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posted by on Tuesday January 03 2017, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-can't-hide-from-the-zuck dept.

At this point, it's well-known that Facebook is as much an advertising company as it is a social network. The company is probably second only to Google in the data it collects on users, but the info we all share on the Facebook site just isn't enough. A report from ProPublica published this week digs into the vast network of third-party data that Facebook can purchase to fill out what it knows about its users. The fact that Facebook is buying data on its users isn't new -- the company first signed a deal with data broker Datalogix in 2012 -- but ProPublica's report nonetheless contains a lot of info on the visibility Facebook may have into your life.

Currently, Facebook works with six data partners in the US: Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian, Oracle Data Cloud, TransUnion and WPP. For the most part, these providers deal in financial info; ProPublica notes that the categories coming from these sources include things like "total liquid investible assets $1-$24,999," "People in households that have an estimated household income of between $100K and $125K and "Individuals that are frequent transactor at lower cost department or dollar stores." Specifically, the report notes that this data is focused on Facebook users' offline behavior, not just what they do online.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/30/facebook-buys-data-on-users-offline-habits-for-better-ads/


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:16PM (#449073)

    What could possibly go wrong!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:26PM (#449105)

    I didn't like walkie-talkies or CB radios when they were fads, and I don't have a cell phone now, you inconsiderate clod! (I do borrow a flip phone from my sister on rare occasions, she hardly uses it.)

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Celestial on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:39PM

    by Celestial (4891) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:39PM (#449113) Journal

    Sadly, more and more websites and services are doing just that. And/or forcing you to login with Facebook, Google, or Twitter.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @10:50PM (#449118)

      Then the list of websites I'll never use out of principle just keeps increasing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @01:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @01:25PM (#450199)

        And you get isolated, more and more, and more and more...
        When you local utility will require you to log in with your facebook account "for security reasons" in order to pay your bill without offering an alternative, will you also block that site and forgo the services of you (monopolistic) utility?
        THAT is the problem with these companies: they are re-centralizing what was conceived and designed to be a decentralized system (the internet). All you have to do to see that this is true, is block *.google.com and *.googleapis.com. Good luck browsing around without those two. Facebook is fast becoming another one of those 'backbones' of the world wide web.

        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 06 2017, @05:11PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Friday January 06 2017, @05:11PM (#450295) Journal

          All you have to do to see that this is true, is block *.google.com and *.googleapis.com. Good luck browsing around without those two.

          I did this months ago. I block Google, Microsoft, advertisers, government agencies, and a hell of a lot more. I don't really have a problem. A few site that come up in DuckDuckGo results fail to load, so I pick the next result. Not a big deal. The biggest annoyance was blocking YouTube, because sometimes that ends up being half the results. I avoid those out of principle, but DDG will proxy the video if you really need it. None of the sites I use regularly have any issues at all.

          When you local utility will require you to log in with your facebook account "for security reasons" in order to pay your bill without offering an alternative, will you also block that site and forgo the services of you (monopolistic) utility?

          Personally, I refuse to pay online anyway, because they charge me an extra fee for saving them the cost of hiring someone to handle my check! So until paying online is free, I'm not doing it no matter what. And at least in the US they're legally required to accept payment in cash anyway, so that's always available, even if you have to drive somewhere to do it. Most grocery stores around here will let you pay your local utility bills at the store service desk for that exact reason, so you could always pay it whenever you go shopping. Not everyone even has a credit card or a bank account, which means not everyone can pay online, which means any essential services have to accept other forms of payment.