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Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

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421–430 of 478 posts

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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indirectly GDPR does this. All data collection must be either opt in, or necessary to provide the service.

Oh, I forgot an important detail. I should have added another aim I would want is that as a result of paying this money, you wouldn't receive any advertisements from the service.

We're trying to build the idea of "paid for storage" that doesn't look at your stuff, but getting people to pay fora service that others provide with advertising for free is hard.

Any company being truthful about what their customers want can't be tracking them 24-7 and sifting everything they type. Almost no-one wants that level of invasiveness. We just put up with it because there are no real (easy) alternatives or aren't aware.

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

#422
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…

> ... there's a clear disconnect between shareholder incentives and those of the general populace.

This is always the case when the general populace are not customers but products. It cannot not be the case.

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

#423
Umm, based on the content of the article, no, Facebook did NOT advertiser access to your shadow contact information.

Advertisers can specifically say that they want to advertise to a phone number THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, (READ: THE ADVERTISER ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE). And Facebook will display that ads to the Facebook account that use that phone number in their shadow contact info.

At no point does advertiser have access to which Facebook account that is.

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reminder that if you work for Facebook you are fully complicit. Especially if you're an engineer, there should be no shortage of jobs available to you at this time. There is no excuse to work for a company that's sole focus is exploitation of its users.

This is an asinine, Deference to authority, nanny state garbage take.. No-one is forced to give all their info to fb. Better yet, no one is forced to use fb.. Of your using these services, and you give all your info to them, that's on you, not engineers just earning a check.

Did you read TFA? It's clear that FB has info on people that they never willingly gave to FB. It's also clear that FB can mine information about people who have never used FB, simply by virtue of their being in the contact list of someone who DOES use FB.

You are absolutely right this calls for nanny state involvement. This is precisely a case where the invisible hand of capitalism is impotent and government regulation is essential.

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

#425
post #423

Umm, based on the content of the article, no, Facebook did NOT advertiser access to your shadow contact information. Advertisers can specifically say that they want to advertise to a phone number THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, (READ: THE ADVERTISER ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE). And Facebook will display that ads to the Facebook account that use that phone number in their shadow contact info. At no point does advertiser have ac…

[deleted]

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

#426
post #423

Umm, based on the content of the article, no, Facebook did NOT advertiser access to your shadow contact information. Advertisers can specifically say that they want to advertise to a phone number THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, (READ: THE ADVERTISER ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE). And Facebook will display that ads to the Facebook account that use that phone number in their shadow contact info. At no point does advertiser have ac…

From the guidelines:

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#427
post #306

I talked with the lead engineers from a company back in 2014, that shall remain nameless, that bought private profile data from Facebook, ran it through a bunch of algorithmic mumbo jumbo, and sold the aggregated data to marketing firms. They acted like this was really cool and awesome, much like the wide-eyed cultists. It was very creepy, and I backed away slowly even though this place was looking for more engineers…

Are you sure the "private profile data" wasn't aggregated before it was sold? Either way, selling private data is not something Facebook is actually known to do much (outside of misunderstandings by confused activists/journalists). If you contact me (info in profile) I'm very curious to understand more.

Maybe they bought it from someone violating the terms of setting up a Facebook app? I can't stress that this shit's illegal but I also can't stress how the Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that Facebook had almost no way of regulating this.

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

#428
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if they dont keep an account but just a query that can return results like an account.

How would that work?

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

#429
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The standard official Facebook response to this is that you do not own your "shadow profile" since it's a profile made out of data gathered from other people and companies, and thus they can not let you control it. In other words "it is not your data".

I doubt that holds in court, but as mentioned in the article, there are people in the EU who for months have tried to get Facebook to provide the shadow profile data on GDPR grounds, and Facebook has yet to allow it.

It seems like Facebook can afford to stall, they've got more knowledge and power than a single EU citizen can have, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

----

To be honest, I think Facebook is in breach of _multiple_ GDPR articles _simultaneously_ here, which is quite a feat in itself.

They're in breach of:

- Privacy by Design (a.k.a. Privacy by Default)

- Right to Access

- Right to Be Forgotten (which is older than GDPR..?)

- Data Portability

Then again, Facebook is not alone. I'm pretty sure there are very, very few companies on the web that are not in breach of GDPR at least in spirit, if not in letter.

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

#430

Facebook gonna Facebook. It's long past time to consider regulation of an ethically bankrupt corporation.

No regulation needed, just avoid using their 'services' and block anything facebook at the point of access. They might keep 'shadow profiles' and use facial recognition to find you on images posted by others but if you keep them out of your network they can have a ball trying to target their advertising at that closed door. Not that I allow any advertising here, mind you - everything is blocked at the router (ipset […

Then it definitely sounds like regulation is required, the vast majority of Facebook's users don't know how to do all that. The public should not have to protect themselves from unethical companies, the companies should have to stop with their unethical behavior lest the government shuts them down.

Drawn to its logical extreme, you don't need regulation to be protected from racketeering if you run a restaurant either, you can just hire private security and arm yourself.

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