
Downloaded my Facebook data and it has the call history with my partner’s mother - bkfh
https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976369275324678145
======
oblio
Heh, I didn't have a Facebook account until several years ago. At some point I
heard some coworkers discussing about something posted on Facebook, a post was
about me. So I decided I'd make an account.

One of the first screens was that list of suggestions for people to add as
friends.

Guess what? Even though they had almost no info on me, from me, the list had
almost everyone I knew, even neatly sorted by level of interactions across the
time.

I had just activated the "shadow" profile they had on me from everyone else...

~~~
jonathanstrange
I "deleted" my FB more than 8 years ago, but since it was not possible to
actually delete the data it was only disabled. In January I decided to re-
activate it to get in touch with old acquaintances. Surprisingly, all of my
pictures, contacts, and other interactions were there. Even a pending friend
request was pending for 8 years.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, though, because FB stated clearly that you
cannot delete your data. I just didn't believe they would keep it for so long.
It felt weird.

 _Edit:_ Just a fun addition, I also made a fake account to promote Youtube
videos against FB's EULA. To get more viewers I thought it might be a good
idea to make arbitrary friend requests and must have had a certain tendency to
click on attractive women. Curiously, at least half of them accepted
immediately. One week later I got spammed with friend request of two kinds:

(a) Asian manufacturing sites offering all kinds of machinery and services.
Most of them from China, but also some in other countries.

(b) Women posting half-naked pictures of themselves on FB, apparently doing
that for a living.

None of them were my target audience. I guess successful FB marketing is more
complicated.

~~~
dzmien
It is absolutely possible to delete your Facebook account and profile
permanently. It is harder to find (I had to search the help section for
"permanently delete" or something), and they give you two weeks to change your
mind. Of course, they still have tons of information about you, but I am tired
of hearing people claim that you can only deactivate your account.

I deleted mine two years ago, but not before downloading my data. I haven't
ever gone through it, but now I am interested to see if they included call
logs and stuff.

~~~
jonathanstrange
Are you sure this was possible > 8 years ago? If I remember correctly, I
researched this for quite some time then and didn't find any way of deleting
the account and everything stored in it. But it's possible I overlooked the
option, of course.

~~~
dbpatterson
I believe in the past you had to open some kind of support request, as there
wasn't an "automated" way to do it (and there was maybe still some kind of
waiting period after having deactivated the account). It's certainly been made
easier (they've gotten a lot of flack over the years oven this...)

------
cornholio
The Android Facebook messenger is pure cancer. It will hijack the default SMS
application and scrape all available information to the mothership. I mostly
stopped responding to Facebook messages and refuse to acknowledge it as a
legitimate way to contact me.

But if you absolutely need to use the messenger, I recommend using a Hermit
lite application, that hocks into the web version of the messenger and leaks
no more info than any other web Facebook session.

You can use Hermit to replace many proprietary bloated apps, and even create
pseudo "apps" for sites that don't feature one, like this site, with a nice
icon on your desktop.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think the issue is not the Android Facebook messenger. It's Android. Because
you have a platform that not only permits apps to do this, but an app store
that approves apps which does this.

I am hoping to get my own data from Facebook and check it against when I
switched to Windows as a mobile OS. As it stands, only two built-in apps,
People and Messaging, have access to my call history.

~~~
kalleboo
Android also has absolutely useless permission categories. Supposedly lots of
apps legitimately ask for "read phone status and identity" just so they can
e.g. pause a game when a call comes in. The same permission lets them scrape
all kinds of info like phone # and IMEI. Which is the app doing?

Android just looks like a privacy nightmare.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The Play Store team should not be permitting apps in the store without extreme
skepticism of the permissions they request, particularly in certain
categories.

The Facebook app should be pulled from the Play Store until its permissions
are reduced, but I doubt Google will do it.

------
xuki
Here's how: Facebook requested those permissions on Android and scrapped them.
Users (includes technical people like OP) just blindly click "Yes" on every
pop up.

Even if you're super careful with your permission, Facebook can still
construct a good profile of you via the people you're communicating with.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Android has not, until extremely recently, required apps to request permission
for things at runtime. Android 5.1, which is what was in use here, I believe,
did not. Installing Android apps for most of Android's lifetime required
granting it all the permissions it asked for.

~~~
Slansitartop
> Android has not, until extremely recently, required apps to request
> permission for things at runtime.

Or allowed permissions to be selectively denied. I think that was introduced
in Android 6.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Yeah, I believe these two things are more or less part of the same major API
change to how permissions are handled. Note that until like... this year, you
could simply target older Android versions to prevent users denying your app's
permissions.

It looks like Google's going to try to start forcing apps to comply with
targeting requirements to get apps on the Play Store now. But this really is a
"too little, too late" situation, IMHO. Billions of users, as Android team
likes to brag about, are already compromised.

------
sgift
Two month to go. End of May GDPR will start the end of this.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In the EU only though. Facebook have enough resources to keep separate
versions and manage people who are geographically mobile.

~~~
soziawa
> In the EU only though.

That's enough for me.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You're going to make this unwilling Brexiteer cry. Damn it.

~~~
sgift
Maybe you can use the "THAT people on the continent have better protections
than us"-argument to pressure your government Post-Brexit to introduce
something similar. I wouldn't bet on it, but .. it's worth a try?

------
pknerd
The question is, why does Facebook wants to know each bit of our lives and
fetch details which might be _harmless_ for us. For instance, Facebook might
want to know how do I talk or walk or turn around and build a persona of mine?
Ads, well that's obvious but ONLY Ads? I don't think so.

~~~
vivekd
I don't know why people are down-voting you, you make an excellent point -
what benefit could having phone and text meta-data possibly have for
generating targeted advertising?

~~~
John_Cena
Resale. Suits at my company did not like our innovation idea until we let them
know how the fiscal windfall we stand to make just by selling data.

------
wongmjane
Not surprised. Facebook/Messenger Android App can read phone call log.

Somewhere in their Messenger Android app indicates they might be planning to
provide a dialer and support voice calling. It makes the excuse of reading
call log more justifiable /s

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Can the iOS WhatsApp app read call logs? I block it from my contacts _et
cetera_ but am not sure about call logs.

~~~
xuki
No they can’t. No 3rd party apps can read call logs and messages. 1st party
(Apple’s) can.

------
jerrre
No problem, it's just meta-data \s

~~~
taneq
You'd get along great with the Australian government. /grr

------
bdreadz
I haven't ever had a facebook. What I find more chilling is why would my phone
be giving over all that meta data? I'm just wondering then what other apps are
just collecting that data and what security setting can be enabled to say that
data shouldn't be shared! wtf.

~~~
fhood
Android + Facebook is a bad combination at the moment. I don't believe this
can happen on iOS which doesn't even have an option to allow an (external) app
to view things like text messages or call history.

------
znpy
My "main" account has been disable for years. I have a secondary facebook
profile that i used to use like once a month to keep in contact with maybe 4-5
friends (as in facebook friends) and many others via a group that we have in
common.

Since I moved in my current city about 5-6 years ago, there was no connection
to my previous city. Yet Facebook managed to understand who one of my cousins
was and suggested I added it as friend. SCARY.

------
NiklasMort
and this kids is why you a) don't use Facebook apps and b) don't use your real
name on FB (or really anywhere if not absolutely necessary)

~~~
chillwaves
And why I delete my Reddit account and re-image my computer every few months.
And why I use a VPN.

You don't have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you.

~~~
24gttghh
You don't delete your HN account every few months it seems ;)

~~~
chillwaves
It's a better community and I say things in less controversial ways because of
it.

------
kindohm
Facebook can't be the only app that has collected this data, can it? What
about every other app that requests permission to see that data?

~~~
soziawa
> What about every other app that requests permission to see that data?

Of course they'll collect and save it somewhere as well.

------
Lewton
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16652387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16652387)

Previous submission that was massively flagged for some reason

Edit: might have been the misleading title

------
HugoDaniel
Can anyone confirm if they also do this for Instagram and Whatsapp ? Is it a
whole group policy or is it FB specific ?

The future sucks

------
diimdeep
I still use Moves App[1], since Facebook acquired it in 2014, last update in
2016. Is there alternative?

Moreover: >>> We may share information, including personally identifying
information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate
groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide,
understand, and improve our Services.

[1] [https://moves-app.com](https://moves-app.com) \- background location
logger and step counter

~~~
kbyatnal
Check out Gyroscope

~~~
diimdeep
Moves is so clean and simple. Gyroscope is too much glorification. There is
much cleaner [https://exist.io](https://exist.io)

------
agumonkey
God I miss the landline phone days

------
swarnie_
Could this be data sharing between Facebook and Whatsapp? FB was asked to stop
that practice around the end of 2017

~~~
dyl
My particular case was not related to WhatsApp (OP of the tweet here) as I had
never installed or used WhatsApp until yesterday.

~~~
pbalau
Can you reply to [0]? Copying here:

>> You know, you're going on about the data that fb has... and yet you've just
shared other peoples names all over the internet. (Unless you've changed them,
as the font seems different in the photo?)

[0]
[https://twitter.com/i400s/status/977102139263782912](https://twitter.com/i400s/status/977102139263782912)

~~~
Raphmedia
People's names are public. I don't see any issue with OP sharing them. There's
no context at all.

~~~
pbalau
You just illustrated the main issue here. People's names are public, true.
Those people using to have a relationship with the op, both the fact that
there was a relationship at some point and that there is no relationship atm,
is NOT public info. That's not OPs information to give away.

This is the problem I have with the #deletefacebook thing, deleting facebook
and even facebook disappearing all together is not going to make the world
more secure, as most people seem to believe. There are many more companies
that have data about you, for example did you ever wondered how many websites
you use are using jquery from code.jquery.org cdn?

The info shared by OP might not affect any of the parties involved. So does
most of the crap facebook "leaked". But what if that info is affecting
somebody?

You might be pointing out that laws could be enacted to prevent this from
happening. It's a fact that laws cannot keep up with technology.

The solution is to educate yourself about how online works, about what data
means and then educate the persons around you about this.

------
bocahrokok
I guess it might be the reason why my facebook showed ads that always related
with what i search in google/non facebook apps.

~~~
cmac2992
thats probably the facebook pixel or the facebook sdk doing this, not the
facebook app

------
justaguyhere
I rarely use FB and have never had their app on my phone. But I use whatsapp.

Anyone knows how much info whatsapp is vacuuming up?

------
hpyhpyjoyjoy87
Has anyone done this for node yet? I don't want to download ruby onto this
computer. Thanks!

------
fwdpropaganda
Anyone care to explain how we can get this data?

I tried going to facebook > settings > download data, but that's only data
that I manually uploaded to facebook.com (posts, messages, photos, etc).

~~~
cryptoz
It probably comes as soon as you install their app on an iPhone or Android
device.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
I get it, but my question is how do I download this data from facebook? I
would like to see what they have on me.

