10 October 2019

If We Enforced the Law, Half of San Jose Would be in Jail

I am referring, or course to the recent revelations that Twitter collected users phone numbers for 2 factor authentication and then sold them to advertisers.

The Silicon Valley business models are increasingly indistinguishable from fraud and various forms or racketeering:
When some users provided Twitter with their phone number to make their account more secure, the company used this information for advertising purposes, according to a blog post from Twitter published on Tuesday.

This isn't the first time that a large social network has taken information explicitly meant for the purposes of security, and then quietly or accidentally use it for something else entirely. Facebook did something similar with phone numbers provided by users for two-factor authentication, the company confirmed last year.

"We recently discovered that when you provided an email address or phone number for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) this data may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes, specifically in our Tailored Audiences and Partner Audiences advertising system," Twitter's announcement reads.

In short, when an advertiser using Twitter uploaded their own marketing list of email addresses or phone numbers, Twitter may have matched the list to people on Twitter "based on the email or phone number the Twitter account holder provided for safety and security purposes," the post adds.

"This was an error and we apologize," it read.
This wasn't error, it was greed and a disdain for their users, who are, after all, not customers, but the protect that they sell to their customers, the advertisers.

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