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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

#461

Post by TeMPOraL »

pyman wrote: post #436
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that the same applies to Google.

Yes, but it’s not about business model, it’s about trust. Both companies, Facebook and Google, built their business modeles around advertisers and have no other option than to sell your data. But, for some reason, 9 out of 10 engineers that I work with dislike Facebook and don’t trust them. They are willing to share work documents and emails with Google, but not Facebook.

> They are willing to share work documents and emails with Google, but not Facebook.

Last time I checked, Facebook did not offer free personal and company e-mail and collaborative office suite.

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

#462

Post by TeMPOraL »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #297
NiekvdMaas wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

okay so… - not all people buying FB ads are experienced marketers - companies throw tons of money at ineffective ads, that should be obvious… - we have no idea what the ratio of "successful" to unsuccessful campaigns is - even if that ratio is negative, Facebook is still one of the only remaining "games" in town, so people _will_ continue throwing money at it. “Least worst” is a fine and lucrative place to be in. - c…

Also:

- marketing companies they ask to run Facebook campaigns for you may be as clueless as they are

Source: I used to work for one (we had separate development and social media marketing departments). People doing marketing had no clue about statistics, they just shoved random whale graphs from Facebook's fanpage panel into a word document and wrote narratives that suggested everything is peachy. Customers read those reports, and since they had no way or skill of reevaluating the results on their end, they were happy and willing to pay. I'm not even assuming malicious intent on the part of the provider - just general cluelessness.

I'm increasingly convinced a lot of marketing on the Internet looks that way. Neither party understands the real meaning of the results, but as long as the buyer is happy, money keeps flowing.

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

#463

Post by chopin »

Zhenya wrote: post #428
chopin wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That doesn't make a difference. GDPR doesn't talk about data ownership it talks about data on persons. If it's data about me it's not allowed to hold it if there is no otherwise relationship.

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

#464

Post by realreality »

harlanji wrote: post #454
realreality wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they’re all complicit, to different degrees. Even the janitors and cooks are complicit when they support unethical enterprises. If any Facebook engineer suddenly acquired some moral sense, he should spend his time working to sabotage the company from within. Some have walked away; others have walked away and publicly spoken about facebook’s dubious culture. Now it’s time to see some sabotage.

I was with you until sabotage. It’s spending energy maliciously when as you say, there are plentiful options. Non aggression principle rules.

No need for “aggression”. The CIA wrote a sabotage manual, which involved things like “forgetting” to lubricate wheels, spending lots of time in meetings which go nowhere, slowing down and getting distracted while working, etc.

I consider all of the energy being spent in the maintenance of facebook to be malicious. If a datacenter caved in because of a structural flaw in the building, then that’s a lot less energy going into supporting facebook. How many datacenters would have to cave in before they wouldn’t be able to recover?

https://www.businessinsider.com/cia-manual-sabotage-producti...

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

#465

Post by realreality »

antonkm wrote: post #458
harlanji wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until sabotage. It’s spending energy maliciously when as you say, there are plentiful options. Non aggression principle rules.

Whistleblowing would be a good middle-ground here. Also, I don't think sabotage would be as efficient since FB would just restore everything in an instant. The problem with whistleblowing is that the consequences need to be more direct and actually leave a dent. As it is right now, FB can absorb pretty much any fines they're hit with.

Think creatively! For instance, make sure that backups silently corrupt data. Someone could also lace the salad in the salad bar with arsenic.

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

#466

Post by danShumway »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #460
MzHN wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

>I doubt that holds in court There's a zero chance that holds in court. If it were possible to have a negative chance it would have a negative chance of holding in court. Data protection does not in any way relate to "ownership" of data. If the data are personal data then you are forbidden from processing that data unless you have one of seven lawful bases enumerated in the GDPR, and where the data are sensitive then…

So this is an interesting scenario that I've seen people bring up before, but I've never been completely clear on the answer. Let's say I'm using an online virtual assistant with auto-replies and stuff like that, and I upload your contact information and phone number so it can help me manage my schedule/emails/etc...

Under GDPR, the company I just gave that information to doesn't have your permission. So, let's say that later on, you go to the company and say, "hey, delete any information about me." For them to comply, they can't keep on syncing your contact information in my address book, right?

I guess, how does GDPR handle a situation where a separate customer is going to Facebook and saying, "hey, let me put in that I'm X's cousin"? Should Facebook block that person from specifying the relationship in the UI? Or would that just fall under "essential for business"?

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

#467

Post by Number8 »

FrostyBear wrote: post #451

The big picture here seems to be alluding people. Let's not get bogged down with Symantec's and logistics. It boils down to self preservation, people need to understand who/ what that " self" is.

Well Frosty, I for one am glad to see the scrambling and gasping for oxygen. As for hope in each generation, I believe #3 is getting stronger each day. We are living in a truly glorious time.

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

#468

Post by Number8 »

FrostyBear wrote: post #451

The big picture here seems to be alluding people. Let's not get bogged down with Symantec's and logistics. It boils down to self preservation, people need to understand who/ what that " self" is.

Well Frosty, I for one am glad to see the struggle and gasping for oxygen. As for hope in each generation, I honestly believe #3 is growing stronger each day. We are alive in a great moment in time.

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

#469

Post by sean2 »

aurbano wrote: post #159
finnjohnsen2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this, and concluded that friend suggestions must use GPS to see who I am near on a regular basis.

This is absolutely true, when I moved to London a few years ago, I rented a room in a house with 3 other housemates I had never met. Within 1-2 days, Facebook recommended one of them as a friend - bear in mind I hadn't added any of them to Fb, so all it could have used was our location...

It's possible Facebook uses location data for this, but I've got an alternate theories.

This happens to me often too, with much briefer encounters: mainly dates and meetups. Since I've shared similar amounts of time at the same restaurant with hundreds or thousands people with whom I had no interaction, many of who's arrival and departure times would happen by chance to line up with mine, they must be using something else. I also share a duplex-house and an office building with people who've never been inexplicably recommended on Facebook.

From these observations, I've come to think that location data has to play a very small role in Facebook's recommendation system.

Here's my best (but untested) theory to explain this: Your house-mate searched for you on Facebook, which triggered Facebook to think you might be friends.

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

#470

Post by sctb »

realreality wrote: post #465
antonkm wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whistleblowing would be a good middle-ground here. Also, I don't think sabotage would be as efficient since FB would just restore everything in an instant. The problem with whistleblowing is that the consequences need to be more direct and actually leave a dent. As it is right now, FB can absorb pretty much any fines they're hit with.

Think creatively! For instance, make sure that backups silently corrupt data. Someone could also lace the salad in the salad bar with arsenic.

You've gone off into uncivil territory—please don't.

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

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