
People Renting Out Their Facebook Accounts for Cash and Free Laptops - jbegley
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-account-rental-ad-laundering-scam
======
ryanlol
>One person who said they analyzed what the Pi was doing found it was buying
ads on Facebook as well as connecting to a botnet

Why does Buzzfeed assign any credibility to the analysis by a person who
claims the raspi "records EVERY KEYSTROKE sent of the network, even SSL
connection"? It's really obvious that this guy is completely clueless, he
can't even spell "botnet".
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2vd1g8/scam_rentyour...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/2vd1g8/scam_rentyouraccountdotcom/cq9840d/)

Props to buzzfeed for finding some really funny reddit posts though, like this
one where the guy goes on a paranoid fit and cancels his bank cards(???) after
finding his roommates raspi
[https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9ixdh9/fou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/9ixdh9/found_hooked_up_to_my_router/e6nh61r/)

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1337biz
It is buzzfeed after all. They are just living up to their reputation.

~~~
ryanlol
Buzzfeed news actually has a pretty solid pulitzer-winning team behind it,
this story definitely isn't one of their best.

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fxfan
This is the third time im seeing them messing up- the news yesterday about
trump was something

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ryanlol
I don't think its very clear that they messed up the Trump story, special
counsels office called it inaccurate but I don't really see any reason to
blindly believe them.

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fxfan
Look I'm a liberal and all but at this point im beginning to wonder if my side
is really stupid or just doesn't want to believe in reality?

~~~
ryanlol
I certainly don't blindly believe the BuzzFeed story either. Actually, I
haven't even bothered to read it as I don't really care very much about the US
president.

I find it bizarre that you think that being a liberal has anything to do with
this.

~~~
akiselev
Proclaiming yourself to be a member of the "other" side to try to undermine
their arguments by association is becoming a favorite tactic of trolls.

~~~
IgorPartola
Especially the way this is phrased. “I am a liberal” is not something liberals
actually say.

For Reddit there is a Chrome plug-in that lets you highlight users who
frequently post on specifically troll-heavy subreddits such as The_Donald so
you can spot this kind of shit easily.

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calgoo
So is this a good way to delete your Facebook account and get payed doing it?
I wonder if the banned accounts content gets deleted or the login is just
blocked.

~~~
vlunkr
When you delete intentionally they claim they delete your data. I have no idea
how or why you could get paid for that.

~~~
xfitm3
I think the distinction is that accounts deleted for abuse may actually be
removed. Where accounts voluntarily deleted may just become hidden.

~~~
ryanlol
Accounts banned for abuse are definitely just banned, and not deleted.

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14
Could facebook not easily destroy these companies? I mean facebook could sign
up for literally thousands of these accounts and the article even lists many
of the sites that will buy accounts. Then after receiving payment let the guys
run the ads so you can get a sense of their campaign and just shadow ban
anything they do. The companies would be paying for useless accounts and
eventually lose all their money. Is there a reason facebook would not do this?

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
Is there any reason FaceBook _would_ want to crack down this? It doesn’t hurt
their metrics of “Daily Active Users” or cut into their as revenue. It’s not
as though they care about integrity after all!

~~~
bpicolo
If Facebook wanted these parties to buy ads, they wouldn't have to pay users
to hijack their facebook accounts in order to do it.

~~~
sokoloff
I tend to agree with you, but it wouldn't be the first time that a company
came out with a policy to block some action with a super-obvious (and likely
intended) workaround or loophole that they have no inclination to close.

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mtnGoat
Facebook has done a good job of choking this practice. I think this article
had a lot of fear mongering and speculation in it, doesn't appear that he
spoke to anyone on the other side of this. It's profitable, but I wouldn't say
wildly successful.

On the flip side, I'm not sure how important choking it off completely really
is to facebook, why get rid of ad revenue if you can pretend to chase the bad
guys and keep everyone happy?

~~~
mic47
> On the flip side, I'm not sure how important choking it off completely
> really is to facebook, why get rid of ad revenue if you can pretend to chase
> the bad guys and keep everyone happy?

It's pretty important. In short, there is no incentive for FB to really keep
"bad" ads, "fake" accounts, "spammy" pages and so on, as it creates crappy
experience for user. If Facebook would be full of fake accounts, the there
would be less people using it, and ads would be less effective (that means
less money for FB). If there would be shitty ads, people would use more ad-
blockers...

Disclaimer: I worked in Facebook's anti-spam team for couple of years.

~~~
mtnGoat
I guess this makes sense in the light that fb claims to have a shortage of
inventory, so maybe they don't need the money and they are trying harder then
it appears.

That said there are some obvious and simple ways to kill this at the root that
fb seems to have been ignoring for years. Maybe they are just obvious from the
outside looking in when you know how the black hats operate these endeavors.

~~~
mic47
> Maybe they are just obvious from the outside looking in when you know how
> the black hats operate these endeavors.

Or, they are just obvious from the outside when you haven't actually tried to
solve that problem, but that solution actually don't work. I've seen a lot of
"why don't you just do X" in my career questions, where X is something that
looks good on first attempt, but in fact is really easy to circumvent by any
blackhat (or it was even tried and it didn't work).

I am not saying that your solution don't work, but without you saying which it
is, it's impossible to judge.

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devereaux
FB may not like it, but I just see that as the free market correcting the
inadequate price of FB ads.

The marginal cost of a FB ad is about 0. If the price charged differs too much
from that, resourceful companies will move in to fix that situation!

Anyway, people can (and do) post stupid stuff that litters other people feed.
If companies move in and arbitrage, giving money to people and reducing the
cost of FB ads for companies, I see that as brilliant!

Besides the difference of intent, it is in practice no different than this
weird family member we all have who's spreading questionable content. At least
they'll get something out of it!

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lelandgaunt
If you can’t delete, rent it out for abuse. Data will become so unreliable it
should hurt their advertising business models. Similar to “social cooling”.

~~~
lphnull
I wholeheartedly agree with this comment. I recently had my facebook account
"accidentally reactivated" against my will after I had deactivated it on
facebook. I deactivated it a second time, and am currently hoping that it
doesn't "come back to life" again for one reason or another. The last time it
happened, it was because I was right in the middle of a big california fire
and I think facebook was trying to be "helpful" or something by giving me the
option of alerting family members that I was okay.

I wouldn't mind deleting everything, loading up facebook onto a VPN-facing VM
and selling it for cash and watching it burn. Maybe my old account would
become so cluttered with garbage, that they'll be forced to finally let me
open up a blank new account with nothing on it that I'll park and forget the
password to one day. Only then will the illusion of privacy finally be
complete.

~~~
the_duke
Then just permanently delete your account instead of deactivating it?

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scottlocklin
FWIIW it doesn't really delete the data here either.

Citation: I deleted my account, asked friends if my side of old conversations
was still there. It is.

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the_duke
That would be a big violation of EU laws.

Maybe it depends on jurisdiction.

~~~
scottlocklin
Yes it would be: but I used the Russian nuclear testing site as my address, so
they may not apply GDPR to it.

~~~
zozbot123
Russian troll spotted? Maybe that's why Facebook "reactivated" the account so
easily.

~~~
scottlocklin
Yes, I'm sure most Russian trolls use the Russian nuclear test site as their
home address when posting from Berkeley.

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toss1
This is yet another reason that FB should be transparent about adverts run on
their system.

In other media, all adverts are visible to all. FB should publish a searchable
DB of every advert live, with parameters used and general info about
purchaser.

They would then effectively crowdsource the policing of the ad network. The
Russian dezinformatsiya & influence campaign that they missed in 2015-16 would
have been quickly flagged, to all of our benefit. Also scams -- all it would
take is one motivated person with decent search skills to track it down.

As it is today, a total black box, thousands of ads can run that nobody
notices, and do real harm, and it's directed at the FB user base.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
I think
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/)
might do what you want. You can also view the ads that individual pages run if
you go to their pages (it's under the 'Info and Ads' tab)

(I work for FB)

~~~
toss1
Cool, looks like a good start! Can it be accessed via an API so that
journalists can monitor activities of various groups? Any reason it is
restricted to just political topics, and how do you expand or limit that
inclusion?

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smelendez
I'm curious whether this is actually as dangerous as the article implies for
the people participating.

Obviously for most people on HN installing random software and turning over
the keys to a social media account is a bad idea. But I know people who have
mostly quit Facebook and have an old laptop lying around they never really use
with nothing particularly sensitive on it.

Now morally it sounds like this is a bad idea, since the ads are promoting
sketchy drugs and gambling. But as far as computer security risk? I'm not
sure.

~~~
ryanlol
>I'm curious whether this is actually as dangerous as the article implies for
the people participating.

It almost certainly is not. There's no reason these guys would be
significantly more likely to screw you over than literally any software
vendor.

Lots of weird scaremongering in the article:

>“They can easily install a backdoor or steal your personal files including
but not limited to personal photos, electronic tax records, banking
information, etc,” he said.

... Yeah? It's perfectly normal for people to pay money for software capable
of doing all these things. On the other hand, these account rental people are
actually compensating you.

I wonder how this guy would feel about Steam for example, millions of people
paying for videogames that can easily install a backdoor or steal your
personal files.

~~~
mehrdadn
> There's no reason these guys would be significantly more likely to screw you
> over than literally any software vendor.

No reason? Compared to literally any software vendor? The fact that their
entire business model revolves around shady if not illegal practices designed
to circumvent others' terms of service isn't a reason?

~~~
ryanlol
Why would that be a reason? Why would they want to harm their existing
business by acting like that?

How would they benefit anyway? Installs aren't worth shit. They'd be better
off going to a forum and buying thousands of installs for their malware if
they wanted to spy on people, the kinds of people renting out their facebook
accounts certainly won't be particularly interesting targets.

If someone wanted to "install a backdoor or steal your personal files
including but not limited to personal photos, electronic tax records, banking
information, etc," this would be the worst imaginable way of achieving that.

~~~
smallgovt
>> Why would that be a reason?

In short, because of Bayes' theorem.

That is:

\- X% of people with "questionable" morals are willing to scam you when given
the opportunity

\- <X% of people with "standard" morals are willing to scam you when given the
opportunity

Given that these guys have "questionable" morals, the likelihood that they are
taking advantage of their software to inflict harm is higher than those with
"standard" morals.

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aboutruby
When will people rent Hacker News accounts?

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ams6110
Who says that isn't already happening?

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b_tterc_p
I assumed these were scams to get unique combinations of emails and passwords.
Surprised they’re real. What’s to stop people from generating new accounts and
signing them up?

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dragonbonheur
It's cool that such opportunities exist - basic capitalism. I always thought
that Facebook should ether hare revenue for great content with its users (who
they like to call their "community" but apparently their door swings only one
way) or that companies should emerge that pay users to share ads to their
followers as predicted by Bill Gates in "The Road Ahead" and "Business at the
Speed of Thought".

~~~
zilian
Such as instagram ? «Influencers» paid to post photos with native ads
(products).

~~~
dragonbonheur
As an option for everyone, not just a select few influencers. You're more
likely to buy a Lenovo Carbon laptop if one of your friends post an ad about
it than if Kylie Jenner posted about it.

