FFS, Facebook is abusing 2FA… again
- mar
- 05
Facebook's continued abuses aren't just damaging Facebook, they're damaging our trust in all technology.
I get it. With all the abuses being discovered about Facebook, week after week, sometimes day after day or even hour after hour, it's hard to be surprised any more, much less outraged. But, those continued abuses remain and must remain outrageous.
From Fast Company:
On the surface, Facebook prompting people to enable 2FA was a good thing–if you have 2FA enabled it's much harder for someone who isn't you to log in to your account. But this being Facebook, they're not just going to do something that is only good for the user, are they?
Last year it came to light that Facebook was using the phone numbers people submitted to the company solely so they could protect their accounts with 2FA for targeted advertising. And now, as security researcher and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out, Facebook is allowing anyone to look up a user by their phone number, the same phone number that was supposed to be for security purposes only.
Convinced a friend to turn on Google 2-factor authentication this weekend. Now they read Facebook is abusing the phone numbers collected through its 2FA, and my friend no longer trusts anyone.
Facebook doesn't just damage itself, it damages trust in technology.