https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051:
Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn't hand over at all, but that was collected from other people's contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I've come to call "shadow contact information." I managed to place an ad in front of Alan Mislove by targeting his shadow profile. This means that the junk email address that you hand over for discounts or for shady online shopping is likely associated with your account and being used to target you with ads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)
... more like Cuckerburg!
Fuck facebook.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @07:52AM
His name is Zuckerberg — think of an iceberg: The danger is in the large part you don't see.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:26PM
Anyone who uses facebook to begin with must ok with this...
Why report on it? The only reason is stock price.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:55PM (8 children)
The real question is not whether facebook has shadow profiles of their registered users, but whether they, illegally, have shadow profiles of people who did /not/ register with facebook.
It has long been speculated upon, and known informally, that facebook has shadow tracking. But when they do this on everything/everybody, without regard to explicit consent, then they are performing a surveillance operation. That is a very bad thing to do. Especially with the new GDPR rules, which requires explicit and retractable consent.
Those caught in this surveillance have a very bad position. You cannot just "ask" facebook to delete data because they will have plausible deniability of the existence of data on any non-users. The next scandal(s) will tell us more what they have been doing. Maybe then, maybe, something will change by force of law. And all of this also goes for Google and all the others who have been on a data collecting spree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:20PM
That's been a theory for many years. I don't have an account but my info would be available when they purchase bulk credit records or pull in public records. As they're matching the data to existing accounts they can create shadow accounts for those without matches. Another example would be collecting address books from users with the mobile app. Just a couple of obvious ways, I'm sure there are many more.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:40PM (3 children)
GDPR allows other companies to hand over their customer data to Facebook for contract work, permitted under a clause known as "Legitimate Interest". For example, marketing and product development could be "legitimate interests". The customer may be informed of this but I'd suggest once Facebook has the data, it's too late.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:27AM (2 children)
No, legitimate interest is more limited than you think. Read this [gdpreu.org] .
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Friday September 28 2018, @07:28PM
You think that the legal definition won't be stretched and broken by FB and other actors to suit their own interests? Subject, of course, to the standard risk assessment of "If or when we're caught, is the fine likely to be higher than the profit?"
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:29PM
It's not about how limited I think it is. I brought it up because it was used in the Ts and Cs of a well known corporation to justify passing personal information to Facebook without prior consent. They may well be violating GDPR but how it remains to be seen when and whether they will be penalized for this. By then, it's too late for existing customers. The damage is done. If one company is doing it, there will almost certainly be many others.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rigrig on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:53PM (2 children)
Really?
I came across this "news" on another site, and decided not to submit it t SN, because I figured at least Soylentils wouldn't consider this newsworthy.
But in case people didn't know yet:
Yes, Facebook collects and keeps as much information about everybody on the planet as possible (this is news how?).
Yes, Mark will make another apology, and ensure everybody that
this won't happen againFacebook will be more careful in the futureYes, this[1] will happen again(and again, and again, and again)
Yes, Facebook revenue might dip slightly, because they have to come up with another way to demonstrate to advertisers that yes, they can and will directly target the intended audience, while pretending they can't and wouldn't.
Oh, and possibly eventually[2] some EU instance might get fed up enough with this to fine Facebook significantly enough to make them actually put some effort into hiding this kind of activity and/or pretend it only happens to non-EU users.
[1] i.e. it making the news, Facebook slurping up everybody's private data won't change.
[2] totally coincidentally during some national election time.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:45AM
And idiots like MDC will continue to defend Facebook's abominable practices because their moms find it easy to use.
Convenience at the cost of your and everyone else's privacy.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 28 2018, @08:53AM
GDPR makes large fines possible. Facebook can, literally, be fined into the turf. This is even in EU's interest because they don't pay taxes and provide very little of value. They can't fine, e.g. banks or utilities into the ground because the modern world would not function without them.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:56PM (3 children)
They won't really have any way to know whether you actually have an account with them:
Facebook
ATTN: Mark Zuckerberg
1 Hacker Way
Menlo Park, CA 94025
There's a good reason to write even if you don't use FB: advertisers can purchase _your_ contact information.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:14PM (2 children)
Ah yes, I'm sure the billionaire cynically selling out hundreds of millions of people is very concerned about your personal correspondence politely denouncing that behavior.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
There's a good reason to send your congresscritters snail mail as opposed to phone calls or emails:
They can divide their correspondence into piles, one for each pending legislation as well as for Yea/Nay.
Then they can weight them. I mean like on a scale.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday September 28 2018, @02:06PM
Zuckerberg isn't a congressman. He doesn't need your vote. Due to the nature of communication monopolies, he also doesn't need your custom.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 27 2018, @08:59PM (1 child)
I've posted two of Soggy Jobs' three openings on Facebook.
Each time I was prompted to select the genders of the people who would see the ad.
While I selected "Both" I expect that it's very very common for hiring managers to select only "Men".
While sex discrimination is unlawful, it's not in many other nations. I know that in the Philippines particularly, it's very common for Help Wanted ads to specific both the gender and the age range of the applicants they are seeking. This because a friend owns a Filipino grocery store; he gave me a copy of a Manila newspaper.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14AM
Yup... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/19/facebooks_ads_sexist/ [theregister.co.uk]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:25PM (2 children)
The joke is on Facebook. Every ad they show that is even remotely related to my life, work, purchases, posts, etc I flag with "Hide Post" and mark it as which ever version of "not interested" they have as an option. The more people who do this the more ineffective their algorithm becomes.
Fuck 'em, and Fuck Beta.
(Score: 1) by fennec on Friday September 28 2018, @06:31AM (1 child)
I think you're doing the opposite of what you think. By hiding the ad, and clicking "not interested" you're just giving them more data, the is no bad data for Facebook. Hiding the ad proves you've looked at it, and clicking only the ones related to your real life may by analysed as "you already bought the stuff" so ad targeting was actually relevant but too late.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:08PM
They already have an option for "already own/purchased" - I never select that. Sometimes I mark the ads as offensive just to throw them a curve.