Facebook Is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users 338
An anonymous reader writes "As noted previously, Max Schrems of Europe Versus Facebook has filed numerous complaints about Facebook's data collection practices. One complaint that has failed to draw much scrutiny regards Facebook's creation of Shadow Profiles. 'This is done by different functions that encourage users to hand personal data of other users and non-users to Facebook... (e.g. synchronizing mobile phones, importing personal data from
e-mail providers, importing personal information from instant messaging services, sending invitations
to friends or saving search queries when users search for other people on facebook.com). This means that even if you don't use it, you may already have a profile on Facebook.'"
Rock and a hard place (Score:1, Insightful)
So, sign up and have some control of the details they hold (maybe that should be illusion of control) or don't sign up and have no control of the details they hold on you.
Re:who's data (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:who's data (Score:5, Insightful)
What the article is in part talking about is what a lot of people have been saying for years now.
People say if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't post there.
So others reply that it doesn't matter that you didn't give the data to facebook, one of your friends might.
So now the statement is that if you don't want facebook to know anything about you, then you shouldn't tell your friends, colleagues, etc. anything - after all, they may enter it on facebook.
But this still makes the presumption that you actually gave that information, knowingly and willingly, to that person - and that it it's reasonable to assume that facebook will then collect it as well.
Let's say you went to Slashdot High. So did some other person. That other person tells facebook to look for MikeB0Lton who attended Slashdot High. Now facebook has a reasonable assumption that you went to Slashdot High.
You didn't give facebook that data. And you didn't really give that data to that person - it's just information that accumulates simply by existing. You could fo for a "well you could have chosen to be homeschooled" sort of retort, but setting aside that most people here went to highschool long before facebook even existed, that's of course asking for ridiculous steps to take just to prevent anybody from collecting data about you.
Now obviously pandora's box on this was opened a very long time ago and there's really no way that it'll ever change. Even if facebook were to be forced to kill all collected data beyond that required for direct facebook operations, there's plenty of companies and shady organizations who are not targeted and who will gladly not even bother with waiting for users to provide the data and instead crawl sites and official records for it.
But the suggestion that facebook only has data on you because you gave it to them - and now that it has it because you gave it to somebody else - seems to be putting some level of blame with people when really they needn't even do/say anything.
Re:Slander. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is absolutely false to say that my client is building "shadow profiles" on "non-users". [My client admits] compiling dossiers on non-aligned-persons; but that is an entirely distinct matter.
If it's so distinct [wikipedia.org], would you kindly explain to those gathered here the difference between a "shadow profile" and a "dossier" and between a "non-user" and a "non-aligned person"?
Re:We should have a "Tell Lies to Facebook Day" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slander. (Score:2, Insightful)
Your labwork just came back. You might want to sit down for this...
You got trolled. Hard.
Re:People have no clue what's watching them (Score:5, Insightful)
You also have no idea if your ISP is collecting information on the sites you visit, either through DNS queries or by parsing the content of pages you visit, and creating a profile about you to sell. And once that profile exists, if even one website out there is connected to that company's profile database and can associate your visit and a particular account as being you, then suddenly they've attached a name to an otherwise anonymous profile. It can only grow from there.
The point I was trying to make is that unless there are privacy laws and strict rules on what data networks and companies are allowed to take and sell about you, then it's simply never going to stop.
The other point I was making is that Facebook is far from the only company doing this, and people shouldn't be wasting their time focusing on just one of them.
Re:Monetize that.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even without Facebook selling it, it's already in some unscrupulous hands.
FTFY
You don't own facts about yourself. Get over it. (Score:4, Insightful)
For heaven's sake, get it into your head: You do not "own" facts about yourself. You never did. It has never been, and will never be, illegal for someone to look at you in the bus queue and observe what clothes you're wearing, what your height is, what your hair colour is, or what number bus you're queuing for. Nor is it illegal for someone to listen to you chatting to your friend and hear your name or where you live.
Even before the widespread use of computers, people were compiling databases about individuals. In the Victorian and Edwardian era there were still card indexes of potential customers' names and addresses.
What is different here is the *interconnectedness* . I don't mind people complaining about interconnectedness - I mean, it's pointless and they've missed the boat by at over 20 years, but it is at least a valid argument. The ability of this information to spread at lightning speed between billions of people using thousands of databases, yes, that is relatively new. But complaining about somebody else knowing facts about you, that's dumb.
In England we've had this for well over 950 years, since the Domesday Book in 1089AD which listed every landowner in the country. Most likely the Roman empire kept a similar directory over two thousand years ago.
If you visit a company's website and they record the facts of your visit, that is NOT illegal. It's not even immoral. It only becomes controversial when they pass this information on to an entity which was not otherwise involved with your visit.
Re:It can't possibly be that hard to avoid... (Score:2, Insightful)
You've certainly secured that arrogant cock up your ass.
Re:Monetize that.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is unfortunate, Facebook might be willing to sell this data to 3rd parties without your consent... as your friends/coworkers/family have already consented to releasing the contact information for you. Even without Facebook selling it, it's only a data breach away from some the unscrupulous hands.
I don't know that there's anyone more unscrupulous than facebook. The mobsters and fraud rings out there really just want to use your identity to take money from banks. They're annoying but not really that dangerous to ordinary people (nor to the banks, who treat low-level activity as a cost of doing business). The law is also firmly entrenched against them, and they are occasionally caught and punished. Facebook and their ilk, however, sell humans as products to thousands of corporations around the world, and they do so with impunity. They are a direct and real threat to every individual person alive today and countless unborn yet to come. If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to give all my personal information to either Mark Zuckerberg or a Russian gangster, I'd give it to the gangster every time. Then I can go file a police report, close all my accounts, and start over with no loss but a few hours of my time. Eventually the gangsters will be caught and imprisoned or perhaps killed in a war with other gangsters. There's no such happy ending possible if facebook gets its hands on my data; even if I change my name, move to a different state, and start a new career, sooner or later facebook will get my new data too. There's apparently nothing I can do about it, and the law won't help me.
Bottom line: a "facebook data breach" would mean nothing to us, since everything in their database was already for sale; it would only harm facebook, who will have given away what they were previously selling.
Re:We should have a "Tell Lies to Facebook Day" (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of Microsoft's evil was directed at their competition. They were rarely evil to their customers, lock-in aside, just incompetent. With things like lawsuits over FAT patents and demanding $15 for every Android phone sold, they're still just as evil to their competitors, but they seem to be a lot less incompetent to their customers (I've not used it, but I've heard good things about Windows 7).
In contrast, Facebook is evil to its users.
Re:You don't own facts about yourself. Get over it (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not "own" facts about yourself. You never did. It has never been, and will never be, illegal for someone to look at you in the bus queue and observe what clothes you're wearing, what your height is, what your hair colour is, or what number bus you're queuing for.
Yes, but it's also true that if a creepy man staked out a bus stop for months on end recording data about people, the police could get him to "move along sir". And if that creepy man was following you around all day, day in and day out, you could get a restraining order against him. Somehow I think getting a restraining order against FaceBook, Google, etc. will be a little more difficult despite the fact that they are stalking the entire world. What's needed is for the legislature to come to the rescue.
Re:who's data (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Facebook should be merely fined, I think it should be fined so vastly that it's very existence is put in doubt. I think CEOs, boards of directors and shareholders should be absolutely terrified to the point of pissing their pants if they create an aggregate database of people who have not given explicit permission to be in such a database. I want them to wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats at the very thought that anyone in their data centers might even be doing it. I want them to spend a fair portion of every day worrying about it.