Facebook manipulation of posts

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: angus1745
Personally, me and my pals are going back to using Snail Mail. Ironically it's now the most secure form of data transference.

Not true. It is easier to obtain metadata from snail mail as the post office takes a photo of every package it handles. Using anonymous email accounts and encryption you can in theory transmit information securely while creating less or false metadata.

It takes a photo of the package, not the contents. What metadata can you hope to obtain from that other than the obvious address? Whereas the NSA/GCHQ can intercept every email you send. It takes high levels of encryption to ensure your data is private and in today's world, that isn't actually enough. Like you said, in theory encryption should be enough, but in reality it is not. Emails are usually sent via a smartphone, more meta data attached. They can pinpoint the location of a sender using the metadata and much MUCH more. That's why some people choose to use snailmail. MD5 and SHA1 are known to be vulnerable but sites like facebook still use them to 'encrypt' your private messages, even though it is easy to hack these hashes.

Also you do realise the UK government are hoping to ban encryption via email?

a reply to: daftpink

You can take measures to make email secure and limit the metadata you're sending. Snail mail reveals just as much.

The goal with encryption isn't to have something unbreakable but rather something that's not worth the time to break.

To be perfectly honest, if there was something that I wanted security on today, I would put it 100% in plain sight and make it look as uninteresting as possible by making it hit a couple of triggers that are looked for (something that hits too many means a flag, but something that hits none is also flagged because it clearly circumvents them... they expect you to hit a trigger or two). Encrypted messages are by their nature interesting, and snail mail leaves a physical paper trail.

a reply to: MimiSia

Well...thats my point. Seems a lot of users think they have somewhat of a freedom in posting what, which and when they want on these sites including Twitter.

That's the gist of Big Brother and also companies like FB and TWTR. They can moderate any way they want...and BB can monitor anything too while they do.

We really don't have any right to expect these sites to leave our posts, pict, tweets alone. We might think we do...but we don't. Therein is the issue.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: daftpink

You can take measures to make email secure and limit the metadata you're sending. Snail mail reveals just as much.

The goal with encryption isn't to have something unbreakable but rather something that's not worth the time to break.

To be perfectly honest, if there was something that I wanted security on today, I would put it 100% in plain sight and make it look as uninteresting as possible by making it hit a couple of triggers that are looked for (something that hits too many means a flag, but something that hits none is also flagged because it clearly circumvents them... they expect you to hit a trigger or two). Encrypted messages are by their nature interesting, and snail mail leaves a physical paper trail.

Rainbow tables take years to crack hashes but people still use them because they can.

As has been mentioned, FB and other social media must use computerized algorithms to sort all posts. All we have to do is to be smarter than the algorithm--at least till we get banned. Social media is still one of the few ways that otherwise ignored/suppressed information can get to the uninitiated---which is something that has to happen to effect any change from us becoming just sheep, cannon fodder, and Eloi.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: daftpink

You can take measures to make email secure and limit the metadata you're sending. Snail mail reveals just as much.

The goal with encryption isn't to have something unbreakable but rather something that's not worth the time to break.

To be perfectly honest, if there was something that I wanted security on today, I would put it 100% in plain sight and make it look as uninteresting as possible by making it hit a couple of triggers that are looked for (something that hits too many means a flag, but something that hits none is also flagged because it clearly circumvents them... they expect you to hit a trigger or two). Encrypted messages are by their nature interesting, and snail mail leaves a physical paper trail.

The emails can be stored in encrypted form until there is some reason to hack them. Terabyte drives could hold a lot of emails. The government budget is big enough to set aside a terabyte drive for each citizen.

Cost of a few billions.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

That's why I said if I had data that I truly cared about keeping secure I wouldn't encrypt it. Encryption makes data interesting, part of what the NSA does is save encrypted data incase they ever need to break it. Unencrypted messages don't appear interesting and are therefore discarded.

a reply to: Tusks

Facebook allows us to connect with our friends and family for free. As a trade off, they sell our information to third parties. If you want your privacy, I hear MySpace is making a comeback lol.

originally posted by: acehigh91
a reply to: Tusks

Facebook allows us to connect with our friends and family for free. As a trade off, they sell our information to third parties. If you want your privacy, I hear MySpace is making a comeback lol.

not looking for privacy--looking to share PC incorrect info without the algorithms knocking the info to the bottom of the page or out the door.