Facebook = CIA Database

Facebook - CIA Profile Database

[MintiNF]

like im always saying: fuck facebook.

[silverado]

[Urameshi-sama]

^Lol.

^^^^The whole privacy cost you mention is limited by what you post on the site. If you treat the place like a business network like LinkedIn, you don't post extraneous things like personal videos and pictures, you don't affiliate with groups you don't want to be associated with, and you don't post opinions on there that could take away opportunities in real life. US residents are already profiled and databased by fingerprints, traffic records, ethnic profiles & backgrounds, credit histories, SSN/Visa/resID, phone records, so why wouldn't you expect a database of user info to be exempt, especially since the opening of the Office of Homeland Security? We're already tracked by so many of the things/groups we buy, but is that going to be a big deterrant from buying the things we want/need and taking advantage of opportunities?

If you don't want something shared to the world, then don't share it on FB. Conversely, if there is something you do want to share to the world, FB is a good way of doing that.

I've heard of stories of people getting fired, divorced, etc for stupid facebook spamming. I hold them accountable for that, not facebook. And the case you named above only strengthens my opinion, since it avoided a potential tragedy. I don't like the way FB handles it's privacy, but FB is not especially notorious in context of the submissiveness of other big websites' willingness to hand over their data to the government. There is no such thing as privacy as far as phones go and privacy on the internet has been on the drop since it's inception.

Just realize that there's a certain baseline of arbitrariness on FB privacy to start off with. Even if you boycott the place entirely, it's hard to ensure all of your friends aren't posting information about you. You'd literally have to set up a cluster preventing the behavior(FB usage) from spreading from you among your friends/acquaintances to all the networks you're affiliated with.

And the porn analogy doesn't hold if you're aware of data management (and who would get a job for porn on a massive social network?  ).

[ghost305]

well.
I'll give facebook some 3/4 years before the whole masses jumps to another social network sites

I remember it was Myspace and hi5 a couple of years before.

[hobby_master]

What an amazing timing! I just saw a movie trailer for the creation of facebook. It'll be hard for people to like the movie now that we know the main character calls people dumbfucks.  

[hellsling]

Without Facebook we won't ever have great moments like this... But seriously Mark Zuckerberg is a giant prick and backstabber.

[KeyzHunter]

people should have seen it coming 

[aquis45]

...I just don't give out any information. I remember a buddy saying to watch out because phone numbers were being shown on your profile and to reset your privacy settings. I looked at this message and thought...why the fuck did you give a website your phone number? I never gave them more information than I needed to register, which was a email address which I don't even use regularly.

[silverado]

The second you enter your real name into facebook, every crawler in the world will start collecting and linking information to your name.

[Acce]

Mark is a true ass, Didn't we all already know it? But people are dumb too, and thanks to them, he's a rich ass now.

[honouji]

What a bummer...I hope my mother doesn't post stupid things in her faux-me facebook account :P


Facebook. I can't believe I'll be one of it's victims. Well not really me specifically but our certain group. Some people just like to post everything on facebook. Too bad for us, the admin read it all and they are hinting the desire to decrease our working force to half.

:P I want to hate the person but somehow I feel sorry for her stupidity naivety

[black_rabbit]

I found this on Piratebay:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5722635/Facebook_directory_-_personal_details_for_100_million_users

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584

[Acce]

Apparently that has nothing more than you couldn't get by checking them in facebook itself.. except some profiles marked private have been exposed.

[silverado]

 

Welcome to Web 2.0 you noobs! Just a few years back one could earn thousands of dollars by selling out just email addresses. Now they post their picture and real name for free! hahaha

How dumb are you?

Now a few are justifying their lack of brain function and exhibitionism by saying they wouldn't mind those things posted anyway.

Really?

I wonder if that is true. I dare them all to post their picture, hobby, university, address, birthday here in this forum!

[Acce]

They are not thinking about it deeply. People think that internet is somekind of safe haven which cannot hurt your real life. But they are so, so wrong. So terribly wrong it almost hurts me.

[MintiNF]

Yeah They dont think about it when they do it. Some dont care.
@silv i have a pic here(somewhat outdated)

[silverado]

Would you give out your real name, photo, university, age and names of all your friends to a creepy stranger on the street? No? then why the heck do you publish it in the internet for free?

[MintiNF]

Cuz the net was made to share information. Who am i to tell people what data they can and cant share. Its all about the use. People use facebook for 'social networking' while government agencies use it to keep track of the people. Commensalism. The cia gets benefits, the people are unaffected. I would put out my info because i dont care if someone stumbles upon it. So what if you know who i am? the town thief knows who i am. The serial murderer two towns north knows who i am. That dont mean im his next target.

[silverado]

Remember that torrent yesterday that contained the personal information off of 100 million scraped Facebook profiles? I thought it was strange that the guy didn’t sell this information, since many companies would be interested. Turns out they are interested.

Reader Clint discovered that all you had to do is use something like Peer Block, which grabs the IPs of the other users also downloading the torrent and identifies which company or university or organization they belong to. You can check this yourself by hopping on the torrent and doing the same thing.

Here are the major companies that are downloading the torrent. A couple caveats to these. Just because a company is on the list, doesn’t mean that it’s a sanctioned download by the company itself to grab the user information for some purpose. It could easily just be some dude at the company who wanted to download the torrent himself to check it out. Also, the IP addresses assigned to a company might fluctuate (they usually don’t, much, unless major companies change their connection to the internet, so it should be mostly accurate).

A.C. Nielsen
Agilent Technologies
Apple
AT&T – Possible Macrovision
Baker & McKenzie
BBC
Bertelsmann Media
Boeing
Church of Scientology
Cisco Systems
Cox Enterprises
Davis Polk & Wardwell
Deutsche Telekom
Disney
Duracell
Ernst & Young
Fujitsu
Goldman Sachs
Halliburton
HBO & Company
Hilton Hospitality
Hitachi
HP
IBM
Intel
Intuit
Levi Strauss & Co.
Lockheed-Martin Corp
Lucasfilm
Lucent
Lucent Technologies
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co
Mcafee
MetLife
Mitsubishi
Motorola
Northrop Grumman
Novell
Nvidia
O’Melveny & Myers
Oracle Corp
Pepsi Cola
Procter and Gamble
Random House
Raytheon
Road Runner RRWE
Seagate
Sega
Siemens AG
SONY CORPORATION
Sprint
Sun Microsystems
Symantec
The Hague
Time Warner Telecom
Turner Broadcasting system
Ubisoft Entertainment
Unisys
United Nations
Univision
USPS
Viacom
Vodafone
Wells Fargo
Xerox PARC