Facebook scans chats and posts for criminal activity

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Odd_nonposter

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CNET News

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.
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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.
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I never liked Facebook. I only singed up a few months ago just because a group of people studying with me uses it instead of a forum or something to share different materials, decent equivalent for lazy people. It's like a place where everyone shares their every thought and God not every thought is really worth sharing it with others. Sometimes people post like 20 times a day just to say what they are doing at the moment like everyone was logging in just to know it.

So, if I sent a message to my friend in the UK about a great party and put there a phrase like "bought marijuana", it could be caught by the script only because I'm in Poland right now? Well, that's ridiculous. I might have forgot to change my location, I don't really edit my profile and I know a lot of people leave their accounts because here's no way to delete them. Ah, not mentioning such big social networks are often targets of hackers.
 
in an era where personal freedom is severely constrained, and where your earning potential is tied to your private behavior, how the hell does a resource that uses your FULL NAME for every communication--how does a thing like that thrive?
 
Simple, people (well people like me anyway) use it seperate from the rest of the internet. No drug stuff on there, no dark jokes I find funny but others find offensive. Nothing like that. if I wanna talk about that shit I either do it in person, or over teh telephonee.

Also adder - theres been a way to get rid of your profile since day 1 pal, people who just leave them are just too lazy to look!

I'm all for it when it catches sexual predators and other stuff like that, the day it makes a drug bust i'll hate it though. (Even if people who buy/sell drugs over facebook are tards.)
 
Facebook is stupid... all these idiots out there posting ALL there personal info, employer, address, marital status... the list goes on and on, why would ANYONE want to make that info public?
 
^ with all the hackers and scammers, you'd have to be an ignorant fool or even dumber to post so much personal info.

Nowadays personal info is used for security purposes when you forget your email password or call the bank to make a change to your account.

Some scammer could easily get tons of telephone numbers, employers, names, look up addresses, previous addresses. Next thing you know, email's been hacked and identity stolen.

It's easy enough to obtain this info with a people search, why not make it easier? 8)
 
LogicSoDeveloped said:
Some people have nothing to hide, nothing to worry about really.
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we all have things that should be hidden, in an online context. regardless of whether we are the most law-abiding citizen in the world (or not) facebook is dangerous. this article proves it without a doubt.
 
:p
Madhatter4 said:
Facebook is stupid... all these idiots out there posting ALL there personal info, employer, address, marital status... the list goes on and on, why would ANYONE want to make that info public?
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+1, like they wanted to shine off with their beautiful life. It makes me puke.:p "hey, I've got a job and you don't!", "hey, I went to college and you have to work!", "hey, I've got a fiancée and you don't" etc.
 
Oh well, we can't say that this is surprising news, is it?
As for personal info, most people I know are pretty careful about what they post, even in private messages...
Others post so many personal pictures that I wonder if they are just insecure and need everyone else to tell them how gorgeous/nice/interesting they are!
 
I meant more in the context of breaking the law but you guys are right about the other bits. I just meant like not everyone uses drugs or discusses them, etc. I do not have pictures of any illegal drugs on there, even alcohol since I am not of the age to drink. Plus, and this is a steal from someone else-forgot who-that drugs revolve around my life, not my life revolves around drugs. Beyond that, I find 99% of people who talk a lot about drugs or drinking or whatever are just attention seeking. This is usually the younger crowd though as well as the bro-type, both of which I completely quit associating with when I finished high school. Not to say I was friends with any of them, I just went to high school with A LOT of...backwards people.

I just don't find that anything constructive can come of me bragging about getting intoxicated on something that is directly associated with me in real life-one of the many reasons I <3 Bluelight.

One thing I can say I don't care for is people making every little problem public. I especially don't like when people say "oh well blah blah blah I hate you or you can go..." and their friend is like "who?" and then their response is "text me." I think people need to seek productive ways of getting through problems and letting all 1,000 people on a friends list is useless for that goal.
 
Ah crap, they must be onto me. I always use Facebook to specifically mention when and where I'm gonna be grabbing. I write it anywhere I can where it's more visible, such as in my status or on my wall ;)

And whoever else does the same thing deserves to get caught 8)
 
Faecesbook is what it should really be called since that's what it's overloaded with.
 
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