Facebook is vile, but banning it in Russia is wrong

I then deleted my Facebook account and then re-upped it in 2005 and have not been able to get off the stupid thing since. So I am a super—

So why can't you get off? What are your— You guys!

It's not that kind of podcast.

Smashing Security, episode 75: Quitting Facebook with Carole Theriault and Graham Cluley. Graham Cluley. Hello, hello, and welcome to Smashing Security episode 75. My name is Graham Cluley.

I'm Carole Theriault.

And we're joined this week by a returning guest, Maria Varmazis. Hello, Maria.

Hi. Hello, Maria.

Hello.

Hi, everyone.

Are you all right? You sound a little bit tired.

I'm just a little sleepy. It's all good.

Oh, do we bore you? Is that what's going on?

So tedious.

Yawn.

Yeah, I'll be okay. My energy will get up. I just had a late night due to baby stuff. So I'll be okay. I'll be all right.

Because you've got a baby. It's not that you're trying to have another baby. Or you haven't given birth overnight, have you? That would not be a good reason to.

Oh no, my uterus is not that uber. No.

Do Uber do uteruses now? Is that what you just said?

Yeah, you didn't know Uber for uteruses? It's a thing.

What?

Copyright Maria Varmazis, please don't pitch that. That's mine. It's my retirement plan.

This is a special Splintergun Logical— no, it isn't. It's a special Splinter episode all about quitting Facebook. That's all we're going to talk about. We are going to discuss whether you should quit Facebook.

Yes, you should.

And how you can quit Facebook right after our sponsor break.

This episode of Smashing Security is sponsored by LastPass. LastPass Enterprise makes password security effortless for your organization. LastPass Enterprise simplifies password management for companies of every size with the right tools to secure your business with centralised control of employee passwords and applications. But LastPass isn't just for enterprises. It's an equally great solution for business teams, families, and single users. Go to smashingsecurity.com/lastpass to see why LastPass is the trusted enterprise password manager of over 33,000 businesses. Right, Facebook. Get me off it, kids.

Yeah, exactly. So are we all on Facebook?

Yep. Well, no.

Well, I don't know. I'm deactivated on Facebook, which I understand to be that I am still lurking on there but not locatable.

Oh, okay. So if I go onto Facebook right now, let's open a little window right now. Excuse my typing here. And I enter Carole Theriault into the search.

Yeah, do vomit on my name because that's so nice of you.

And— oh no, there are other Carole Theriault there, but there's not you.

Can we be sure?

So this basically means— I don't know what it means. What if we were friends? Were we friends on the Facebook? Does it say anything in your feed that I've disappeared, or have I just kind of gone away?

You don't appear, and we were Facebook friends. I remember that. Unless you unfriended me. And so I've received no notification that you deactivated. You just disappeared into the mist.

Okay, that's good. So it's not that anyone feels dissed by me. Like, Carole left you.

It's not like AOL Instant Messenger where you hear the door close sound or ICQ where it went "uh-oh," or whatever. Anyway, sorry.

I'm pissed because I was on Facebook, but I was on it quite responsibly. If you remember, Graham, we did a lot of Facebook security training very early on in Facebook's birth and its growth.

Sounds like a disease.

I never got apps. I never played Facebook apps. I didn't share any pictures. I didn't like people posting pictures of me. And still my data could be compromised simply because I was friends with people that may not have been as privacy aware as me. Actually, it probably wouldn't have mattered. Someone somewhere downloaded some game that hoovered up all my data.

So yeah, I mean, I know you've had a Facebook account for a long time. In fact, Carole, it was you who got me onto Facebook way back when. I think maybe because you are Canadian.

I did hear about it early because everyone, a lot of people at my university.

That was it.

Yeah. And Canada was quite an early adopter of Facebook.

Well, back then is when it was universities only. It was only for certain colleges in the US. That's when I joined, when it was still in beta.

Oh, well, aren't you cool? Well, thank you very much, Maria, because thanks to people like you, we're in this mess.

I'm a Facebook hipster. I then deleted my Facebook account and then re-upped it in 2005 and have not been able to get off the stupid thing since. So I am a super—

So why can't you get off? What are your— You guys, the sun is still shining in all our time zones.

For a while, Carole has been wanting to have an agony aunt section on the show. So let's talk about this. Why can't you get off Facebook?

Facebook.

Why can't I quit Facebook? Why can't you quit Facebook? Otherwise it's not that kind of podcast. Well, is it?

No.

It's, I hate Facebook and I can't quit it. And I feel like everyone else I know on Facebook feels exactly the same way with the exclusion of old people who just adore it.

Okay, but why?

I'll tell you why. Because people don't like to miss out.

It's formal.

Because their friends are there, or because you have family who are distant. And it's a really easy and lazy way of continuing to feel connected with people.

I can tell you, I've seen so many times people doing the, "I'm just taking a step away from Facebook," or, "I'm temporarily deleting my account," and then a week later, a month later, the person is inevitably back because their social life completely dies. You don't know what events are going on, you forget somebody's birthday, nobody wants to email you anymore, nobody answers the phone anymore.

Is that what's wrong with my life?

Have you noticed that you have no friends? Because this might be why.

No, no, I have too many to even look after.

Oh well, la-dee-da.

And they're real friends, you know, from real life.

I feel like you're a corner case though.

Yeah, maybe. Or a lucky one.

Yeah, your friends keep in touch outside of Facebook and you hate Facebook and deleting it will be super easy for you. Whereas for a lot of us who want to quit Facebook, it's like, well, we will literally have no way to keep in touch with people.

The thing is, it's so much easier to click the like button on someone's Facebook update than it is to pick up the phone.

That's so true.

Isn't it? And say, hey, how are you? And you feel like, oh, I've done that now. And they'll see a little, oh look, they said they like the picture of my child or whatever it was, or the holiday I'm on. That's nice. And you continue to feel connected.

And you get that little adrenaline rush, right? Or whatever, dopamine rush.

And from that point of view, I think Facebook's pretty good. What I don't like is that people, of course, give this curated image of themselves on social networks, you know, where they're, "Oh, aren't I fantastic? Look at me, I'm doing my warrior pose at the yoga." That's like the max of your familiarity with yoga. I'm doing my sun salutation.

Me having yet another amazing day out with my amazing friends.

What you don't typically do is you don't post up things saying, "Oh God, I hate my life." Yeah, because if you do that, everybody's going to be like, 'Are you okay?' Or, 'Oh, they're such a drama queen.' So you can't do that either.

You can't be keeping it real because then you feel like I'm totally missed out. Now tell me, did you use your Facebook login? Because you could use Facebook to log into other apps, right?

Yeah, I did.

And is that another reason why it's hard to walk away?

Yes.

Or that's not the leading reason? Or is that the leading reason?

It's not the leading reason, but it's extremely annoying. I'm a Spotify user, and it's one of the many apps where you can create your account just by saying, just create your account with Facebook. You just click this button. It's super easy. And I did that. And there's no way for me to easily disassociate my account without literally deleting my old account and creating a new one. And then I'll lose my playlists and my albums. I have to recreate all that stuff I've done.

And at the time, a lot of people created these accounts on third-party sites using the Facebook login process because they thought, well, this is perhaps more secure because I don't have to remember different passwords. I don't have to generate passwords. Facebook's going to handle it. And this site which I'm signing up for, I don't have to worry about them looking after my password because they're using the whole Facebook process instead. So I think this is a really valuable thing for people to remember if they are considering quitting Facebook is what the impact will be on any other apps and websites which might be—

Suck it up, get off Facebook.

Well, yes, I agree with that. So here's my first reason why I think you should leave Facebook. The way you can convince yourself that you've shared too much information on Facebook is to download a copy of your Facebook data, right? There is a link, and we will put it in the show notes, which you can go to on Facebook. And regardless of whether you plan to quit or not, download your data. It will download all the photos that you've posted and all the messages and all kinds of other stuff as well. You will be horrified.

Yeah.

Most people will be stunned at just how much information they have given over the years, because many people will have been on the site for years and years and years. And at that point, you begin to think, crikey, I volunteered so much information, information which I would never have given to a phishing site, information I would never have given to some scammer or fraudster ringing up on the phone. I have willingly given to Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies, and what on earth are they planning to do?

And then you realize how come all the ads are so perfectly targeted to your insecurities on the site, right?

Right, because they've learned all about you and the groups that you've liked and the things which you've given a thumbs up to, or the—

Yeah, you should go on. I bet, Maria, if you go on right now, there'll be ads for caffeine or Red Bull ads to gee you up.

I'm weird. I don't actually post much personal stuff on Facebook. I post political things and memes. I don't post about my life. I don't post about my family. I'm a little weird in how I use Facebook.

All right. We've all had a good whinge about Facebook. Let's tell our glorious audience different ways in which they can quit Facebook. And I'm going to start off with the simplest thing you can do, which is not a complete cutoff, but it is called turning off the Facebook platform. That is the thing which basically Facebook uses to integrate you with third-party apps and websites. It's the thing which powers the like buttons which appear on third-party sites, which can of course track you around the internet, which isn't terribly nice either.

So this is different from deactivating your account?

It is. This is a different level. This is turning off the level one, what we call Facebook platform. Yeah. And this is the thing which was exploited by Cambridge Analytica's app, or the app which gave them the data, which allowed, for instance, your friends to give your information to other people as well. So this is— if you're not ready to leave Facebook for whatever reason, you might want to consider turning off the Facebook platform. So we're going to include a link where you can do that. It's deep within the settings, and what it will mean is that all posts by apps and games and things like that will be removed from your timeline. You won't be able to log into apps or games and websites using Facebook. Oh, wow, I live.

I just did it.

How will Maria get her Spotify playlists?

I just tried it, and now I'm really curious how broken my Spotify account is. But I just did it. I actually didn't know that. Good job.

You can always turn it on back again, you know, if you need to temporarily. You're also going to lose other information like your high scores in games and your favourite places. Oh, diddums. Oh dear, you've lost all that. But that is the most private I think you can really make Facebook without deleting the account altogether. So there you are, disable Facebook platform.

Is this a new feature that they've put out?

Nope, this has been around for some time. It's just been hidden deep, deep down in the settings, and so most people never ever find out about it.

That pisses me off as well. I was trying to permanently delete my account originally, and I found it so difficult to find the information that I ended up just deactivating.

You need to listen to this podcast.

Tell me, but I'm going to shut up right now.

You take the floor.

So the next step is doing what Carole has done, which is deactivating the account. So you can deactivate your Facebook account temporarily and choose to come back whenever you like. Yippee, right? When you change your mind. So at the moment, you won't find Carole on Facebook. Carole could log back in if she wanted to, but right now, no one can see your profile. No one can search for you.

I'll tell you one thing that's a bit annoying about the deactivating your account bit. So you deactivate it, and then of course you kind of want to check to see if you're not on it. And as soon as you log in, if you're using a password manager, it obviously just fills in the login page as you get there. And bish bash bosh, you gotta do the whole deactivation again. So you can't get a friend to look to see if you've been removed.

Well, so what you need to do is you need to create a second account purely for testing if the other one exists.

I just got off it 'cause I don't want to be anywhere near it.

That's crazy.

Well, Facebook shareholders are gonna love this, Carole. How are they gonna get to 3 billion users?

I've got friends. Maria, I'll call you. You're not getting off anytime soon. I'll just go, hey, Maria.

All right. We got to use a different phrase.

What different phrase?

Quitting Facebook.

Oh, getting off.

I actually, I have, I actually have two Facebook accounts. Yeah. And I know I have three. Yeah. I have a bunch that I use for testing stuff. It's terrible.

Anyway.

Yeah.

So you can do that if you want to. Right now, once you've deactivated some information, like messages you sent to friends, they're still probably going to be visible. Okay, so you don't clean up everything which you posted around the place. Your friends may even still see your name in their friends list, but it won't go any further beyond that. But also keep in mind that if you deactivate your Facebook account, your Messenger account, which is like their IM system, that will remain active. So disabling Facebook Messenger is a whole separate thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me make a note. Because you can actually use Facebook Messenger without, I think, a Facebook account. I don't know. Certainly with a deactivated account, it appears that Facebook Messenger continues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That seems very much by design. You know, there are sort of third-party options that you can use that are sort of an in-between the deactivating and the restricting. Have you heard about the Firefox extension that puts Facebook in its own little container tab?

Oh no, tell me, tell me.

So basically, if you're not ready to even go as far as deactivating, but you want to just really, really slap the hand on Facebook and say, you need to stop talking to all the other websites I go to, there's a Firefox extension that you can install that will make sure that if you're in Facebook, Facebook can only talk to a Facebook page and it will not start sniffing around the other pages that you're visiting.

The way they describe it, it sort of isolates your Facebook identity from the rest of the web, which does mean that all of those like buttons, which are distributed so far and wide across the internet, won't be able to communicate back. They won't know that you're logged into Facebook as well.

So I hate to ask this, Maria, but how do you know that this is a trusted plugin?

It's actually created by Mozilla. Yeah, that's a very good question. But yeah, Mozilla actually created this.

So it's called Facebook Container. Cool. Now I don't use—I use Firefox regularly, but one of the things that I've done is I've updated my ad blocker with specific code and rules which block any like buttons from working on pages when I visit them, because I don't want Facebook knowing which pages that I'm going to and gathering data about my movements around the internet if I do accidentally leave myself logged into Facebook. And that's something else which you can do with a blocker as well. But this is all kind of really nitty-gritty advice. I think maybe the push for this podcast is how are you going to stop giving any data to Zuckerberg? So right after this sponsor break, we're going to talk about how you can actually delete your Facebook account entirely.

This episode of Smashing Security is sponsored by LastPass. LastPass simplifies password management for companies of every size, but it isn't just for enterprises. It's equally a great solution for business teams, families, and single users. Learn more at smashingsecurity.com/lastpass. LastPass.

So let's go nuclear now.

Finally.

And let's permanently delete our account. So I've put the link in the show notes. We can find out where to do this at facebook.com/help/delete_account. Pretty hidden away, to be honest. You have to go hunting for it if you do want to do it. And you will get this big fat warning says if you don't think you're going to use Facebook again and would really like your account deleted. We can take care of this for you. Bear in mind, you will not be able to reactivate your account. So really, they want you to deactivate rather than delete your account.

Exactly.

I'm falling into their trap by just being deactivated rather than deleted. So I have no qualms about getting off. All the reasons you guys gave don't hold any water with me.

I think you're really lucky. I mean, you never really got—Smart, Maria.

Brainy.

Very smart. You saw this problem coming a mile away. I mean, you were able to not get tangled up in all of this, but a lot of us are, and it's—I wish I could just hit delete. I really wish I could.

I promise you'll survive if you do it.

Oh, I know I will. I just will never ever know what's going on in my social group ever again.

Just take up another habit like crystal meth. No, come on.

Probably takes less time than Facebook.

My skin might suffer a little bit.

So girls, what do you think happens when you press the delete my account button?

Are you sure?

Are you really, really sure?

Please, please don't kill us. Please, please.

Here's a picture of Mark Zuckerberg's dog. Isn't it cute? Why don't you friend that?

Are you sure?

No. What it actually does is nothing. Does nothing for a few days because it's given you a chance to change your mind.

Of course. So they say psychological warfare.

Are you sure?

We will delay deletion of your account for a few days. So you have that instant regret. Oh, should I really have done that? Maybe I shouldn't. I wonder what I'm missing. Because that evening you're thinking, I wonder if anyone's posted any funny cat memes.

Your grandma calls you up, "You did what? How am I gonna share my favorite do you remember from the 1920s memes?"

Is that what your granny voice sounds like?

If you try and log back into your Facebook account after pressing that delete button in the first few days, it's gonna be like you deactivated it. Your request is cancelled, yippee, and your account is back. And Facebook says it can take up to 90 days, up to 3 months to delete data they may have stored in their backup systems. But it says during that time, your information isn't available on Facebook publicly.

I think that's the length of time that addicts are often told— that's the first phase of being clean is 3 months. So that's interesting.

Now, the other thing is that some information isn't actually stored in your account, which means that you're not going to delete everything. If you've been communicating, if you've been sending messages to friends and things, they're still going to have those messages in their inboxes.

Yeah, it doesn't scrub their account.

Exactly.

Unless you're Mark Zuckerberg, and then you can have your messages mysteriously disappear.

He did do that.

He did. But we can't have that capability now.

It was the equivalent of you, Crow. Do you remember, Crow, when you sent some— I think you replied to all something not entirely appropriate.

I was telling someone off, wasn't I?

How do I retract that email?

Yes, I yanked the cable out of the back of the computer. This was before Wi-Fi. I don't know what I'd do now.

It was that Terminator 2 moment.

Yeah.

Throw yourself across the desk. And Graham was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, nothing. But I saved it. It didn't go. I don't know how I managed it.

So that is how you do it. We've put the link in there and that will delete your account. And the thing is, whatever privacy steps you take, even if shutting down platform and things like that, if you continue to have a Facebook account, you're still sharing information with Facebook. And you have to ask yourself, do you trust this organization with your information?

And I do 100%.

You do?

100%.

That has been extremely clear from this entire podcast.

And think about how much time you're going to— extra time you're going to get back in your life because you're not constantly checking Facebook. You'll probably go on to some other social network instead.

Yeah, I've got TweetDeck open.

I mean, so I think I'm going to delete my account. Right.

Are you?

I have deleted it before.

I know.

And what happened with me was about 5 years ago, I started working for myself and I thought I should really probably have a Facebook account because I need to promote, well, the podcast and need to promote the blog and things like that. Right.

Rik Astley.

And so I started creating the community. Now I closed down my blog page. I told them I'm not going to update it anymore and it's going to be deleted. Carole, what we haven't discussed is what should we do about the Smashing Security Facebook group?

I was just going to ask about that. Yeah.

I've never been on it.

No, I've noticed that.

Of course you haven't.

I haven't been on it. So, you know, I love that they're there, but I'm not going to miss them. Well, I say, you know, get in touch via old school methods. Send me a letter. Handwritten letter.

Postcard campaign for Smashing Security.

Exactly. Postcards.

Carole, this is our fan base. Right now, the one thing that is stopping me from deleting my personal account is that it is the administrator for our Smashing Security Facebook group.

I don't care.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

This is your— you're— you're—

I—

Hey, I love Smashing Security. I am not— I am not—

What's Angelina going to say?

I'm just reading the group chat.

What are they gonna do? We've got some people who love us up there, Carole.

Well, they can love us. Why does that stop them loving us?

Hang on, Andrew Angelina. Geoff.

Oh good, that's good. That's good GDPR practice. Read all their full names off on the air.

Oh, I'm gonna have to get the bleeper out, am I?

Tony. Bronwyn.

Let's just, you know what, let's just look right now. I'm sure I have a lighter or a match somewhere in the house near the barbecue. I am gonna hold up a little flame for all our Facebook fans.

And when you find yourself on dodgy networks, doo doo doo, we're going to press delete. Okay. So we're going to kill off the Smashing Security Facebook group. Oh no!

Wow.

Because we don't want to give anybody another reason to stay on Facebook, right? I'm sure we're not the only reason they're on Facebook, but why should we make it— I'm pretty damn sure that's not the case. Why should we add to the difficulty of quitting the addiction?

Yeah. Confession time. You are the only reason I am still on Facebook.

Ignore everything else I've said.

In this podcast. That's actually the reason.

So we're going to go through this process. First of all, we're going to download our data. We're going to check that we don't have any websites or third-party apps which are associated with our Facebook login. And if they are, we'll recreate accounts on those sites without using Facebook logins. Okay. Or we just ditch the apps because what are they thinking? And we'll zap the Smashing Security Facebook group. Sorry guys. Thank you for all the support. Go and join us on Twitter.

Yeah, on Twitter instead. Yeah.

So much better.

Well, that's the question. Now, what's the alternative? Is there anything like Facebook which we actually like? I don't know that there is.

I mean, a lot of people say go to Instagram, but that's owned by Facebook.

Well, yeah, exactly.

That's where all the younger folks tend to be at, and that's— it's owned by Facebook. So, you know, the exit is right there.

I say go old school. Go old school. Send an ad in the paper, Graham.

I will get on my donkey and I will ride over and I'll talk to you in person. It'll be about 3 months till I get there because I have to take a boat.

Why don't you start doing a town crier thing in the city?

That's probably great.

Yeah, and Maria would be amazing.

Oh my God, I could do it.

You could.

I think my main qualm is that it's super easy to quit Facebook if you

I think that may be sensible advice because otherwise you'll just jump back in again.

never really use it to begin with, but if you're really, really in, you have Yeah, it's too hard to go— And that will sort of force you to really,

You guys with your addiction advice.

Well, I mean, okay, so here's what I like.

Cheese sandwiches, find them hard to stop.

to sort of take baby steps to cut off your addiction.

Yeah, do you, what do you do? Do it cold turkey when you decide to give them up, or do you just—

really slow down your Facebook use, and then you'll

I love me a turkey sandwich with some salt.

Now you're talking. One thing you— so for Facebook, legitimately get rid of the app on your phone first. That seems to be the first thing to try. That's what I did about a year ago.

see, do you really need it?

That's a good idea.

Just get the phone app off your phone so it's not tracking your location at least, and only check in on a computer. It forces you to use it a lot less.

Yes. I've just deleted my Facebook app on my phone.

Hallelujah!

That's how you start.

I think that is a fantastic first step. I will be deleting my account entirely. I will be posting up an apology to our Smashing Security listeners as to what's happening. I'm sure they've listened to the podcast and know, well, I'm going to give them time just to deal with it.

And they may be catching up on past episodes. It takes us some time.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm sure they're going to care.

I mean, I'm behind by an episode or two, so, you know.

Well, that just about wraps it up for this special splinter episode of Smashing Security. We'll be back next week with a regular episode, pick of the week and all the other goodies and a different guest. But if you want to follow us in the meantime, you can join us on Twitter @SmashingSecurity. Security, no G, Twitter wouldn't let us have a G. You can grab t-shirts and stickers and mugs and things like that at smashingsecurity.com/store. And you can go to smashingsecurity.com for past episodes and for details on how to get in touch with us. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Maria, as well for joining us. If you like the show, rate it on Apple Podcasts. It really does help new listeners discover us, which we like. Until next time, cheerio, bye.

Bye everyone! Bye!

Uber for uteri? Is it uteri rather than uterus?

No, it's not. Uteron? Vairi? Uterons? It's the same ending, same suffix. But—

Etymology.

But—

Yeah.

I see. I agree. We are speaking Greek, remember?

Dad, what's the answer? You know, I'm actually going to have a hard think about that one because I feel like I should know.

Maybe just ask Google during the show.

All right. It's really ridiculous.

Shall we move on?

Apparently it is uteri.

Right? I stand corrected.

Or uteruses. That might be the American influence because we don't know. Anywho.