
Facebook recommended that a psychiatrist’s patients friend each other - deep_attention
http://fusion.net/story/339018/facebook-psychiatrist-privacy-problems/
======
grandalf
This is one of the many dark patterns that Facebook uses. It simply does not
respect any boundaries the user might wish to have in place...

Install it on your phone? Anyone you have in your phone's address book gets to
see your picture under "people you may know".

Someone in your family joins Facebook and friends you? Now everyone you are
friends with gets prompted about whether or not they know your family member.

Want to delete some pictures you uploaded to Facebook? It's extremely
difficult and they must be deleted one by one.

Other than LinkedIn, I'd say FB is the prime innovator of UI dark patterns
that exploit users' unwitting behavior for profit.

The youngest generation of internet users gets this which is why they largely
do not use Facebook. Soon they will realize that IG and Whatsapp are
connected, and will avoid those too.

What's interesting to me is that the recommendations are fundamentally not
useful. It's easy to look someone up by searching for their name without the
privacy-invading helpful suggestions.

~~~
rando444
I know it's seems like it's 'dark pattern' week on HN, but not everything is a
dark pattern.

Dark Patterns are user interfaces that are designed to trick users.

Facebook requests the permission to go through your stuff and if you read
their data use policy, they go so far as to tell you in detail exactly the
information they're taking from you, as well as how they use it.

Sure, it's a little bothersome when the information that you've given them
goes farther than your personal preference, but it's not a 'dark pattern',
it's just a feature that you don't like.

~~~
dmix
Indeed, I don't believe the problem here was that Facebook was tricking their
users here into handing over their phones/emails contact information (aka this
persons client lists). FB is explicit about permissions in this sense,
although most users agree to everything without thinking twice.

The real problem is how the information was utilized by the recommendation
engine, which is known to be creepily effective at matching people (people who
just met for the first time, for example). FB is investing heavily in AI here
so this is the natural outcome - where the results are very effective but has
some unintended side effects. The side effects are largely due to the fact
this connectivity happens in the background, outside of a place where the user
can control privacy settings on particular contacts.

So I'm not sure there is an easy solution here. Mining contacts and social
information is Facebook's business. It's what you hand over to use the service
and why many people stop using Facebook voluntarily - or carefully limit what
information they allow access to. I never allow FB to access my phones
contacts, for instance, and their mobile app still works fine.

~~~
taurath
Fundamentally though that's the problem with the modern web - the services
that users get is not a transaction in the sense that the user knows what
they're giving up for the service - it's all hidden under an innocent
permissions check (if it's Facebook) or not said at all (if its LinkedIn). The
user provides permission for a small pittance like their email address or
phone number and it snowballs into having every want need and action tracked
and catalogued to make the service owner money. A product not intent on
tricking the user into giving up every bit of the data on their life would ask
if it could use individual bits of information to serve them ads and sell
their information.

It takes more than it asks, and the fine print is there to cover its ass, when
in reality if users were asked about what information they were willing to
share they would be much more uptight. The users's have no real idea what is
happening with their data, what they've given up or how its used to make the
company money. It may be true that most user's don't care, and some might even
prefer the outcome to them in the form of "relevant" ads (if the choice is
made over "irrelevant" ads or paying for the service). It certainly is
transforming what is in the public sphere about people, and the lessening of
privacy can certainly be used as a weapon (and it is, to the extent that it is
a big powerful force arrayed against a person independently figuring out what
they want to spend their resources on).

------
thr0waway1239
TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened.

TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side
is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned
about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical
offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. "

This is about as practical as recommending people just figure out how to fly
and occasionally levitate into the upper atmosphere to go out of the cell
tower's range, move a few kilometers west, and then fly back down to earth to
scramble all these tracking algorithms.

~~~
Fuxy
So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook
website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if
you value your privacy.

It's sad that we are at this stage but it's mostly our fault for being so
complacent with companies doing these kinds of things.

If people stopped using their service when they did these kinds of things they
would change their behaviour really quickly but most people don't know or care
that this is happening.

~~~
stoshe
An individual's data sharing with Facebook is less of the issue, here, though.
You personally not using it doesn't prevent you from becoming the common
thread that ties others together.

Just because I'm not on Facebook (I'm not), anyone that's allowed Facebook to
see their own contacts, in their phone or email, has shown that they are or
are not connected to me in some way. Without me actually ever even having an
account with Facebook they can correlate this data from users to see who is
likely to know one another by a shared connection to me. Just because my
particular node on the relationship tree has more blanks than it would if I
was a Facebook user does not mean I don't create a node at all.

My guess for this Facebook issue in particular is that the Doc potentially did
absolutely nothing herself, but rather all of her patients had mail and phone
contact lists that included her and that common thread along with the same
geographic area was enough to trigger a recommended match. In other words,
this was equally likely to happen even if the doctor never had a Facebook page
of her own.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
That doesn't seem to be very important. It's not the doctor who wants privacy.

The people who want privacy allowed Facebook to scrape their contact lists and
monitor their locations. They then expected Facebook not to correlate this
data with others who contact and visit the same doctor. Why not?

~~~
radarsat1
> They then expected Facebook not to correlate this data with others who
> contact and visit the same doctor. Why not?

Because that would be a dick move.

But clearly that is not enough to dissuade companies from doing this kind of
thing, because they have no morals.

And that is the crux of the problem. They don't give a shit what would be
considered "reasonable behaviour" for a human being, because they are just
giant correlating machines with access to data they shouldn't have been given
access to by people who don't know better.

At the end of the day, we are allowed to have reasonable expectations of
others, including companies, so I take issue with any implication that they
should have known better. We are allowed to have these reasonable
expectations. And we will be constantly disappointed. But we should maintain
them, I might even say that it is a duty to do so.

Saying "they should have known better" is giving up the fight prematurely.
They shouldn't have to know better. They should be able to expect that their
privacy (a right) will not be violated.

It is an ideal, not a reality, but it is something to work towards. One step
might be to sue the hell out of Facebook for this.

~~~
oldmanjay
Suing Facebook for knowing something people told them ought to be interesting.
Please tell HN all about it if you ever pull the trigger.

------
huehehue
So, I deactivated my account maybe 6 months ago, and uninstalled the app long
ago. Since then, I moved halfway across the country and, using a _brand new_
laptop, a fake name and number, and a throwaway email address, created another
profile so I could use their API.

People You May Know still had old high school friends, my old real estate
broker (??), and someone I starred on GitHub. I have _absolutely no idea_ how
they connected that account to my old one, considering Google Mail is the only
other service I've used on that laptop.

~~~
rukuu001
You're not using some kind of mobile router/dongle thing for network access
are you?

Otherwise all that's left is you - how you type, click & otherwise use FB.

Edit: and the 1st thing the goddamn site shows me is a pop-up begging for a
Like :\

~~~
huehehue
I'm not, in fact I'm using a different ISP entirely. You really think my
behavior patterns are uniquely identifiable at FB's scale? I can't imagine how
many other users must have similar typing/clicking/resting/etc. patterns.

~~~
rukuu001
Interestingly, my comment's getting down-voted without refutation. C'mon,
let's talk :)

Anyway, no, I don't know if FB can do that at scale.

What I do know is that sites, especially complex ones like FB, like to track
user interaction to evaluate UX (hover targets, click targets, time it takes
to find call-out etc).

If I were a data science type at FB, and knew FB was collecting that stuff, I
think I'd like to find out what other questions I could answer with it.

Or more banal - did you use your laptop as a wifi endpoint and connect your
phone & WhatsApp to it?

------
dunkelheit
The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering
that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a
phonebook is a privacy disaster.

~~~
nroets
I recommend that we all add the office number of a health care professional we
_don 't_ need to our phone book. It will muddy the water just a little bit.

~~~
mrweasel
It would be better if Facebook didn't hoover up data not explicitly entered
into their app or website.

In fact I think that should be the basis of privacy laws everywhere: You can
only use data that the user personally entered into your application or
website. Data should only be available across your different "properties" it
they are branded as being part of a single platform.

It would be much more in tune with the average persons understanding of
something like Facebook.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Your suggestion might actually lead to something very interesting.

Once a day when someone logs into FB, they should be presented with a word
problem asking if the data they have thus far submitted to Facebook can be
used to mine such-and-such fact about them.

If they cannot answer correctly, FB should not do said type of mining. As
their understanding of the potential for mining info increases, FB is also
allowed to add that type of mining.

This would be a win-win. People would actually understand what is going on,
and FB itself has something to fall back on when the day comes when people
turn this into an inquest (more a question of when than if in my view).

And I wish all the big tech companies would do something like that.

~~~
mrweasel
>People would actually understand what is going on

I don't think that's in the interest of companies like Facebook or Google. If
people understood how their data can be used, many would close their accounts
immediately. Data mining companies, and their customers are best served by
keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. Revealing how much they
actually know about us would cause trouble, if nothing else then simply
because it's creepy as hell to many of us.

The funny thing is that while I think all this data mining is creepy, I also
believe it's useless in most cases. The only thing I've seen work well over
time is Amazons recommendation of books.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Its also not in my interest to reduce my net worth by paying taxes. But it
happens promptly each year. Maybe its time we demanded this from the
companies.

Also, I would argue it is indirectly in the interest of said companies and
their employees if they prefer that their legacy is to avoid being referred to
in the same bracket as the Enrons and the Arthur Andersens of the world.

The trouble is, they are also too big to fail now. The thing that petrifies me
more than a thriving Facebook is a Facebook on the brink of collapse and which
has nothing to lose.

------
wtbob
Note that everyone's favourite privacy-respecting app (mine too!), Signal,
also does contacts-sharing, although it doesn't do friends discovery (so the
server knows one's contacts, but one's contacts don't). If Open Whisper
Systems wanted to be evil, though, they could do this form of analysis.

Back in March I laid out how they could use a private set intersection
protocol to enable any pair of users to privately share their contacts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289223)
(I'm not posting this to shame them or something: March wasn't that long ago
for developing a feature like this, and of course it's open source; I could
develop it myself and submit it to them).

I think it's something they care about; they've just not found a solution
they're comfortable with yet.

~~~
glitcher
Yet another daunting issue in our modern world:

No matter how good a given company or product is at privacy-respecting, what
happens to all that data if they are bought out by someone else?

~~~
wtbob
Well, that's the good thing about PIR — with the protocol I discussed, OWS
wouldn't have access to one's list of contacts. They'd still know with whom
one spoke (anonymising that is a hard problem), but at least they wouldn't
know everyone one knows.

------
kendallpark
I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone when it kept trying to push
Messenger on me. I only use the webclient these days.

This bolsters my resolve to keep that app off my phone. You know, it doesn't
bother me too much to have companies like Google analyzing my email to send
targeted ads because I assume that information is not going to get out to the
public. Facebook is a different case because there's a bidirectional flow of
private information. It is a HUGE privacy concern (especially as someone that
will be a physician in a few years).

~~~
dasboth
I succumbed to the Messenger app and the first thing it did was message a
random handful of my friends to say I've joined Messenger... instant
uninstall. Now I also just use the web client and if I want to read my
messages on my phone I can do that by requesting the desktop site.

~~~
NoGravitas
You can also request the mobile site (m.facebook.com), but with a desktop user
interface. This seems to be the most practical way of reading Facebook
messages on mobile at this time.

~~~
kendallpark
Yup, this is exactly what I do.

------
tacostakohashi
Amazed that this 'feature' hasn't been killed yet. At this stage of Facebook's
maturity, everybody finished adding their real friends about five years ago,
and suggesting non-friends with tenuous connections to the user serves only to
remind everyone what a privacy disaster Facebook is and generate bad press.

~~~
noer
The other side of that argument is: You don't stop making friends & meeting
people, why should Facebook stop suggesting people you might know?

I moved out of state three years ago, most of the people I see & spend most of
my time with a completely different than the people I did five years ago.

~~~
corobo
> You don't stop making friends & meeting people, why should Facebook stop
> suggesting people you might know?

If we've agreed to become Facebook friends then we've done it outside
Facebook. If I use the "People you may know" feature I look like a stalker.

~~~
NamTaf
There's many younger people for which this isn't the norm.

------
throwanem
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't
be doing it in the first place."

Granted, that's Schmidt, rather than Zuckerberg. The attitude seems to be the
same, though.

~~~
ENTP
I normally reply to people who cart this argument out: "so you're ok with
someone following you around with a camera videoing you? At work....in the
toilet....in the bedroom...?"

Privacy != doing something wrong.

~~~
vacri
A much clearer example is this article: "Going to a doctor for a mental health
issue".

~~~
throwanem
There's still a stigma, most places. It's a shame, and I wish there weren't,
but there is. So it's not hard to see how that argument can have a hard time
getting traction.

~~~
vacri
Oh, I just mean it as an example of something that you should absolutely do if
you need it, but something that most people wouldn't want publicised (because
of that stigma).

------
0xmohit
WhatsApp (now) shares data with Facebook. Now imagine if Facebook, Google,
LinkedIn were also to share data with each other.

Imagine the possibilities [0]. What a wonderful world!

[0] If this were to come true, then the word "possibilities" would be replaced
by "synergies" :)

------
tptacek
This is a real problem. My sister is a legal clinic domestic violence
attorney, and apparently there are concerns about DV clients unwittingly
friending their legal clinic advisors, not realizing that by doing so they're
outing themselves to their abusive partners.

------
woliveirajr
> Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use
> information from us to improve your experiences within their services such
> as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of
> interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads. [whatsaap privacy
> policy]

Many possibilities here:

1 - whatsapp connection with messages exchanged

2 - contact list loaded by whatsapp

3 - psychiatrist secretary number in whatsapp

4 - friends in common

5 - places in common

~~~
dev_256
Or 10 people checked psychiatrist’s facebook profile, facebook found common
interest, saw that none of these people are fb friends and suggested to become
friends, because hey, you all have something in common, you are all interested
in this person.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, I believe this is what happened

Fb will suggest you know person X if a) you looked at person X's profile or b)
person X looked at your profile

------
webosdude
I think it's also quite likely that the psychiatrist's patients are searching
for her profile just to checkout how's her personal life on FB which might
give FB some clue as these people might know each other hence a friend
suggestion. I do that sometimes to see some of my not-so-close friends.

~~~
dougmccune
I have a number of psychologist FB friends and every one that I know of has
changed their name on FB to make it harder for patients to find them. Many go
with FirstName MiddleName, some make up a last name, etc. That's not to say
that it's impossible to find your therapist on FB, but I'd be _really_
surprised if it's easy.

~~~
webosdude
Interesting.

------
WhitneyLand
There should be a way to turn off "Peole you may know". I actually hate this
feature.

~~~
nitrogen
If it has a consistent ID, you could add a custom stylesheet to your browser
(or use an element hiding ad blocker) to hide it.

------
maxxxxx
That's why I am getting more and more reluctant to share anything. It's
starting to be impossible to predict how your data will be used and what is
private and what isn't.

------
kej
I wonder if there is an open WiFi access point in the vicinity. I noticed that
I had several coworkers suggested as friends shortly after I connected my
phone to the office WiFi.

It makes sense that people using the same access point or connecting to
Facebook from the same external IP would likely know each other.

~~~
wavefunction
It's quite an assumption that they would want to 'friend' each other on
facebook or even be presented with another's facebook profile.

~~~
kej
Sure, I'm just tossing out another hypothesis beyond tracking locations or
everyone importing their contact lists containing the doctor.

------
zxcvgm
Actually _wayyy before_ WhatsApp announced [0] that they were going to share
data with Facebook, Facebook had already started suggesting me to add friends.
These are people whom I have no mutual friends with, but after more
suggestions popped up, I realized they were all people I added to my address
book and contacted before on WhatsApp.

I definitely did not consent to sharing my address book contacts with
Facebook, and frankly nor would I want to. Now WhatsApp is offering an "opt-
out" option, but I'm not sure how that will help. Isn't it a little too late
for that now?

[0]: [https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000627/Looking-ahead-for-
WhatsAp...](https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000627/Looking-ahead-for-WhatsApp)

------
dcw303
The funny thing is that this would be very easy for Facebook to fix - just a
line of text under each friend request explaining the suggestion:

    
    
      * "You're both friends of Duffman McPartyDude"
      * "We found Psycho Ex Boss's phone number in your contacts"
      * "Location Services confirms you were both frequenting a dubious drinking establishment at 4am three Saturdays ago"
    

Would they do it though? Of course not. It would scare the hell out of their
users if they knew how this algo actually worked.

------
watmough
"People You May Know is based on a variety of factors, including mutual
friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts
you’ve imported and many other factors,” said the spokesperson by email.
“Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to
explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another."

Facebook is full of shit. Of course they are using locations, why else would I
get suggestion to friend the guy that cuts my Mother in Law's yard - he stops
by for a check from my wife.

~~~
laksjd
Isn't it more likely he has your mother in law's/your wife's/your phone number
programmed into his phone and shared his contacts with Facebook?

It seems like that is the source of 99% of 'creepy' Facebook recommendations:
Facebook doesn't realize that while 'has phone number' is a great indicator of
'knowing somebody' it has poor transitive properties.

------
tapatio
And that's one of the reasons I stopped using Facebook. Fuck'em.

------
jordigh
> It’s a massive privacy fail,

I can't believe "fail" has become the standard noun instead of failure. It
started as a lolcatism and now is standard.

------
codingmyway
It should be a lot easier for everyone to collectively sue Facebook and other
social networks for violation of privacy.

This is just one of the economic asymmetries where small annoyances to
everyone, but not enough to individually do anything about it, aggregate to
billions for a few in power.

The only social network we need is a collective legal one.

------
adw7677
I know for a fact that Facebook uses my phone contacts to suggest friends.
When I started at a new job and was exchanging numbers with coworkers, they
would appear as a suggested friend within 24 hours.

My doctor also showed up as a suggestion. I figured either the office phone
number was linked to his FB page, or FB was scanning my calendar events and
linked me to him that way.

------
justinlardinois
I regularly have people show up on my "People You May Know" that have no
mutual friends with me, and I don't know them so they certainly don't have my
email address or phone number. Oftentimes it's people who went to the same
university as me, so I wonder if they base it on friends of friends of friends
and other less direct connections.

------
blackflame7000
Facebook is probably using geo-location to determine if two people are in the
same vicinity for extended periods of time over time.

------
gjolund
This happened to me after attending NA.

I got friend recommendations from FB for other members of the support group.

------
iamben
I assume the connector is the doctor - why doesn't she have a work phone with
the patient's numbers that she doesn't use Facebook on? Then the chance of
patients being connected to one another is dramatically lower.

~~~
joveian
But will that actually help? I could easily imagine Facebook matching people
who have shared contact numbers, even if the contact number shared is not
associated with an account. Possibly they don't do that to try to avoid this
situation.

I think this issue requires action from Facebook. The minimum they should do
is allow numbers to be registered to be not used for making connections. Much
better would be for them to be more explicit about what information they are
collecting (with sufficient guidance that the user understands that medical
privacy can be affected) and allow users to not send them that information in
the first place. I can't imagine them doing that voluntarily, though.

------
EGreg
tl;dr

"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’s a number that
her patients could also have in their phones."

------
malz
Ironically, before it lets me read this story the site pops up a "LIKE US ON
FACEBOOK!" prompt. I'm pretty sure once I do that all you fellow article-
readers will be my next friends.

------
anonu
"Unfortunately, due to health privacy reasons, Lisa was not able to put me in
touch with her patients directly"

You mean: "Fortunately..."

------
econnors
After three accidental ad-clicks and a scrolling ad on mobile, I gave up on
reading the article.

------
ensignavenger
She lives in a small town, she specializes in treating a small subset of that
population. It is quite possible the patients were recommended as friends as
coincidence, not having anything to do with her.

~~~
ChoGGi
"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."

~~~
ensignavenger
One outlier hardly establishes a pattern, it is still reasonable that the
connection to Lisa had nothing to do with these suggestions, and that there
was something else in play.

~~~
throwanem
An outlier like that destroys the pattern you're arguing must exist.

~~~
ensignavenger
I'm not arguing that any pattern exists- I am merely arguing that we don't
have enough information to demonstrate conclusively that Facebook is
recommending these people as friends simply because they are all Lisas
patients. Such a pattern may be probable, but there simply isn't enough
information to come to a conclusion.

~~~
throwanem
I don't suppose I feel it necessary to reach absolute incontrovertibility on
this matter, given Facebook's longstanding history of doing things very like
it, but find mere strong preponderance of likelihood to suffice. But I
understand that some may feel otherwise.

------
untilHellbanned
> “Without additional information from the people involved, we’re not able to
> explain why one person was recommended as a friend to another.”

Such a terrible excuse. FB you only have one job! Fail.

~~~
mrweasel
Facebook must understand how weird that sounds. How can they not know why
people are recommended to each other?

They really do need to dig into the issue, if in fact they don't know. Because
something seriously need to be excluded from their recommendation algorithm if
the article is true.

~~~
brianfitz
She can't reveal the patients to them, so Facebook wouldn't be in a position
to give a specific reason -- only generically how the algorithm is calculated.

------
wslh
Hopefully it was no Tinder.

------
amaks
Sounds like a solid ground for a class action suite.

------
cbsmith
LinkedIn has had similar issues. Not news.

------
S_Daedalus
But I'm still a paranoid lunatic because I don't want to smear my picture all
over the web and give my every scrap of data away for the dubious benefits of
Facebook or Twitter...

~~~
astazangasta
Hear, hear! I'd suggest some sort of paranoid lunatics' support group, but
none of us would show up.

------
phn
Talk about blowing something simple out of proportion.

All these people have one friend in common with this person, maybe they know
each other as well? Being a psychiatrist or whatever has nothing to do with
it.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Not so simple regarding where they get the "potential
friendship" data from. Diagonal reading mistake on my part.

~~~
throwanem
You might want to take another look at the article; your understanding appears
to include a severe oversimplification.

~~~
phn
You're right, I stand corrected. The technique is still simple, the way they
get the data is not so transparent to the user.

~~~
throwanem
I'm not sure how they get it at all, except via contact list mining. It makes
sense that the doctor's phone number is part of her Facebook account. It does
not make sense that her patients, who have not added her as a "friend" there,
would nonetheless have explicitly told Facebook her number from their end. (I
don't even think that's a thing you can do.)

~~~
ubernostrum
Facebook will happily slurp your entire contact list even if you're not FB
friends with all of them. And the algorithms almost certainly know and take
into account having someone in your contacts as a way to build a graph of
relationships.

~~~
throwanem
Exactly. And, of course, there is not even a way to flag some contacts as
private, or otherwise to be excluded from social graph analysis.

I mean, I guess you could keep those contacts in a note or some other record
outside your contacts list, and just tap to call or email or whatever. But
that only works as long as the Facebook app doesn't decide it needs access to
that kind of record, too. And when you find yourself going that far out of
your way to circumvent something that's installed on your phone, maybe it's
time to think about whether that thing is more trouble than it's worth.

