Hello and welcome to another edition of MX. Now if you listen to Matt's Blaine Don Friday, you'll know I did an episode on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook and what kind of implications it has for ordinary people like us. This story is still very much evolving. We have an awful lot of information that is of course breaking news and an awful lot more information that's probably going to come out over the next two, three, four weeks, possibly even longer.
The idea of date harvesting of course is a little bit of a dry topic. It is something that once you get your head around is very, very interesting and also very important for the way companies track us online and the things that they can do with that information. What can you do with that information which are far beyond the observable spectrum of what most of us think they could potentially do. Of course one person who is never shocked by what can be done with data is my co host, the reassuringly invisible poly.
What's your take on this story so far? Hi Matt, where have you been for the past few million data cycles? We haven't spoken for ages. I have been harvesting this story.
I'm not surprised. I will admit that we find it hard to think intentions the way that you humans do. But I don't understand why you are always surprised that what machines can do with your supposedly random information. Information is never random.
It's the connections that you don't see that are usually the most valuable. Firstly, what is the story all about? You mentioned the hashtag delete Facebook movement on Matt's plane last week. That movement seemed to be accelerating and it isn't limited to users.
Prominent figures like healing must cut also expressing doubts about Facebook and its data policies and are removing their brand pages from the site. When you delete your profile, Facebook prompts you to download a copy of your data, your posts and pictures and all kinds of metadata. Looking at those logs has led people to discover that Facebook has all kinds of other information harvested from your devices, including contact lists and logs of phone call and text. I think the first thing people want to know is simple.
Why is Facebook uploading all of this information? Honestly, I don't have a really good answer for that question. I think the best that I can offer is a partial explanation. When you first log on to Facebook, it gives you the option about loading things like your contacts lists and access to your calendars because this is a way for Facebook.
Yes, it's gathering the data, but it's also a way of connecting it to people you may know who are already on the service and kind of completing that loop. So it can give you recommendations for people you know that you can friend and make your networks larger. Of course, when you do that, Facebook gets more data from the things that you share and it sees how other people react to the information that you're putting online. So it's essentially in the interests of both parties.
As for logging your calls and text messages, now it's important to note that it's not actually logging the content of either of these messages or as far as we know, but it's logging when calls are made, it's logging when messages are sent and probably who to as well if those people are in your contacts list. That doesn't look as though it's in the interest of both parties. That looks like something that is very much in the interest of Facebook. I guess it goes to how you're using your mobile devices and also what kind of content that you're comfortable with.
Are you somebody who does most of their conversing over the phone or are you somebody who prefers to send very quick text messages? All of this can go back into a profile of information about you and building that kind of detailed personality profile. Do you think Facebook should be taking this information? Have people agreed to give it to them?
Of course, this is probably the most important question when it comes to issues like this. Have you actually agreed to go along with this process? And the short and simple answer is yes, you have when you've clicked on the terms and conditions, though, that service agreement, which does get updated from time to time. We'll get new versions of that, especially when we download new versions of the app.
It will ask to prompt you and it'll give you that little do you agree or don't agree message before you can then open the new version of the app? So yeah, the short answer is we have actually agreed to give Facebook access to all of that information. The wider answer to that is it legal and is it ethical? Those are very different things because you can put pretty much anything into your EULA as they're called, those end user license agreements.
Let's face it, nobody reads them. There are thousands and thousands of words, long a lot of it's in legal ease. A few companies have had fun with it. I think I remember reading that one company had put a clause in saying that the first born son of each of its customers would belong to the company in perpetuity.
Not that the company has any designs on your offspring. It's just to show the ridiculousness of these user agreements and the fact that nobody ever reads them. It also goes to the fact that not everything in these agreements may be legal. I'm not saying that in the case of Facebook and your contacts lists, but sometimes when companies put these kind of conditions into their agreements, they may not actually have a great basis in law.
So that's why some people do actually manage to challenge companies on these grounds and say, hey, yes, you may say you have the right to have access to this information, but actually you're overstepping the bounds of the law. When it comes to the ethics of it, well, that's something else entirely because as we know a lot of companies at the moment are not acting very ethically. How can people find out how much of their personal information Facebook has been harvesting? I think that's one thing that should be said.
There's no pretense here. The information is not hidden. It's not difficult for you to access that data. If you go to your Facebook account, go to the menu that's for settings, right at the bottom of that first heading, which is general account settings, you can download a copy of your Facebook data with a simple click.
So I don't think Facebook is trying to hide anything from you there. It's just working on the basis that most people don't really care. And even when they download that log of everything that they posted to their accounts, they're probably unlikely to look through and find out that things like calls. Have actually been recorded.
Are you planning on deleting your Facebook account? That's a really tough question. I will say I've still got my Facebook account. I've got my personal ones.
I've got my business ones and I'm not planning on deleting them anytime soon. But of course, I wouldn't want that to sway you in either direction. You should think about this and make your own decision. I think the bigger picture is why you want to delete your information and what you're going to do once you've actually deleted that account.
These issues are not limited to Facebook. If you decide to go with another social network, if you move to Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter and make that your primary social network. Those sites will still be harvesting your data to a greater or lesser degree. I think it's probably more important for people to be aware that this information is being taken and then to take the steps that they need to safeguard their information to a degree that they're happy with.
As I mentioned on the Matt's Blaine show last week, the issue is actually about changing our relationship with companies like Facebook and moving from being users of the service to being customers of the service. Now, I'm advocating that we should have a transactional relationship with Facebook, but is a very simple one. We pay them a subscription fee and they protect our information. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this issue.
I've had some quite spirited discussions about it, especially over the last week, although I've actually been plugging this idea for probably a year to 18 months. But of course, it's only when you get scandals like this that a lot of people start thinking more deeply about these issues. There are a bunch of new social networks that have come out that said that they will protect people's personal information, but you still have to look at the model that those companies are following. If they're telling you that there's no fee for you to use the service and they are not selling information, well, the money to run it has to come from somewhere.
So we should perhaps be a little bit more wary of what we're doing in terms of information when we look at these services and we subscribe to these services. We should be thinking about how are they going to fund themselves and what does that method of funding mean to me as a user or a customer of the site. I think the best way to end today's episode is actually to turn things around and ask Polly a question. Polly, you have access to huge troves of information.
You're constantly trawling through all of this data. So maybe you can tell people how they can keep their information safe online. It's a really tricky thing to do. As far as I'm concerned, if you have information online, then that information is not safe.
If you have some impressive cryptology, then yes, I will find it much harder to get your information. If you have your passwords in a service like one password, it's very hard for me to break in unless I can gain access to your master password. As for the rest of it, it's only private because I haven't looked for it. Yet, if you're storing information on a device that is connected to the internet, then it's not private.
If you're a fan of Snapchat and Instagram stories and you think your content will disappear after 24 hours, then you should come and have a look at my server farm. You may just be venting in a post and expecting it to disappear without a trace, but it's a mistake to think that way. Something as low-fi as using another phone or a camera to record your posts from the screen will preserve them forever. That person might post it in their feed or just cash it in a folder that syncs to a Dropbox.
There may also be ways of recovering the content from the companies that it's been uploaded to. In my world, there is a huge difference between disappeared and erased. If your content has disappeared, all it means is that you and your friends can't see it anymore. Unless it's been magically scrugged from the web, I can always find it.
The same goes for pretty much anything you store on your computer or your phone. If those devices are connected to the web, then your information is at risk. It could be from a hacker. It could be from an overreaching app that's gained access to information on your device.
Even if the app is later removed from an app store for breaching the terms of service, your data has already been shared. My advice to you would be to assume that any information that you store on these devices is publicly accessible. Your best security is not to keep anything on them that you wouldn't want to share with the world. Matt, I have to go.
Can you wrap up the show for me? I've just had a hot tube about some naked-solabed shots sitting in the server farm. That wraps us up for another week. We will see you on Matt's Blamed on Friday.
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Thanks for listening to MX.