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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

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Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#371

Post by y04nn »

NiekvdMaas wrote: post #263
secfirstmd wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has occasionally runs experiments with FB adverts for various types of business. I feel it's boiling point will be when people and organisations advertising on the platform really start to look deeply into the value for money they are getting on it. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen organisations throw money at it in return for dubious clicks from markets they never targeted, bot like user…

Are you hinting that FB advertisers are throwing 50 billion (expected 2018 revenue) at ads that are poorly performing? Obviously that is not correct, the result of all this detailed targeting is campaigns that are performing very well for experienced marketeers.

FB is making sure you can't calculate the ROI of a campaign. Marketers are putting money in FB because they think this is where they can the most accurately target people.

https://adage.com/article/digital/p-g-decided-facebook-ad-ta...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/05/15/gm-says-...

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#372

Post by chopin »

danShumway wrote: post #288
bla2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can personally decide not to use Facebook, which is good. But you can't convince everybody to do that. Pretty scary. Which means Facebook has a shadow profile of you even if you don't use it at all: http://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-ab...

Yep. And I don't know a way to get around shadow profiles. We should try to find one. I fully support the privacy fixes people are proposing. I think that's really important. But it's pretty obvious that Facebook is winning right now. However, the only thing that Facebook cares about is getting you to click on an ad. So even if you can't stop Facebook from getting a shadow profile on you, at least you can make that p…

The workaround is called GDPR. A shadow account is illegal with that.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#373

Post by anonytrary »

adpirz wrote: post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

> most people remain unaware that FB owns both WhatsApp and IG

I am not surprised. If you let Google autocomplete the search "is facebook o" for you, you'll find these autocomplete results in order:

  1. is facebook owned by google
  2. is facebook on roku
  3. is facebook over
  4. is facebook offline
  5. is facebook overvalued
    ...
  10. is facebook on its way out
Seriously, people? "Is Facebook owned by Google?". AFAIK most people have no idea what goes on with tech companies and they have no idea how much power they have and how they work with your data, or what personal data is even comprised of.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#374

Post by benchplz »

What people forget is that Facebook doesn't just give them to advertisers, they give them to everyone. Click "Advertising" on the bottom of the site and try it yourself. Anyone can be an advertiser. The fact that it's equal for everyone makes it seem fair to me.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#375

Post by gdrift »

ben_w wrote: post #271
puppetmaster wrote: post #250

It should be already well understood that free services aren't free. To me the moral issue of the story is how Facebook isn't upfront about "the cost" of the services they provide. You want to use facebook to get in touch with friends? We all now know that you will be targeted by ads customized with every piece of information that you reveal (and some bits that you are not even aware you are revealing...) Assume that…

It is not well understood that they are a service. To many people it is more like a place, and places are free. Sure, technically you can buy a place and own it and charge for access, and technically somebody owns almost all places you might care to go to, but mostly we think of them as free. The fact that it costs nothing, monetarily, to access… that very thing often makes something seem like it has no cost.

I don't understand why people think these services cost nothing monetarily.

All ads are not free, all advertised products already include the cost of advertising in their price.

So everybody are paying for those "free" services whether they use them or not.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#376

Post by ben_w »

gdrift wrote: post #375
ben_w wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not well understood that they are a service. To many people it is more like a place, and places are free. Sure, technically you can buy a place and own it and charge for access, and technically somebody owns almost all places you might care to go to, but mostly we think of them as free. The fact that it costs nothing, monetarily, to access… that very thing often makes something seem like it has no cost.

I don't understand why people think these services cost nothing monetarily. All ads are not free, all advertised products already include the cost of advertising in their price. So everybody are paying for those "free" services whether they use them or not.

I suspect most people don’t get as far as “thinking” that in a conscious, deliberative, system-2 sense of the word — They see no price tag, so it’s free.

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#377

Post by ta345908345908 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #358
kevin_b_er wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook will still harvest your personal information to profit from. They'll just do without your involvement. They'll get it from anyone or anything you've ever revealed information about yourself to.

If you're a EU resident, use GDPR early and often on them.

Australia needs something like the GDPR, can't happen soon enough. I enjoyed the wild west days of IT, but I think now companies are enjoying it a bit too much.

It doesn't help that legislators wouldn't have the foggiest clue about some of these issues^, so there's no impetus from the legal community or political arena to make changes, while nefarious companies are doing whatever the hell they like.

I deleted FB years ago, and this infuriates me to know they might still be trying to sell my information based on contacts and what I share with them.

^ Actually, they've recently tried to pretend they are above the law of mathematics, so...

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#378

Post by marmaduke »

mojuba wrote: post #53
ezoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you didn't access it from the same IP address? There are so many fingerprints you are willingly sending to the public.

I did of course, how could I not access both from the same IP. The bottom line is: a property owner is a property owner even if it comes to separate domain names.

A VPN would be one way

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#379

Post by dymk »

ummonk wrote: post #17

As a security engineer, I cannot overstate just how horrible this is. Phone numbers might not be an ideal 2nd factor for authentication, but to punish users for setting up 2FA by using the provided phone number for ad targetting is incredibly unethical.

How is a difference in how ads are targeted a punishment?

Re: Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

#380

Post by mbesto »

secfirstmd wrote: post #247
adpirz wrote: post #239

What's facebook's boiling point? My guess is they'll respond, they'll no longer use 2FA #'s for ads, the damage will have been done, and 99% of the population won't know any of it occurred. We'll repeat this cycle when a fresh revelation occurs months from now, as facebook continues to test how much they can leverage for more ad revenue. But none of it is actually slowing FB down. Its biggest dip in value came from d…

As someone who has occasionally runs experiments with FB adverts for various types of business. I feel it's boiling point will be when people and organisations advertising on the platform really start to look deeply into the value for money they are getting on it. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen organisations throw money at it in return for dubious clicks from markets they never targeted, bot like user…

People have been doing this for years on Google's platform and the behaviors still haven't changed (I have a lot of hands-on experience with $100k+ annual ad spend budgets that are atrocious), so I disagree. People set it and forget it (mainly to ad ops agencies who charge 10%), because they don't know any different as long as sales keep coming in.
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