Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 478 posts

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

#351

Post by 394549 »

mattlondon wrote: post #113
boraturant wrote: post #74

As an FB Marketing API developer, this has been available for several years . The way it works, advertisers can send their phone list to FB for ad targeting. However, phone hashes are sent, not clear ones. Personally, as long as the user has an opt-out and opt-in options, I don’t think ad targeting is necessarily an unethical pattern, the blurring lines of ads and recommendations would be actually a pattern that user…

Thanks for the info - didn't think of this angle (i.e. advertising sending a list of numbers to target, and facebook tying that to their cookie ID they have on you). There I was wondering how this works in a browser since browsers don't know your phones number (right?). > Would you rather use Netflix or Spotify without recommendation engine? 100% yes. Personally for me the term "personalisation" is becoming a dirty w…

> Personally for me the term "personalisation" is becoming a dirty word and I am becoming uneasy when I hear it mentioned in design docs and product launches etc. I dont want to see what some algorithm thinks I want to see. Instead I would prefer to see the real, unfiltered, unfettered data. I think the whole Fake News outcry started me thinking about it in a more deep way.

That's also a corruption of the meaning of "personalisation." Personalisation is about me making choices to adapt a product to my preferences, it's not about the product making choices about how to interact with me.

Real personalisation would be having the (sticky) option to shut the algorithm off and "see the real, unfiltered, unfettered data."

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

#353

Post by njarboe »

NiekvdMaas wrote: post #346
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm in ad tech, and believe me: FB advertising works . The vast majority of their ad revenue is coming from experienced ad buyers that are spending immense amounts on direct response campaigns, not branding. If you want to see how things work, start a small ad campaign yourself of FB. It's all about ROI, attribution, cost per action, super detailed targeting, etc. It's the opposite of "throwing money at it hoping tha…

Exactly like this article states. You can give Facebook a list of phone numbers or email addresses and it will put your ad in front of only those people. Does anyone know how small a list you can target? List of one? List of one plus N number of dead email addresses? Therefore a list of one, but more expensive?

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

#354

Post by njarboe »

The article states that you can give Facebook a list of phone numbers or email addresses and it will put your ad in front of only those people. Does anyone know how small a list you can target? List of one? List of one plus N number of dead email addresses? Therefore a list of one, but more expensive?

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

#356

Post by sweezyjeezy »

ergothus wrote: post #305

recently interviewed at Facebook (didn't pass the in-person) and one thing I was looking for was a job that WASN'T based on ads. I didn't want to come across negative so I was circumspect in my asking ("Tell me about the positions at Facebook that I as an outsider don't know about - I know ads, messaging, and events"). I wasn't really excited by the answers I got - ads seemed worked into everything they brought up, b…

I find it interesting that you would absolve yourself for working for Facebook just because you wouldn't be working directly on ads. Facebook is an ad company with services attached (a fairly reprehensible one in my opinion). If you work for them, you are helping them achieve their goals, which ultimately is about serving people ads, it doesn't matter what particular role you are doing there.

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

#357

Post by snaky »

njarboe wrote: post #353
NiekvdMaas wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in ad tech, and believe me: FB advertising works . The vast majority of their ad revenue is coming from experienced ad buyers that are spending immense amounts on direct response campaigns, not branding. If you want to see how things work, start a small ad campaign yourself of FB. It's all about ROI, attribution, cost per action, super detailed targeting, etc. It's the opposite of "throwing money at it hoping tha…

Exactly like this article states. You can give Facebook a list of phone numbers or email addresses and it will put your ad in front of only those people. Does anyone know how small a list you can target? List of one? List of one plus N number of dead email addresses? Therefore a list of one, but more expensive?

> The smallest audience you can upload is an audience size of 30 people. Also, this audience size needs to be 30 people which Facebook can identify and find. So, if you upload an email list of 30 and Facebook can match only 20 of those email addresses to Facebook profiles then it will reject your list, so in most cases you need to upload a list of about 60 people. You then need ensure you upload a list of only females or males which includes the one email address of the person you are targeting (the opposite to the one person that you are targeting). Lastly you need to choose the gender in the demographic filtering which matches the intended target. Here’s a step by step example below

"Sniper Targeting on Facebook: How to Target ONE specific person with super targeted ads" https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-facebo...

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

#358

Post by toomuchtodo »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #350
jzl wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple: delete your Facebook account. Many of us already have. Nothing will send a stronger message than people doing this en masse. Even if they don't get the message or don't care, it's the only way to protect yourself from their never-ending privacy violations.

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.

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

#359

Post by propman »

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.

There has to be a reason Facebook reminds me 50 times (yes 50 times) a year to put my phone number in for security reasons. That’s extremely unethical tbh and then I can’t recall if this is true because I’ve stopped using Facebook but I’m 80% sure they then filled out my phone number and just wanted me to confirm it.
Post reply on HN