DeanoH
16th March 2019, 10:09 PM
Well I finally decided to create a Facebook account and what an illuminating journey it has been.
My only interest in Facebook is Facebook Marketplace, I've no interest in friends, chatting and private detail sharing. My goal as the Facebook product being on sold was to give the absolute minimum of information with as much of it as false and misleading as possible and to use FB for my purposes. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. After all I'm not the thieving scumbag that stole the FB concept from the people that hired him to develop it. So no feelings of guilt here. :)
So, onward and upward. I have a seldom used email account which goes something like Landy Bill at gmail.com (not a real email address) and used the name Landy Bill with a fake birthday to create the account using my (no SIM card) tablet. No problem at all, it went through like a breeze. I went in and shut down all permissions etc to the absolute minimum. Note. no phone number given or required but does exist within Google for gmail authentication etc.
Now the fun begins.
First thing the next morning a text message on my mobile phone, guess what, I've just won 6.5 million pounds etc, damn ................... and here's me not even remembering entering a lottery in a country I've never been to. Coincidence ? This is the first of these messages I've ever received on my mobile EVER ! Hmm ........ I'd have thought Google and FB would be arch enemies in the data trolling / info trawling business and would have protected their info like a lioness protecting its young. This is the only tie in I can see. Perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence' ?
I logged in on my 'throwaway Win10 PC' ( the one that Microsoft's 'Fall update' totally screwed up 12 months or so ago) which is miraculously still working with no updates since :) and subscribed to several groups but no Marketplace icon. It turns out that Marketplace access is not immediately given to new members but will be granted quite soon. Fair enough, but there's no indication of what 'quite soon' actually means. There's a link to a totally useless Microsoft-esque generic info page with no useful info along with many unanswered queries asking info on the same question. From my limited browsing I assume that FB does not answer queries from 'product being sold' ie the FB 'members'.
No worries says I, I'll do a general internet trawl and see what I can find. And the answer is ................. nothing, yep, nothing. I could not find any specific or useful information on the lack of FB Marketplace access. Sure there was plenty of threads/queries but every time I hunted down specific info the threads petered out or had had their contents deleted, weird.
Sure, I make no claims to being an internet sleuth but the complete lack of info on this issue was uncanny. Again, perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence'.
But the best is yet to come :)
I logged in this morning and lo and behold there is a whole list, growing longer by the hour, of potential 'friends' for me to request. Note that I have no FB friends so have sent/received no messages apart from subscribing to various buy/sell groups. I have sent/received no messages within these groups.
What is most interesting is that this growing list of people includes my BIL, nieces and nephews with most of the rest being friends of my kids but interestingly not my kids. Note. the only people that know I have a FB account is my wife (who thinks I'm crazy in signing up) and two of my kids who know better that to befriend me. :)
Why is it so ?
My kids have at various times logged in to FB using my PC so what I assume is that FB lodges some sort of 'cookie' or other spyware on my PC to identify these 'logins' and can extract this info along with my login and uses this info to trawl my kids 'friends' and suggest them to me. Wow !! Not an angle I would have expected.
My other thought was using IP address info but as I have a dynamic IP and frequent power outages/router lockups my IP changes several times a week so think this unlikely.
Again, again, perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence' ?
Deano :)
My only interest in Facebook is Facebook Marketplace, I've no interest in friends, chatting and private detail sharing. My goal as the Facebook product being on sold was to give the absolute minimum of information with as much of it as false and misleading as possible and to use FB for my purposes. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. After all I'm not the thieving scumbag that stole the FB concept from the people that hired him to develop it. So no feelings of guilt here. :)
So, onward and upward. I have a seldom used email account which goes something like Landy Bill at gmail.com (not a real email address) and used the name Landy Bill with a fake birthday to create the account using my (no SIM card) tablet. No problem at all, it went through like a breeze. I went in and shut down all permissions etc to the absolute minimum. Note. no phone number given or required but does exist within Google for gmail authentication etc.
Now the fun begins.
First thing the next morning a text message on my mobile phone, guess what, I've just won 6.5 million pounds etc, damn ................... and here's me not even remembering entering a lottery in a country I've never been to. Coincidence ? This is the first of these messages I've ever received on my mobile EVER ! Hmm ........ I'd have thought Google and FB would be arch enemies in the data trolling / info trawling business and would have protected their info like a lioness protecting its young. This is the only tie in I can see. Perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence' ?
I logged in on my 'throwaway Win10 PC' ( the one that Microsoft's 'Fall update' totally screwed up 12 months or so ago) which is miraculously still working with no updates since :) and subscribed to several groups but no Marketplace icon. It turns out that Marketplace access is not immediately given to new members but will be granted quite soon. Fair enough, but there's no indication of what 'quite soon' actually means. There's a link to a totally useless Microsoft-esque generic info page with no useful info along with many unanswered queries asking info on the same question. From my limited browsing I assume that FB does not answer queries from 'product being sold' ie the FB 'members'.
No worries says I, I'll do a general internet trawl and see what I can find. And the answer is ................. nothing, yep, nothing. I could not find any specific or useful information on the lack of FB Marketplace access. Sure there was plenty of threads/queries but every time I hunted down specific info the threads petered out or had had their contents deleted, weird.
Sure, I make no claims to being an internet sleuth but the complete lack of info on this issue was uncanny. Again, perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence'.
But the best is yet to come :)
I logged in this morning and lo and behold there is a whole list, growing longer by the hour, of potential 'friends' for me to request. Note that I have no FB friends so have sent/received no messages apart from subscribing to various buy/sell groups. I have sent/received no messages within these groups.
What is most interesting is that this growing list of people includes my BIL, nieces and nephews with most of the rest being friends of my kids but interestingly not my kids. Note. the only people that know I have a FB account is my wife (who thinks I'm crazy in signing up) and two of my kids who know better that to befriend me. :)
Why is it so ?
My kids have at various times logged in to FB using my PC so what I assume is that FB lodges some sort of 'cookie' or other spyware on my PC to identify these 'logins' and can extract this info along with my login and uses this info to trawl my kids 'friends' and suggest them to me. Wow !! Not an angle I would have expected.
My other thought was using IP address info but as I have a dynamic IP and frequent power outages/router lockups my IP changes several times a week so think this unlikely.
Again, again, perhaps I'm just being paranoid and it's just 'coincidence' ?
Deano :)