ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been creeped out by Facebook for a long time now. The following story takes it\u00a0to another level.<\/p>\n From Fusion<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n While some of these incredibly accurate friend suggestions are amusing, others are alarming, such as this story from Lisa*, a psychiatrist who is an infrequent Facebook user, mostly signing in to RSVP for events. Last summer, she noticed that the social network had started recommending her patients as friends\u2014and she had no idea why.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t shared my email or phone contacts with Facebook,\u201d she told me over the phone. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next week, things got weirder.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most of her patients are senior citizens or people with serious health or developmental issues, but she has one outlier: a 30-something snowboarder. Usually, Facebook would recommend he friend people his own age, who snowboard and jump out of planes. But Lisa told me that he had started seeing older and infirm people, such as a 70-year-old gentleman with a walker and someone with cerebral palsy.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe laughed and said, \u2018I don\u2019t know any of these people who showed up on my list\u2014 I\u2019m guessing they see you,\u2019\u201d recounted Lisa. \u201cHe showed me the list of friend recommendations, and I recognized some of my patients.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n She sat there awkwardly and silently. To let him know that his suspicion was correct would violate her duty to protect her patients\u2019 privacy.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another one of her female patients had a friend recommendation pop up for a fellow patient she recognized from the office\u2019s elevator. Suddenly, she knew the other patient\u2019s full name along with all their Facebook profile information.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a massive privacy fail,\u201d\u00a0said Lisa. \u201cI have patients with HIV, people that have attempted suicide and women in coercive and violent relationships.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lisa lives in a relatively small town and was alarmed that Facebook was inadvertently outing people with health and psychiatric issues to her network.<\/strong> She\u2019s a tech-savvy person, familiar with VPNs, Tor and computer security practices recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2013but she had no idea what was causing it.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n She hadn\u2019t friended any of her patients on Facebook, nor looked up their profiles. She didn\u2019t have a guest wifi network at the office that they were all using. After seeing my report that Facebook\u00a0was using location from people\u2019s smartphones<\/a>\u00a0to make friend recommendations, she was convinced this happened because she had logged into Facebook at the office on her personal computer. She thought that Facebook had figured out that she and her patients were all in the same place repeatedly. However, Facebook says it only briefly used location for friend recommendations in a test and that it was just \u201cat the city-level.<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Lisa looked at her Facebook profile, she was surprised to see that she had, at some point, given Facebook her cell phone number. It\u2019s a number that her patients could also have in their phones. Many people don\u2019t realize that if they give Facebook access to their phone contacts, it uses that information to make friend recommendations; so if your ex-boss or your one-time Tinder date or your psychiatrist is a contact in your phone, you might start seeing them pop up in the \u201cPeople You May Know\u201d list.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s my guess as to how this happened.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The above tale presents a good opportunity to revisit a post highlighted last year by\u00a0Salim Varani titled,\u00a0A Very Disturbing and Powerful Post \u2013 \u201cGet Your Loved Ones Off Facebook.\u201d<\/a><\/em>\u00a0In it, he warned:<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah, I\u2019ve been meaning to ask you why you\u2019re getting off Facebook,\u201d is the guilty and reluctant question I\u2019m hearing a lot these days.\u00a0Like we kinda know Facebook is bad, but don\u2019t really want to know.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a big Facebook supporter \u2013 one of the first users in my social group who championed what a great way it was to stay in touch, way back in 2006. I got my mum and brothers on it, and around 20 other people. I\u2019ve even taught Facebook marketing in one of the UK\u2019s biggest tech education projects, Digital Business Academy. I\u2019m a techie and a marketer \u2014 so I can see the implications \u2014 and until now, they hadn\u2019t worried me. I\u2019ve been pretty dismissive towards people who hesitate with privacy concerns.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n With this latest privacy change on January 30th, I\u2019m scared.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n For more on the perils of Facebook, see:<\/p>\n Former Facebook Curators Reveal How Conservative News is Censored<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Video of the Day \u2013 Three Former U.S. Treasury Secretaries and a Facebook Executive Laugh About Income Inequality<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n At Facebook, Some Hate Speech is More Equal Than Others<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying for Privacy Destroying \u201cCyber Security\u201d Bill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Facebook Reveals its Master Plan \u2013 Control All News Flow<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n
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