Robert Siciliano explains how Facebook and other apps "slurp" contact lists and text data when users grant permission, harvesting phone numbers and emails for convenience. Cambridge Analytica showed how these detailed profiles get weaponized for influence campaigns. Europe is investigating tech giants over the practice.
Cybersecurity analyst with Hotspot Shield. Robert, Facebook says there was nothing improper in its call logging. Is that true?
Well, it, um, it all depends. Whenever a user signs up for a social site like this, especially a messenger app, and they are assimilating this with their contact manager, their list of phone numbers in their contacts, it is likely that that app is going to slurp up that data, and they do that more so for for convenience purposes for the user themselves. But then when the user reflects on that data that has been slurped up or used, uh, they find that, uh, they have a long history of, um, getting all of their contact information, email addresses, phone numbers, and that can be a little scary, uh, due to the privacy issues for most users.
Robert, I, I've read your stuff, and I agree with you on the privacy issues, especially data collection if you're talking about collecting data from text messages and phone calls that are supposed to be, uh, private. However, when you talk about influence— in the news. Facebook is one of the biggest repository of cat videos in the world. Don't people have a responsibility somewhere to get news and glean that themselves?
You know, the problem here is that we have been immersed in social now, we're going on 15 years, and most users aren't really paying attention of the privacy in regards to what they're posting, apps that they're adding their personal identifying information to. You know, when you plug in the 25 things that nobody everybody knows about me into an app, you're giving away everything and anything about you. And that's the type of data that Cambridge Analytica and others have gathered, and then they're using that against the consumer, against the user. So buyer beware, user be informed. This is a wake-up call. Going forward, you need to know that this is how this information is being used to influence you in so many different ways.
Yeah, it looks like an investigation is coming from the politicians who They first went after the banks and now they're going after the tech giants right now, especially what's going to happen in Europe. Robert, thank you very much for your time. The AT&T and Time Warner mega merger could change the media
