SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.