The Time To Get Off Of Facebook Is Now.

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H

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,059
73
91
Facebook has caught a lot of media attention and raised a lot of questions about their security and privacy policies. I don't have a facebook page, and now, I'm glad I don't. As of today, whatever you thought about those issues may be about to get much worse -- enough so that you may want to dump yours and clear out as much of your personal info as possible.

As an AT Senior Mod/Admin, I'm one of those who spends a lot of my forum time stomping spammers. What has motivated me to post this is that, today, Facebook got a major infusion of cash from Golman Sachs and a company called, Digital Sky Technologies, a major investment firm from one of the major sources of e-mail and forum spam, porn and malware, Russia!

Facebook investor DST comes with ties to Alisher Usmanov and the Kremlin

Three Goldman Sachs bankers, Alexander Tamas, Verdi Israelian and John Lindfors joined DST over the past three years

By SUSANNE CRAIG and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Goldman Sachs has reached out to its wealthy private clients, offering them a chance to invest in Facebook, the hot social networking giant that is considering a possible public offering in 2012, according to people familiar with the matter.

Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian firm behind Goldman Sachs's $450m (&#163;290m) investment in Facebook, boasts an eye-catching set of relationships of its own &#8211; including close ties with the investment bank, billionaire Arsenal suitor Alisher Usmanov and the Kremlin.

Three well known Goldman bankers have joined DST over the past three years: Alexander Tamas in 2008; Verdi Israelian in 2009; and John Lindfors last June, while Goldman led November's $5.7bn flotation of Russian internet business Mail.ru, which was spun out of DST last year.

DST was founded by Yuri Milner, pictured right, and Gregory Finger in 2005 and the company initially bought 2&#37; of Facebook for &#163;200m in 2009. That stake is now owned by Mail.ru but some estimates now put DST's stake at almost 10%. DST will pick up $50m of Goldman's $450m investment, which will be held through its DST Global division along with other internet investments including Zynga and Groupon.

Usmanov, the Uzbek oligarch who owns 27% of Arsenal football club, has an undisclosed stake in DST Global. He also owns 27% of Mail.ru, which entitles him to two representatives &#8211; Vladimir Streshinsky and Matthew Hammond &#8211; on the company's nine-strong board. DST has admitted that its association with a man who spent a spell in Soviet prison during the 1980s &#8211; albeit on charges he claims were trumped-up &#8211; initially caused "a lot of reservations" in Silicon Valley, although the company appears to have few such problems in Russia.

A Moscow source said: "DST has the backing of the big boys at the top in the Kremlin, which is why it will go from strength to strength."

A DST spokesman said: "Yuri Milner in his personal capacity is a member of the president's commission on modernisation. In this capacity he acts as an adviser on the promotion of broadband development and electronic government in Russia. However, there is no substance to the suggestion that DST receives any formal support from the Kremlin."
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I don't know whether this will bother anyone or makes you re-think whether you want to continue on Facebook, but I thought our members should at least be aware of this.
 
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Numenorean

Diamond Member
Oct 26, 2008
4,442
1
0
There really isn't anything personal on my facebook that any spammer could use to do anything.
 
KeithTalent

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
Administrator
Nov 30, 2005
50,231
118
116
Good PSA. I dropped Facebook due to crazy and annoying women, but spamming would be another good reason to get rid of it.

KT
 
shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
80,287
17,081
136
I have a page, it has nothing on it but bullcrap.

I know better than to constantly update the world with my exact locations and actions. Good way to get killed or blackmailed.
 
Skitzer

Skitzer

Diamond Member
Mar 20, 2000
4,414
3
81
Not sure how to take this. Care to elaborate on the future consequences of having a Facebook account in the light of this information?
 
IndyColtsFan

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,655
688
126
rudeguy said:
WIN!

My whole family and 90% of my friends use FB to spam or post emo bullshit. I've gone there a whole 2 times in the past 2 weeks.
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I block people who post emo crap or "poor me" stories, but Facebook does suck and I wonder why I even bother having a page. I typically only post to make fun of someone.
 
BeauJangles

BeauJangles

Lifer
Aug 26, 2001
13,941
1
0
Skitzer said:
Not about this ... fill me in
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Now that they've invested, Facebook will sync its database with the Kremlin and the FSB while simultaneously giving spammers the ability to troll their data. This is clearly what is going to happen. It makes sense.
 
Printer Bandit

Printer Bandit

Lifer
Mar 16, 2005
13,856
109
106
jim-halpert-facebook.JPG
 
A

Alone

Diamond Member
Nov 19, 2006
7,490
0
0
EVERYONE PANIC!! ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IS NOW IN THE HANDS OF THE DEVIL!

Oh, wait, all the information I've made available on Facebook is available just about everywhere else, too, including a phone book or other public record.

But let's all get bent out of shape over absolutely nothing and act as if someone is out to get us, as if any of us are that important. :rolleyes:

Get over yourselves. Don't like Facebook? Don't use it.
 
H

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,059
73
91
Skitzer said:
Not sure how to take this. Care to elaborate on the future consequences of having a Facebook account in the light of this information?
Click to expand...

Sure. I deal with a lot of the spammers that try to hit the forums, and I stop far more of them before they post than anyone other than our mods ever see. I see a lot of the underlying tricks they use, and they scare me.

Spam is crass, and porn is ugly, but what worries me most is cyber-warfare. Specifically, even if you're smart enough not to click questionable links in spam e-mail, if you click a link to a page from anywhere, including facebook or on the forums, you may end up on a url that plants a trojan on your system that does absolutely nothing... until the people who planted it launch a DDOS attack.

This has happened to major firme, and I'm sure it will happen again. Our infrasctructure is on the web. Our financial institutions are on the web. Our governement and defense agencies are on the web. The bad guys don't have to hack into them to bring their daily activities to a screeching halt. All they have to do is tie up their servers with a flood of requests.

Then, there's whatever information you actually have posted on facebook and all the info they can derive from your system just because you landed on one of their pages. And don't think you can recognize a questionable url when you see it. With url shorteners, you may not know where you're going until it's too late. That's why we've started censoring any url shorteners that are used by spammers, which is most of them.

I don't trust any of them, but I can tell you from personal experience that Russian spammers are among the worst. I don't know if their government is involved, but they doen't seem to be inclined to do much to stop it.
 
BeauJangles

BeauJangles

Lifer
Aug 26, 2001
13,941
1
0
Harvey said:
Sure. I deal with a lot of the spammers that try to hit the forums, and I stop far more of them before they post than anyone other than our mods ever see. I see a lot of the underlying tricks they use, and they scare me.

Spam is crass, and porn is ugly, but what worries me most is cyber-warfare. Specifically, even if you're smart enough not to click questionable links in spam e-mail, if you click a link to a page from anywhere, including facebook or on the forums, you may end up on a url that plants a trojan on your system that does absolutely nothing... until the people who planted it launch a DDOS attack.

This has happened to major firme, and I'm sure it will happen again. Our infrasctructure is on the web. Our financial institutions are on the web. Our governement and defense agencies are on the web. The bad guys don't have to hack into them to bring their daily activities to a screeching halt. All they have to do is tie up their servers with a flood of requests.

Then, there's whatever information you actually have posted on facebook and all the info they can derive from your system just because you landed on one of their pages. And don't think you can recognize a questionable url when you see it. With url shorteners, you may not know where you're going until it's too late. That's why we've started censoring any url shorteners that are used by spammers, which is most of them.

I don't trust any of them, but I can tell you from personal experience that Russian spammers are among the worst. I don't know if their government is involved, but they doen't seem to be inclined to do much to stop it.
Click to expand...

So because the *gasp* Russians invested in Facebook this is now a problem? Give me a fucking break. Facebook isn't about to turn over their data to an investor, if anyone is going to abuse it to make money, it's Facebook themselves who have no qualms about using your demographic data, your work history, or your interests to sell ads at you.

Goldman and a Russian company investing in Facebook doesn't suddenly make us more vulnerable to cyber warfare.
 
911paramedic

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
I have one profile pic and the year I graduated HS, that's about it. I knew enough about the apps stealing all my info so I didn't use them but my friends are another story, so I removed all my stuff.

I like being able to keep in touch with old friends, so I kept the account.
 
R

RavenSEAL

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2010
8,661
3
0
I have a facebook page, i just don't use the hell out of it like many (sick/crazy) people do.
 
olds

olds

Elite Member
Mar 3, 2000
50,122
778
126
So I should take my social security and credit card numbers off my page? :confused:
 
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