Sunset, 10/17/23 + Annoying Facebook News
Posted on October 17, 2023 Posted by John Scalzi 17 Comments
First: Look! A sunset! Isn’t that pretty? Let’s all bask in its orange cloudiliciousness for a moment.
Second: Some dude snuck his way into my Facebook account and it was shut down after it became clear it was breached. I’m in the process of recovering the account, but honestly who knows how long that will take. So, if you were following me on Facebook and wondering where I might be, I’m away for a few days at least.
What makes this annoying is that I had strong passwords and two factor authentication on the account; this shouldn’t have happened. Naturally, I blame Facebook. Anyway.
— JS
Why feed your personal info to Facebook anyway?
Unfortunately, Ken, Facebook manages to get a lot of your personal information whether you intend to give it to them or not!
What security people are increasingly finding out is that even two-factor authentication doesn’t stop a determined hacker, especially not one going after somebody public and specific like you, Scalzi. That’s why Google and password managers are increasing using passkeys instead of passwords, often keyed off your biometrics like facial recognition or fingerprints…which will work until somebody figures a way to hack around THAT, too!
::Remembers the scene from the Tom Selleck movie RUNAWAY where Gene Simmons’s villain walks into a police station holding a glass eye in his hand and grinning evilly….::
Not to mention thr DEMOLITION MAN scene where Wesley Snipes does the same with the prison warden’s actual eye!
Maybe it was the deer from the other day. Those types look all innocent and cute but that’s how they get ya.
I am sorry that happened, a similar event happened to me in 2020, why i am no longer on Facebook, let alone Twitter as well (no, i will never refer to it as X).
On the bright side, wow, Ohio, you sure have wonderful sunsets!!!
If they managed this by stealing your session token (most likely cause with 2FA) then it is likely that one of the devices you had used Facebook with, is compromised. It might be a good idea to check all other important services you use, many YouTube channels (and their google accounts) have been taken over with targeted token stealing attacks.
Timothy: the Google passkey system is fundamentally flawed and actually worse than older 2FA.
Is this the real John Scalzi writing?
Yeah, the ‘eyeball thing’ was used in “Angels & Demons” as well.
From s/f concept to gory shocker to standard gimmick in our lifetimes.
Beautiful photo!
I am sorry to hear that you’re having issues with your face-book. Being militantly fanatical about my privacy, I have never participated in any form of social media, but I know that I am in a very tiny minority and that most folks really seem to enjoy it. I hope you are able to get your issues sorted quickly.
My account was breached in the summer of 2022. I notified facebook and got a response of basically “We see nothing wrong here”. I decided I wasn’t going to jump through hoops so I could continue to generate content for an organization that was either incompetent or just didn’t give a darn.
Other than the photos of distant relatives and old high school friends, I haven’t missed it.
It was probably Snark Smuckuckernrrd himself overcome with jealously due to the success of Starter Villain. He’s the Villain of his own story.
(This is sarcasm.😉)
Retaliation because Z-berg can’t even trust his cats now?
I’m surprised no one yet mentioned the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report” when talking about biometric ID. The first one that came to my mind.
I’ve never been big on social media like Facebook and ex-Twitter but I’ve had a couple of successful web sites over the years. After I “cashed out on the Internets” according to my wife when I sold my sites, I put up a site with my name to blog and just keep in touch with people who were fans of my earlier more commercial sites but one day when trying to log on I was directed to a staff member of my ISP who said my page had been hacked and my opening page had been replaced with what the tech described as a horrible image of a woman who’d been tortured and hanged, and that my site was under lock and key of the FBI. I never got a refund on what I’d paid, never heard from the FBI and just let it go. Whatcha gonna do?
Didn’t they do an eyeball scan in Star Trek 2:TWOK ?
Hey, if they don’t pluck out your eye for a retina scan they’ll chop off your hand for handprint or fingerprint identification.