funsec mailing list archives
Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...]
From: Siim Põder <siim () p6drad-teel net>
Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 17:44:19 +0300
Hi Gadi Evron wrote:
On 5/23/10 4:53 PM, der Mouse wrote:Also notable (in that it vitiates your casting of them as just a somewhat unusual webmailer) is that I can't think of a case in which I had any clue who the nominally provoking person - the name Facebook sticks in the From: - was. Of the three examples I find in my incoming mail that hasn't yet rolled off the end of my historical records, two were sent to mailing lists I'm on and the third was sent to my NetBSD address; in none of these cases do I recognize the name in the From:.That is abuse by the users of the service, not the service itself.
Depends how you look at it. If during registration facebook suggests providing your gmail (for example) user+pass so that they could scrape your address book and invite everyone (not sure if they actually do this, I haven't tried giving them an address), it is clear it is indeed spam (unsolicited + bulk if you can send to your hundreds contancts - is there a limit?) but it's not clear who is the spammer in this situation. It may be the registering user, as they are the ones providing the credentials and triggering the send. On the other hand, facebook definitely has their own agenda of getting as many users as possible. You could look at it as facebook tricking misinformed users into providing them address lists to spam to. The slight webmailish customization possibilities don't really make a difference here - they could be considered facebook outsourcing their spam body mutation engine (once again, by tricking users into thinking that THEY want to do it). Of course facebook may be better than this - feel free to substitute in a more evil social network site if it makes more sense that way. Siim _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- And Facebook sells user data, too ... Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah (May 21)
- Re: And Facebook sells user data, too ... Rich Kulawiec (May 21)
- But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] Gadi Evron (May 21)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] der Mouse (May 21)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] Gadi Evron (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] der Mouse (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] Gadi Evron (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] der Mouse (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] Siim Põder (Jun 03)
- But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...] Gadi Evron (May 21)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Paul Vixie (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Gadi Evron (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers der Mouse (May 23)
- Re: And Facebook sells user data, too ... Rich Kulawiec (May 21)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Justin Scott (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers der Mouse (May 23)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers David M Chess (May 24)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Justin Scott (May 24)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Valdis . Kletnieks (May 24)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Nick FitzGerald (May 24)
- Re: But Facebook are not spammers Valdis . Kletnieks (May 25)