The Inherit Dangers Of Nextdoor And How It’s Really Facebook 2.0

Like any other person, at first, I was intrigued by the idea of getting to know your neighbor. So I decided to sign up and check out the site nextdoor.com. After a few minutes, I noticed a similar pattern, and no, it was not the complete ripoff of Facebook’s wall design (American “innovation” nowadays). It Was happening everywhere, people ranting, complaining, whining, everyone’s an “expert,” you know, the same mental disease that is rampant across all self-proclaimed “social” networks. This problem got worse during the holidays, the hyper-feminine neighborhood soyboys felt entitled to their ways, and every neighbor had to comply.

During my testing, I began to post random rants and content to test out and study their algorithms’ flagging and censorship mechanics, which ended up basic, mob, or moderator rule. At some point, an appointed neighborhood “Lead” or snitch was introduced as a tertiary mechanism. As time progressed, the site became a mouthpiece for local governments, mandated posts you can’t comment on, flag, or remove. A Flood of COVID ads everywhere primarily sponsored the local municipalities and shoved down your throat with no way to opt-out. If you asked the wrong questions about COVID or any “sensitive” subject for that matter, you would get a canned notice the next time you log in. The warning was generalized or vague, only highlighting misinformation. If you’d continue, you could safely assume your account would be suspended indefinitely to protect the idiocracy. For me, this was a huge red flag, especially when recognizing the same evolving pattern from Facebook, pretending to be a place for people to meet and have discourse. At the same time, a single narrative is being propagated and used to manipulate behavior, all thanks to their centralized ivory tower.

After a month of being active on the platform, I concluded that Nextdoor is again for the self-absorbed sheep that didn’t learn from Facebook and probably never will. Plain and simple, the platform presents a clear and present danger to any country that uses it. Why would I say that? Because they mimic Facebook in every way, except their local content/data is more accurate. Nextdoor is also much better at staying under the radar while being more aggressive; they have quietly mapped out all US communities or countries with access. They then give or sell unknown access to the highest bidder, which could then monitor the local community’s opinions, sentiment, dissent. They can use various datasets from others users to create algorithms to find patterns within their ecosystem. That data can then be weaponized to identify a specific category, people, targets, or forecast behavior. As with Facebook, the possibilities are endless.

Before deactivating my test account, I requested a copy of my user dataset. After a few minutes, I had a nice zip file with my partial history in various .csv files:

  • Comments
  • Days Active
  • Devices
  • Email Notification Preferences
  • Invitations Sent
  • Posts
  • Private Messages
  • Profile Information
  • Push Notification Preferences
  • Reactions
  • Recommendations
  • Seasonal Activities
  • Targets Ads
  • Topics
  • Verification Information

When I had the chance, I did not use their app as the permissions it was asking for were ridiculous and out of context of what would be necessary to interact with the platform. In other words, it was invasive privacy-wise. If I had used their app, I would probably have another file called Tracking with a log of geolocations pings, unless, of course, that is part of what you don’t get to see. For your safety, of course…

The Danger Of A Malicious User Or State-Actor

During my time testing the platform with a fake account, I built a simple python script that would scrape the entire neighborhood. After only a few hours, I was able to :

  • Identify and Categorize Neighbors based on Race
  • Identify Neighbors with Metal Disease/Issues
  • Identify and Categorize Complainers
  • Identify Trolls
  • Identify Violent Neighbors
  • Areas with most crime
  • Veterans

With more time, and a little ML, the possibilities would have been endless. Map, identify, correlate, you name it. My advice is to stay off any social network that is not decentralized, period, or be ready to have your profile open-sourced to the highest bidder.

“Remember Remember The 5th Of November… We Are Legion, Expect Us!” – Anonymous

Its been a couple of months now since Anonymous made their plans public, to destroy Facebook on the 5th of November.
I for one can’t wait to see what happens, as a network engineer I can say it’s totally possible.
How is it possible might you ask? There are actually many ways what will be particularly interesting to me is which one they use. Some methods will only disrupt service, some can actually destroy it.
For the most part I agree with their actions, government is out of control mechanizing every aspect of life, and becoming extremely intrusive under the guise of “security”. What does Facebook actually have do with government right? EVERYTHING…

 

If we look back to January 2011 when Goldman Sachs announced their investment into Facebook – 450 Million to be exact ( One of Many Sources ). Why would Goldman Sachs invest into Facebook? because of Facebook advertising revenues?
One thing is for sure I don’t trust Goldman Sachs, they don’t seem to have a good history, especially in the past couple of years. Maybe it’s because they wanted control or access information they could monetize ( One of Many Sources ).
Clandestine Agencies could use this data to generate massive databases with physiological profiles of every person in the world. In fact this surely has already begun years ago ( Project In-Q-Tel ). How you might ask? Easy, by creating logical algorithmic bots that makes/processes decisions based on calculation, for example:

 

  1. A Bot (or in some ways AI Software) setup on a computer can go to any Facebook profile/fan page.
  2. The bot begins to scrape all the page data and categorizes by relation/type and stores it.
  3. After Storing, the Bot begins to go though all the followers/likes/subscribers/friends, meticulously categorizing them by predetermined psychological/physiological values. Everyone in someway is connected or exploited into giving up their personal information.
  4. After accessing all your relationships it begins creating physiological profiles about you, what you typically do, act and why you do the things you do. Where you live and you visit the most, what time of the year you might typically be gone… you get the picture.
  5. Now we have all these advertisements in our faces about things you might have been subliminally thinking about getting. All suggested by a mathematical calculation of your personal data. This already happens, Gmail is a great example of this. When you log in for the first time into your Gmail account you get some random ad but as you continue to use it receiving and sending emails the adds become more personal. This is done by reading your email then analyzing it for any suggestions of wants or needs, popular topics etc…

 

Weaponization of Social Networks has already been done, by using social networks to sway/steer public opinion or create Fan pages used to capture potential political activists, an already known fact ( one of many sources )

Imagine the power any Clandestine agency would have with this kind of knowledge. What if Facebook has been selling it to them to capitalize on an until recently – actual business model. If you recall until Facebook started their marketing platform they really didn’t generate any money. Sustaining a 200-500 Million Network isn’t cheap, being innovative isn’t either. Whatever happens I hope its for the good but if it’s one day discovered that Facebook was purposely selling private information, it will destroy them.

 

What do you think? Is it right or wrong? do you agree or disagree?

Removing Facebook ‘like’ feature to protect anonymity.

I Decided to remove the Facebook ‘like’ feature from my blog and company blog. I didn’t want any government tracking being done based on any similar opinions someone might have. Although I do believe in security I still believe people should have the right to be anonymous and still share their opinion. Also Facebook is getting old and as a professional the look and feel of Facebook does not fit business. Aside from privacy issues, any person can go through the process of socially engineering its victim into accepting a stalkers invite (A living nightmare). Imagine what you could learn about someone right away by simply looking into their profile and relationships, after all you are who you hang out with. This is already being done, redundant databases are being generated about any living person based oh a physiological profile. Guess who is helping with this large task? Facebook fits the perfect model for any intelligence agency, Facebook generates databases based on self inputted user data, some of your most private facts can be found in one way or another on Facebook. Lets not mention all your relationships and their psychological profles, all this information used to create a calculated profile about you. Now imagine a very dangerous person after you and he knows everything about you and who you hang out with. All this only because you decided to share your opinion.
At this point in time I would rather give any visitor the choice of privacy.
For business I will remain using Facebook but only as a marketing node used to direct traffic.

Hello To The Regulated Internet, The Death of Social Media

People now days have no idea that there is a storm coming. This storm is one that very few people know about and its coming fast. Laws are currently being presented and passed that is breaking down the very fabric which makes the internet so powerful. These laws are presented to us as part of “security” precautions but are really a double edged sword.

It is important that we do not let the government regulate the internet, in doing so we will give them the power to control our history our time and lives. Once a government controls the flow of information what will stop it from censoring it? What will stop it from controlling the truths and lies? Who will want to speak their mind, people will lose in the end as speaking out will become a possible crime. It’s a sad reality which every day seems to draw nearer. I still sit and ponder how people all around the US have no Idea that this is going on. They are too busy distracted by just about everything designed to distract them and its working.

So what will happen in the end? Will we be induced back to the monotheistic concept or will we be told once again the world is flat? The idea of controlled information is daunting and with great reason, If anyone can control information they control the histories of the world and as I have noticed, there is something wrong with them too.
Social media will be like being at a local bar with police officers at every table, and the bartender… you guessed it another police officer, for security purposes of course :P

Phishing Scams, Thank You Facebook Apps?

I’ve been around for a very long time. Phishing is one of the oldest traits on the www, using shady methods to obtain user info. In recent weeks I have noticed a escalation in Malicious Facebook Applications. Although this has a positive side it also has a negative, the negative sometimes being your information is stolen through a fake app designed to scrape your personal information. Who would want your person information right? How about data providers… who else could find a way to monetize user information, why not sell it to marketers? Marketers need an audience even though sometimes they aren’t listening. Large repositories of information are always sold online to buyers who need an target audience or demographic.

The Facebook App hack seems to work like this:

  • First you create a fake app through an account.
  • Once the App is completed you deploy it from the compromised account
  • A compromised account can be successfully harvested within 10 minutes at your local coffee shop
  • With the compromised account create an attractive Wall post; Want To Know Who Is Stalking Your Profile? Install this App Find Out Who!
  • Once a user installs the app, all there personal information has been scraped and possibly account hacked
    • This technique along with good bots can make quite the successful harvesting.

      Make sure you don’t just install an App because your friend installed it and has a wall post promoting it. Make sure you know enough about any app before installing it.
      Or else you will end up with lot’s of spam in your inbox and possibly your account suspended.