From Wikipedia[0]:<p>> <i>Social engineering, in the context of information security, refers to psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme.</i><p>Honest question: When you take a look at the "manipulation of people into divulging confidential information" part, wouldn't this, by definition, incriminate the vast majority of the modern ("Internet 2.0") web, WRT unremovable-cookies, tracking, "analytics", and so forth?<p>I fully admit there is a difference between downloading a random AdobeFlashPlayerUpdate.exe or MacKeeperApp.dmg from a malicious site and having all your personal data and information about you sent off to a 3rd party company......but where do we(or Google, here) draw the line?<p>Just last week, Facebook started gleaning contacts from my phone and injecting them into the "People you may know" page - these were people I did NOT want on my Facebook - ranging from business contacts to tinder matches.
I knew this was (sadly) standard behavior for users of the Facebook App, or users of "Facebook for Mobile", but I have never given my phone number to facebook, not once, and I only access it via a mobile browser.<p>Is it social engineering to see my recent searches in the Amazon app on mobile reposted on Facebook on my desktop Web browser?<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)</a>