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You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

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Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#31

Post by npsimons »

xpose2000 wrote: post #13

Let's think of a typical use case where a "shadow profile" is useful. Let's say my friend Jane is on facebook. She has my phone number on her phone with my first name. Facebook notices that this phone number is not linked to any other accounts, therefore I must not be registered. Fast forward two months, and I decide to sign up for facebook. I put my phone number in (as a form of password recovery I believe) and it a…

Fast forward two months, and I decide to sign up for facebook.

And this is where your use case fails: some of us already know about Facebook and will never, ever sign up. Don't track us until we ask you to, full stop.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#32

Post by singold »

greenyoda wrote: post #19
singold wrote: post #11

It happened to me before I created an account on facebook, that there was a profile with my name but the photo was of another guy. Later I googled "him" (or myself) but found nothing except that photo about "him", it is really weird. Some of my friends already had facebook accounts, so maybe it has something to do with this, maybe it was my not-so-invisible profile...

Most probably it was just another guy who happens to have the same name that you have. And if this person has never published anything to the web, he won't show up on a Google search.

I thoght that too, but is really strange that he has the same photo five or seven years later.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#33

Post by myko »

mh- wrote: post #14
tjr wrote: post #2

When you install the Facebook app on your phone it requires permission to read your contacts, call log, location, accounts, and application data. Is this true?

on Android, yes

It no longer asks for these things on iOS?

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#34

Post by npsimons »

mason240 wrote: post #25
jerrya wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's how modern privacy invasion works. After Facebook scanned Jane's phonebook, and made the invites Jane asked, Facebook should have deleted your phone number.

You are going to be in for a real shock if you ever see a phone book. Pages upon pages of names matched with phone numbers!

And you're going to be in for a shock if you ever decide to do some research and find out that you can request your name and number to not be listed in a phone book.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#35

Post by coreyja »

Ok so maybe I'm alone here, but this doesn't bother me at all. How is this an invasion on anyone's privacy? They are just using the info a user already gave them access to.

Why does it matter if Facebook has information about you you can't see? Is it really surprising that they do? It's not like FB just shows us the DB tables so that we know what info they are storing on us. As programmers we should all understand that there is some data that you keep that doesn't need to be shown to the user but helps make your program run. That's all I see this as.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#36

Post by enraged_camel »

xpose2000 wrote: post #13

Let's think of a typical use case where a "shadow profile" is useful. Let's say my friend Jane is on facebook. She has my phone number on her phone with my first name. Facebook notices that this phone number is not linked to any other accounts, therefore I must not be registered. Fast forward two months, and I decide to sign up for facebook. I put my phone number in (as a form of password recovery I believe) and it a…

>>"Shadow profile" sounds scary, but in actuality it's just the modern web at work.

I think you have a different definition of "modern web" than most people here.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#39

Post by GauntletWizard »

mason240 wrote: post #25
jerrya wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's how modern privacy invasion works. After Facebook scanned Jane's phonebook, and made the invites Jane asked, Facebook should have deleted your phone number.

You are going to be in for a real shock if you ever see a phone book. Pages upon pages of names matched with phone numbers!

It's a relatively new idea, the modern expectation of 'privacy', and one that's completely out of touch with reality. It's only within the past hundred years that most people did not know everyone in their town - Even in cities, you probably shopped at a small set of stores and were known by name by the clerks. Technology has caught up, and now it's possible for shopkeeps to know your name again.

Re: You Might Have an Invisible Facebook Account Even if You Never Signed Up

#40

Post by pessimizer »

jfb wrote: post #12

I find this very creepy, but I think that fundamentally, the idea that my contact info isn't mine, once it's "public", is correct.

What if that info became "public" because it was conned out of one of your friends, a friend hypothetically fully aware of your distaste for facebook and also someone who would never put any of your info into it consciously, when that friend allowed facebook to access their email/phone contact list to find people on facebook that they knew?
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