Beware the facebook!

[Innocent criminal]

From cnet.com

Facebook scans chats and posts for criminal activity

 

Facebook's monitoring software focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship on the social network.

 

 

by Emil Protalinski July 12, 2012 5:45 PM PDT

 

Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required.

The new tidbit about the company's monitoring system comes from a Reuters interview with Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan. Here's the lead-in to the Reuters story:

A man in his early 30s was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day. Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police. Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day.

Facebook's software focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren't friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.

The scanning program looks for certain phrases found in previously obtained chat records from criminals, including sexual predators (because of the Reuters story, we know of at least one alleged child predator who is being brought before the courts as a direct result of Facebook's chat scanning). The relationship analysis and phrase material have to add up before a Facebook employee actually looks at communications and makes the final decision of whether to ping the authorities.

"We've never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it's really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate," Sullivan told Reuters. While details of the tool are still scarce, it's a well-known fact that Facebook cooperates with the police, since, like any company, it has to abide by the law. In fact, just a few months ago, Facebook complied with a police subpoena by sending over 62 pages of photos, Wall posts, messages, contacts, and past activity on the site for a murder suspect.

For more information about Facebook's stance on working with the police, I checked out these two pages: Law Enforcement and Third-Party Matters, as well as Information for Law Enforcement Authorities. It's worth noting that neither of these documents discusses the aforementioned tool (a quick search for the words "monitor" and "scan" bring up nothing).

Facebook likely wants to avoid discussing the existence of the monitoring technology in order to avoid further privacy concerns. Many users don't like the idea of having their conversations reviewed, even if it's done by software and rarely by Facebook employees.

 

from pcmag.com

 

Facebook Scans Chats for Criminal Activity

 

• Jul 13, 2012 6:00 PM EST
  

By Fahmida Y. Rashid

 

 

Social networking is a great way to keep in touch with friends and meet new people. But it's also important to be vigilant about what you say to people you meet online.

Facebook has technology in place to monitor user conversations for suspicious activity and notify police when necessary, Reuters reported yesterday. The scanning technology monitors chats for words or phrases that may signal that something is wrong, such as personal information being exchanged or explicit language being used.

"We've never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it's really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate," Facebook told Reuters.

Facebook security employees don't see any of the conversations until the scanning technology actually flags the exchange. The employees then review the chat to determine whether the police should be notified.

"I find the news to be both scary and more than a bit surprising," Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told Security Watch. Most communication providers tend to take the stance that since they don't monitor user activity, under the Safe Harbor provisions it isn't their fault if users do something illegal, Wisniewski said.

"If you begin analyzing content, you may be held liable for not stopping something dangerous that traverses your network," Wisniewski said.

Protect Yourself

While it's nice to know that Facebook is keeping a distant eye on chat logs for criminal behavior, users should exercise some Internet smarts when online. And while we are picking on Facebook a bit, these tips apply to other social networking sites, as well.

• Friending Strangers – Study after study have shown Facebook users accept friend requests from people they don't know. It's easy to lie on a profile, and criminals do it all the time on social networking sites. Sexual predators have pretended to be teenagers to talk to younger users on social networking sites. In a recent analysis, researchers from Barracuda Networks found several fake Facebook profiles using the exact same photograph of an attractive woman as the main profile picture. Once a fake profile is added as a friend, that scammer has access to a tremendous amount of personal data. Screen them out beforehand.
  
• Chatty Profiles – Many people still have not locked down their social networking profiles, letting people they don't know see their home address, phone numbers, and all other information. If it's that critical to have that much information about you on your profile, at least lock it so that only friends can see it (and then be careful about who you friend…)
  
• Know About Privacy – Some information, such as login credentials and personal identifying information, should never be shared, even with best friends. Learn how to use the site's privacy controls. Google+ has done a good job of giving users control over who can see their profile data, and Facebook is steadily improving.
  

"The bottom line is no one should expect any sort of privacy on social networks and these types of programs just further prove that point," Wisniewski said.

Crimes Against Minors Online Rare

Facebook relying on software to pre-scan chats protects the company from privacy concerns that someone is monitoring all conversations. But it also means that a lot of other suspicious incidents may be missed.

"I feel for every one we arrest, ten others get through the system," Special Agent Supervisor Jeffrey Duncan of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told Reuters.

However, before anyone panics, it's worth noting that that Internet-related sex crimes against children are rare. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children processed 3,638 report of online "enticement" of children by adults last year, 10 percent less than 2010.

Most sex crimes against children are committed by people the children know, rather than strangers. Reuters reported Facebook's technology is more likely to likely scrutinize conversations between two users who aren't already "well-established" in the Facebook universe as friends. In which case, those chats with non-strangers may never even be flagged.

Protect Children

Despite the fact that strangers approaching children online is rare, many parents are still jittery. A recent survey of 1,000 parents by MinorMonitor found that 74 percent of parents were concerned about their child's safety on Facebook, with 56 percent worrying about predators.

There are a number of tools available that parents can use to monitor their children's social networking activities. PCMag gave an Editors' Choice award to Socialshield, which lets parents monitor their children's Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google+, and Formspring accounts. ZoneAlarm's SocialGuard detects cyberbullying, account hacking, bad links, age-inappropriate relationships, and contact by strangers. MinorMonitoralso tracks the child's Facebook activity and sends parents alerts for potential problems.

 

 

Can't argue with protecting children online, but sure can question the methods.

IMHO parents need to take responsibilty for their kids online safety, either by monitoring their internet usage or putting strict limitations on it.

Your right to online privacy is under attack: facebook monitors your conversations, google caches your every mov, and now the government wants your isp to store every byte that crosses your connection for 2yrs (so that leo can dig through it looking for wrongdoing).

Edited July 14, 2012 by Innocent criminal

[Syb3 rm3nt41_%20]

Dont worry the tighter the control grid becomes the more power the resistance gains.... There are a tonne of different technologies that could be implemented to circumvent any of the strategies being introduced by the government to identfify potential suspects.....

 

later.

[louise]

Your right to online privacy is under attack

 

I think you are missing the point IC... "The bottom line is no one should expect any sort of privacy on social networks..."

[Cerberus]

I think you are missing the point IC... "The bottom line is no one should expect any sort of privacy on social networks..."

 

Pretty much how I see it too. You're entering into an agreement to store your data on their servers, if the EULA's were simpler to read, I'm sure a lot of people would never join sites like facebook. Most never read EULA's so would not be aware of what rights they do or do not have when using someone's webpage for their personal data.

 

What a lot of people seem to forget is that sites like facebook aren't giving you a place to talk to your friends, they don't care about you. They only exist to make advertising dollars from unsuspecting people who use it to tell their friends what's going on. I'm sure if we all communicated by CCing our friends in emails, we wouldn't need sites like facebook.

 

What does facebook actually give us? No, really. What does facebook actually give us? What purpose does it serve where it fills a gap in a market?

 

It doesn't, it's purely there to get people to use it to communicate so someone can make $$$ by showing you advertising that you don't even like to see anyway

 

Yes there are ads in Gmail too, but they're one line unobtrusive ads anyway that fit in with the theme whereas the advertising facebook likes to use is akin to the ads we all hate on TV every 7 minutes. So why the hell do most people put up with it?

 

If anything, I'd rather someone serve me up ads that are tailored to my needs and interests. We'll never get rid of advertising however we can make it easier on ourselves

 

Unfortunately the need for the most of society to feel more important than they actually are, is the reason why sites like facebook are so popular so until the celebrity wannabee phase disappears, we're stuck with these pepole who post too much crap about stuff that normally wouldn't be mentioned.

 

Next time you see a shitty post on facebook, ask yourself whether that person would actually go to the trouble of calling someone on the phone to say the same non-important tidbit of information. If the answer's yes, get rid of them. You're associating with fools.

 

On the other hand,if they wouldn't call someone to say it, then is it really worth sharing with all your friends on facebook? And why do you keep friending these people

 

/rant

 

sorry

Edited July 15, 2012 by Cerberus

[Frazz]

faceborg sux at the best of times anyway ya look at it ...

 

[Haratio Hornblower]

Feces book is for wankers who dont have a life

[Cerberus]

Now I feel more at home

 

[iTiC]

I deleted Fb a while ago now. Actually deleting FB was the hard part, not going back was easy...

I left aft one of the mainy security updates that needed you to go in and turn off features that you didnt want NOT cool

they should all be off and you should be lead though which ones you want to activate and why. FB are just out to make $$ fast and info about you is their comodity.

I subed FB for other communites.

This being one of them.

[Cerberus]

I deleted Fb a while ago now. Actually deleting FB was the hard part, not going back was easy...

I left aft one of the mainy security updates that needed you to go in and turn off features that you didnt want NOT cool

they should all be off and you should be lead though which ones you want to activate and why. FB are just out to make $$ fast and info about you is their comodity.

I subed FB for other communites.

This being one of them.

 

There you go, because they know that's the best way to catch fish, that's why they do it.

 

I'l be the first to admit that I do have multiple facebook accounts under psuedonyms relating to the activity I know you for.

 

Know me on facebook from a weed forum? That's great, all my professional networks don't link me to smoking cannabis, whether I feel it should be less restricted or not.

 

That's the way you should work, because unfortunately people have opinions that don't agree with yours, whether they impeded you ability to do your job, or not.

 

Facebook isn't being honest, why should you be?

 

[Syb3 rm3nt41_%20]

god damn conspiracy theorists ..... ...... ....