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Facebook is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information

posted by martyb on Thursday September 27 2018, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the shadow-file-brokers dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by rigrig on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:53PM (2 children)

    by rigrig (5129) <soylentnews@tubul.net> on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:53PM (#741091) Homepage

    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 again Facebook will be more careful in the future
    Yes, 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.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:45AM (#741135)

    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

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday September 28 2018, @08:53AM (#741247)

    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.