

Facebook bug disables women's accounts, asks for government ID, fix in process - Terretta
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/female_facebook_users_take_to_twitter_complain_of.php

======
stoney
And this is one of the reasons that I don't like the idea of facebook being my
universal log on for lots of different sites. It takes things from mild
irritation at having to find another way to waste time, to a potentially major
problem when I can't access services that I use every day.

~~~
rwwmike
I agree. Facebook having complete ownership and control over my identity is a
scary thought. The site is far too reckless and cavalier with its banning of
people, business sites, apps, etc. I've read far too many accounts of
banishments without any given reason or response to complaints...

------
Timothee
FTA "It's hard not to wonder if the issue could have anything to do with
yesterday's announcement of a new messaging system on the site that would work
using your Facebook username for an @facebook.com email address"

I don't like when blogs do that: the link between female accounts-only
disabled and Facebook's new messaging system is pretty weak. The only reason
they make the link is to have people read that other story about Facebook.
TechCrunch does that all the time and I find that slightly annoying. It feels
like the kid who brings up unrelated stories just to show he knows stuff.

~~~
rwwmike
Actually, that's not at ALL why I wrote that. I wrote that because I found it
hard to not wonder if the two things were connected. Suddenly, user names are
becoming @facebook.com email addresses.

I also wrote this line before Facebook ever responded to our questions (which
they did just a moment before posting) and didn't remove it. Before the
explanation, Boy Genius Report was speculating that it was a hack because of
the request for a government ID. A quick Google search showed that a
government ID request seemed to be a standard thing when Facebook wants to
reactivate certain accounts, so I figured that wasn't the case and postulated
that perhaps it had to do with Facebooks latest change...its messaging system.

The only reason I ever put links into a story is so that if you don't know
about that, and it's readily accessible, you don't need to search for it. :)

------
maukdaddy
It will be a cold day in hell before I send a copy of my ID to facebook. WTF
are people thinking?!

~~~
ja27
There are worse threats.

It took me less than 15 minutes to find a decent photo of you, what I think is
your work address (zip 60603), possibly your home address (number is 519) and
phone number (726 in the middle). I didn't come up with your date of birth but
I can make a pretty good guess about your wife's (digits add up to 2011) and
the date of your wedding (adds up to 2022).

I'm sorry if that completely creeps you out. I tried not to give anything
personal away here and that's all readily available online.

That's not from a scanned copy of an ID that Facebook would hopefully attempt
to protect.

~~~
stoney
Wow, that might be a little creepy but it's very eye opening. Especially as
maukdaddy lists "information security" as his business, so is presumably not
too reckless with his details online.

I'm assuming you started with his HN profile, googled his name, found what
appears to be his blog and took it from there?

Maybe these days having a common name is a good defence against ID fraud!

~~~
maukdaddy
I'm not too careful with my birthdate or anniversary. LinkedIn is a huge
source of information leakage, but the business and networking value outweighs
that. You could datamine my twitter and find most important dates and events.

------
chesser
As someone who remembers BBSes and Usenet flamewars, I can't emphasize enough
how bad an idea it is to have your real identity linked to everything you do.

It also makes it very difficult if you ever need to go on the lam, because
they'll know every place you might go. Every friend and relative. Whether
you're trying to avoid a gambling debt, a stalker, or the government.

------
cmars232
This is impacting a friend of mine. Suddenly disabled with no explanation.

I told her to submit a login/password bug, if only to get it read by a human
over there. And to decline sending a photo ID if asked.

------
jrockway
How does Facebook validate government IDs without actually having them? Anyone
with Photoshop can be anyone they want.

------
jdp23
only women were affected. Facebook's got several anti-woman policies (for
example banning pictures of breast-feeding, and prohibiting domestic violence
survivors from using pseudonyms) but in this case they're blaming a bug. it
would be it would be interesting to hear more about what the actual issue is.

~~~
mlinsey
I frequently get friend requests from fake profiles on Facebook (sometimes as
many as 2-3 per week). They always list themselves as having gone to my high
school (which is why I am positive they are fake, since I went to a tiny high
school), and they _always_ are attractive-looking women. I do not list my sex
on Facebook, but it is possible that the bot recognizes my first name as male
and therefore friends me with a female profile, and that there are other spam
profiles which are male, but I am almost certain this is not the case since I
see in my news feed whenever one of my high school friends falls for the
spammer, and they are again always female profiles. So I think it's safe to
say that the vast majority of spam profiles on Facebook are of females.

The most widespread method of stopping spam in any form is to use flags to
train an machine learning algorithm that picks out particular patterns in
spam. These algorithms don't have political agendas, they just pick out common
characteristics of spam. It is therefore entirely unsurprising that any such
spam detector would learn to only flag women, and therefore to be expected
that a bug in that algorithm which generated false positives would affect only
women's profiles.

The reason you are downvoted is not because you are trying to highlight
women's issues (I got 50+ karma for calling out another comment as sexist
against women a few weeks ago), but because you were quick to imply a sexist
motive for behavior that most any hacker would have immediately recognized as
a natural consequence of how poorly-performing spam-detectors behave.

~~~
jdp23
a spam detector that's biased against women certainly could account for this
behavior.

why don't you see that as sexist?

------
qjz
I don't understand: What constitutes a _fake_ Facebook account? Why does
Facebook need to establish your real identity? Serious question, as I am not a
Facebook user.

