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

http://www.groovypost.com/news/facebook-shadow-accounts-non-users/

by pessimizer • 13 years ago

269 174 13 years ago

tjr• 13 years ago

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?

BlackDeath32• 13 years ago

Good thing deleting the pre-installed Facebook application (if it's ever been used at all it was inadvertently) off of my Android phone is quick and easy, and doesn't require root access!

EDIT: This is why we need sarcasm tags. No, I have not actually been able to remove my Facebook application.

mcintyre19943• 13 years ago

How? Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, ICS, locked to my carrier, unrootable. I've been wanting to get rid of it ever since the phone started running out of space all the time, app info gives no option to remove it. Is this a case of my manufacturer/carrier are more annoying than yours, or am I really missing something?

reginaldjcooper2• 13 years ago

I always have a chuckle when Android users say it's open source and free. iPhone is worse, of course, but still. We all really need an actual FOSS phone that is liberated from the carriers. Maybe Canonical's (modulo Amazon results when searching contacts).

aestra3• 13 years ago

I jumped for joy when my new phone didn't come with preinstalled facebook!

wnevets• 13 years ago

yes, the facebook android app requires about 20 other permissions

vaadu• 13 years ago

First thing to do on an Android is to go under settings/apps/All and disable the privacy parasites such as the facebook apps(4) and google+.

joering2• 13 years ago

But aren't you doing this AFTER you install the app? Which defies the purpose because by the time you turn it off, all your data is transferred.

ambrop7• 13 years ago

Anyone knows if the preinstalled FB application sends anything to FB even if you've never used it?

mh-2• 13 years ago

on Android, yes

myko• 13 years ago

It no longer asks for these things on iOS?

RexRollman3• 13 years ago

I use iOS, and don't use Facebook, but you can't selectively disallow Facebook access to things like the address book? It's all or nothing?

dreamfactory• 13 years ago

Even better, it updates your contact book email addresses to facebook domain ones.

kamjam7• 13 years ago

They had to do that for national security purposes, and you know, the children. </sarc>

And yeah, that was very sad. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57464415-93/facebook-e-mail...

I never sync Facebook/my contacts, but I do wonder if they steal this info anyway... most likely is my guess, but that's just me being a cynic.

Tichy• 13 years ago

Yes

deltaqueue• 13 years ago

Yes, but this shouldn't come as a shocker to anyone that uses Facebook and Android. You can arrange to have contacts synced in Android so that you can see updates / photos / phone numbers merged with your Google contacts. NSA access notwithstanding, Facebook is in the business of making it easier to interact and socialize with people.

Alternatively, you can use the app "Tinfoil" for Facebook, which is essentially a locked-down web browser that provides a watered down Facebook experience.

jacobquick• 13 years ago

I actually got a peek at Facebook's behavior maybe 5 years ago when I signed up to beta-test a video game. They had used the Facebook login API for their beta forums without marking it on their site, so signing up for the game signed me up for Facebook.

Suddenly all the Facebook ads everywhere knew my name. Three weeks and about 40 emails to "update my Facebook profile" that I reported to Gmail as phishing later, I received the dubious honor of being banned from Facebook without ever using it.

I threw all their domains into loopback in my hostfile at home and haven't seen their site or ads on that machine since, but if I log into LinkedIn in my work browser it starts all over again, so I've figured for a while there's probably also an account for everyone who has LinkedIn.

kamjam7• 13 years ago

I have the same feeling about LinkedIn! I only recently signed up for LinkedIn, about a year ago, using my GMail address I use for job-hunting purposes. I've had this account since circa-2008 but I ONLY use it for work purposes (since it's a bit more professional sounding). I also have another GMail account which I have had for much longer and shared amongst friend and some old colleagues.

When I signed up for LinkedIn, I put in my name and "work" email address and straight away, without me having provided any other piece of information it was suggesting people I may know. It was not possible that it could have shadow guessed this from my email since those colleagues don't have that one, but both my GMail accounts are linked so I wonder if that was the weak point. Definitely something strange going on and it scared me somewhat...

I should also note that at no point did I use the "find my friends" type feature and give it access to my GMail to mine my contacts either.

wouterinho• 13 years ago

Probably based on your IP (range). If 5 people from IP address X work at company Y, chances are you work there as well.

reinhardt• 13 years ago

LinkedIn's "people you may know" is notorious for its creepy accuracy. Not only colleagues, current and past, but friends, acquaintances, ex girlfriends, university professors, landlords, hairdressers and more.. The least paranoid explanation is that, unlike me and you, many others click "find my friends" and let LinkedIn slurp their thousand-entries address books.

stfu• 13 years ago

My suspicion is pure and simple: Both Facebook and LinkedIn are operating business models that are based on stalking users on the web. If this is your mission it is almost obligatory to implement something similar to Panopticlick [1] to stalk on anything and everything that could be one of your (future) users.

[1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/

logn• 13 years ago

I think this might be a good example of how to communicate software architecture to non-technical people. It was informative on that level. And by the end, we saw a full-blown process diagram, with even a loop, of Facebook waiting to create a shadow profile.

singold2• 13 years ago

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...

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

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.

singold2• 13 years ago

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

jfb2• 13 years ago

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.

pessimizer8• 13 years ago

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?

jfb2• 13 years ago

Well, right, which to me points out that we have to learn to cope with the difference between "private" and "public" being fuzzy.

xpose2000• 13 years ago

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 automatically asks me if I'd like to add Jane.

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

jerrya• 13 years ago

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.

mason240• 13 years ago

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!

dreamdu5t3• 13 years ago

Define privacy. If I tell my mother what my girlfriend's name is, that's not an invasion of privacy. If my friend tells Facebook what my phone number is, that's not an invasion if privacy either.

If I share my phone number with my friend, under the agreement that my friend will not share it with others, and he shares it with Facebook, then my friend has violated my privacy... not facebook.

npsimons3• 13 years ago

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.

webvictim4• 13 years ago

If you don't want to use the service, nobody says you have to. Facebook having your name and phone number doesn't actually mean anything until you sign up and so if you never do, the situation doesn't change.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>"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.

justinsteele• 13 years ago

Why would Jane not be in your contacts? That way you add who you want, and Facebook doesn't keep tabs on your personal info until you want them to.

trebor• 13 years ago

Great. So all my effort in an attempt to keep my info off Facebook has not paid off; my friends with Facebook apps have "allowed" Facebook to create a ghost profile for me. Thanks a lot, Facebook!

unreal37• 13 years ago

What's a shadow profile? Sounds so sinister.

It's probably just a line in a database with your email address and phone number. It's not like Facebook is actively keeping tabs on people that don't have accounts.

mhurron• 13 years ago

Thank god there aren't groups out there that are using Facebooks data to do just that. Then we'd have a real problem on our hands.

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

The profile also probably contains a list of all the Facebook users who had you in their contact lists, and all the photos that you were tagged in. Since such information would get updated every time a Facebook user uploaded your contact information or tagged you, I'd say this qualifies as Facebook actively keeping tabs on you.

kamjam7• 13 years ago

How do you tag someone if they don't have a Facebook account? AFAIK it's not possible to tag someone with an email address or telephone number?

Certainly you can "tag" someone if they are not on Facebook and not in your friends (of friends) list, but it is then just tagged as text, not associated with an account... maybe I missed an option somewhere...

tonylemesmer2• 13 years ago

and the ties between all the email addresses and phone numbers.

unclebucknasty2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be so sure about that. We know that FB works with third-party companies to track offline purchasing behavior of its users (data which is supposedly anonymized).

So, I wouldn't think it a far leap that Facebook might correlate non-member invitee e-mail addresses with, say, the activities/interests of the inviter. This could be happening right now for all we know, or it could happen in the future. Once they have the data, it's their choice.

samspenc• 13 years ago

Doesn't LinkedIn do this too?

argumentum• 13 years ago

The main invasion of privacy here is your friend(s) agreeing to give Facebook (a 3rd party) your information without asking or informing you. This is analogous to Facebook giving the government (a 3rd party) your information without asking or informing you.

dmead• 13 years ago

i brought this up when my family using the "family tree" app a few years ago. they kept marking their familial relations online for all to see, for free and in great detail.

needless to say, i was met with blank stares when i brought this up.

unclebucknasty2• 13 years ago

Same here. I barely spend time on FB, but check in once and a while.

A while back I received a stream of "family tree" invitations from a relative, who'd noted our relationship via the app.

She'd done the same with a bunch of other relatives (who in turn did likewise). None of them meant any harm, but it turned my stomach.

fsckin• 13 years ago

You're worried about family tree data? Births, marriages, deaths, etc are all public information.

This data should be free and open instead of behind pay walls or locked away in a records office or library.

Google combinations of your full name, father/mother and birthdate in various formats and you might be pleasantly surprised how much is out there.

smackfu• 13 years ago

OTOH, any of the good family tree sites will hide full names of living people from public view.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Is this any shadier than a credit bureau aggregating data?

coreyja2• 13 years ago

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.

tonylemesmer2• 13 years ago

Its connection as well as contact information. Who you have been in communication with as well as your contact details.

TheCowboy• 13 years ago

Why wouldn't you consider it a violation of privacy simply because another person provided information about you? If you had friends and family who intentionally shared any information you provided in private, you would have no problem with that, and think it should be a generally acceptable societal norm?

The idea that any information you share beyond your own mindspace is up for grabs by any method seems bizarre to me.

It is simply too inconvenient to live in a way where you give up zero information about yourself to everyone. It shouldn't be a black or white decision when it comes to sharing any information, but it's to the advantage of companies that make money on other people's information to want people to believe such a severe stance on personal information is a reasonable choice people have to face.

coreyja2• 13 years ago

A few days late in my reply, sorry.

The distinction I make is that it isn't Facebook that is violating your privacy. Facebook. If anyone is violating your privacy it is your friend/family that is giving the information to Facebook, and I think that in providing this information to Facebook they are violating your privacy, but you shouldn't blame Facebook.

My best analogy is the 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' argument. It isn't the gun makers fault if you murder someone, just like it isn't Facebook's fault if someone gives them info about you, you didn't want shared.

jagira• 13 years ago

I wish Facebook fades into oblivion like Myspace.

greyfade3• 13 years ago

We'll need a replacement for all the pleebs to use.

qu4z-2• 13 years ago

I fear any replacement will be just as bad.

shmerl2• 13 years ago

Use Diaspora.

cJ0th• 13 years ago

In my opinion that is highly unlikely.

For one thing, myspace was largely a network of early adopters. Therefore it was not a surprise these people would look for something new soon.

For another thing, "everyone" is on facebook and thus it is not convenient to leave. Most people don't like change after all. We all know how long people stuck with IE6 (and that was just a browser).

I'd say we have 2+ decades of FB ahead of us.

drunkenmasta• 13 years ago

The bigger picture is in terms of Social Network Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis

and the fact that companies are able to figure out lots of stuff about you even though you never consented to being a part of their service.

Hopefully the next "leak" will be about one of these big companies and what they do with your information.

alternize• 13 years ago

last year, i - without having a facebook account - tried to get the data facebook might have stored about me through the corresponding EU privacy protection laws. all i got was the answer that they do not compile custom data exports upon request anymore and that i would have login into my facebook account [sic] to any data through some data downloading service...

now i wonder if i should have pestered a bit more, i.e. by demanding the release of the possible stored data (which definitely exists seeing the "please join"-spam from some years ago) in writing through snail mail. anyone had any success with that?

gknoy• 13 years ago

Would you get a lawyer to write the letter? That might be most fruitful.

seiji• 13 years ago

None of this is unexpected.

If you were making exactly the same service, you would come up with exactly the same evil outcomes.

"Hey, we can upload every contact list in the world with no consent then cluster and cross reference every entry behind the scenes!" Sounds fun to me, especially if you have no sense of societal ethics or boundaries (quintuply so if you firmly believe you're changing the world and everybody else only advances at the pace of your unique genius).

Imagine the graph the NSA can construct about how people are connected throughout the world. facebook probably has close to exactly the same information based solely on voluntary information coughed up by Social Internet Morons. People aren't trained to think about data and relations and how everything can be sewn together, and that puts them at a gross disadvantage when interacting with global megacorps these days.

fixermark• 13 years ago

How does this differ from credit reporting agencies and other forms of legal public spying and data collection?

wj• 13 years ago

I'm surprised this wasn't widely known. For a couple of years I would get invitations to join Facebook that showed the names and photos of some of my friends (some of who didn't know each other).

My problem now is that somebody tried to create an account with one of my email addresses and even though I didn't confirm the account (and contacted Facebook asking them to delete it) I'm now getting emails from Facebook.

j_s• 13 years ago

There was a related HN discussion of the fairly recent security vulnerability where Facebook was giving away information about your friends (a shadow profile with additional info on users who hadn't been the ones to give that info to Facebook) when you requested your extended data download:

Facebook security bug exposed 6 million users' personal information

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5921092

novum5• 13 years ago

Is this it? This is our brave new world of pervasive data gathering, social network analysis, and the dying gasp of any shred of privacy? This is the future we've built for ourselves?

I haven't had a facebook account for 3 years. I'm certain FB has a shadow profile for me today and there's nothing I can do about it. My friends don't understand (or don't care about) the implications of everything they do online being tracked, in minute detail, and stored indefinitely.

Real-time indefinite mass surveillance is a fact and yet failed to galvanize the public into action. What can I do other than allow the cynicism to take hold and become a recluse?

I earn my livelihood from technology. I want to believe technology has great potential for medicine, exploration, and improving the human condition. The cognitive dissonance has to give somewhere.

pasiaj• 13 years ago

If 'has your contact info in a database' amounts to a "Shadow Profile", there are quite many shadow profiles of you laying around. It probably has relations to all the people on Facebook who have your contact info added, but overall this is much ado about nothing.

novum5• 13 years ago

By what measure do you assess "quite many shadow profiles of you laying around" to be "much ado about nothing"? Isn't that exactly the problem?

What of one -- and one is all it takes -- company, disaffected employee, or black hat desiring to analyze, filter, or publicize data about me, even in aggregate? What of user preference or control? What of the right to be left alone?

mtarnovan• 13 years ago

But how much can others fill in the "blanks" of your shadow profile compared to FB ?

kintamanimatt6• 13 years ago

We work with technology and love to see cool new things developed and released in the world, but like anything, it can be used for evil too. There shouldn't be any cognitive dissonance and it's good that you're cognizant of the possible downsides. I wish more people would think of the possible negatives before they lay finger to keyboard and start coding.

What can you do? Keep talking about it; don't give up. Most people have to be exposed to an idea many, many times, and also see social proof (i.e. their peers accepting the idea too) before they will accept it. This is why we as entrepreneurs love early adopters because they give us the social proof we need to pull new, less adventurous customers on board.

What else can you do? Don't code bad shit and compete against those that do. Make the privacy destroyers lose.

novum5• 13 years ago

I admire your positivity.

However, is it not the case that this:

  Don't code bad shit and compete against those that do. 
  Make the privacy destroyers lose.

...has been disproved by facebook? They are (one of the larger) privacy destroyers. They are not -- at present -- losing.

otakucode3• 13 years ago

While your recommendations are great - keep talking about it and DON'T CODE BAD SHIT (if you do, no matter if you think its just to feed your kids or whatever, you're a bad person).... there's more we can do.

The NSA and their ilk think they can take the knowledge of CS, and other aspects of information science, and use it against us. But what is preventing us from defending ourselves with that same knowledge? Surely there's enough public information out there to, say, build a system which uses the public news stories and communications from politicians previously busted for adultery to train a machine learning system that will also monitor contemporary news stories and communications and let anyone check their politicians "aduletery score" to see what % likelihood there is that they're a cheat (according to the system, of course).

There are many projects like that which could be done that would help the public, and the politicians, understand why the things the NSA wants to do are radically dangerous and must be stopped.

otakucode3• 13 years ago

tracked, in minute detail, and stored indefinitely.

Don't forget being analyzed and profiled. When I get arrested for conducting my life in a way that is more than 2 standard deviations outside the norm by some metric the government has deemed critical, it's on all your heads!

RexRollman3• 13 years ago

Worse, you'll can labeled a security concern just because you express an opinion that differs from the government's POV. Just look at the surveillance the government does to peaceful protesters.

AJ007• 13 years ago

I wonder if FB also has deep facial recognition data sets for these shadow profiles?

bennyg• 13 years ago

How many people have a picture with their contact information for friends and family? My guess is a metric fuckton. Since they're allowed to access "contact information" then a few cross references of a different picture of you along with your name and phone number should be more than enough to add facial recognition data to your shadow profile. They can already guess who is in a picture of your friends. Why would this be any different?

hyperplane• 13 years ago

You think your cognitive dissonance is bad? You're heaps ahead of where the people that "don't care" are. I try to evangelize privacy to friends and family all the time, and 60-80% of the time I am written off or ignored.

Most people don't seem to want to accept the fact that something terrible may ever happen to them, and will gladly drown out the pain of dealing with a potential future threat to prolong happiness in the short-term. How's that for dealing with cognitive dissonance? After all, the easiest way to remove the dissonance is to render the counterargument false without resorting to reason that might shake your emotional foundations.

As for your own cognitive dissonance: I don't believe that you are death, destroyer of worlds, by default just because you have the ability to build technology, no more so than a man with the capacity to develop firearms is by default a murderer. Improve the human condition, engineer systems toward that goal, and just pay more attention to the question of "what would somebody evil possibly use this product for?" and try to mitigate against the evil bits.

If you are terrified of ever having unintentionally built a weapon, then it is best not to be an engineer at all, as nearly every tool can be weaponized in the right environment with some degree of effectiveness by someone that means harm.

RougeFemme4• 13 years ago

and then there are those engineers who have intentionally built weapons, hoping that they would be only be used defensively, but knowing that's likely not the case. . .

Jupe• 13 years ago

I have the same issue with the 60-80% - trying to convince others of the deep evil that can (and when there's a bad quarter probably will) be done.

I generally let people know how absolutely permanent this stuff really is... More permanent than a tattoo. The information people put on facebook will, like it or not, outlive your grand kids.

shmerl2• 13 years ago

That's why this is still very relevant: http://betabeat.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit-...

By merely using Facebook, its users are harming others (i.e. their privacy). And it extends even to those who don't use Facebook themselves.

Raphmedia• 13 years ago

Serious question here. Why should I care?

Convince me why I should close my facebook account. Why I shouldn't purposely feed google with infos. Why I shouldn't answer to phone surveys.

Hell. I /like/ having accurate ads on the web. I like reading meaningful spam that sells me the products I want for half the price.

Anybody can already look up my name on 411 and get all my infos. Why should I care if the big corps also gather it to sell me meaningful stuff? It's not like they could use magickal voodoo power based on those infos to brainwash me...

diydsp• 13 years ago

You meet $g at a caffeinated yogurt startup tasting party. You want to form an intimate relationship with person $g. $g looks you up on SureEros.com and finds a bogus profile for you claiming you actually don't like milk products or stimulants. $g figures you lied to get into $g's pants and you look like a lamer.

Race or religion $x takes over a large portion of the local government. You belong to race or religion $y. All of your friends tell facebook you're a $y and their clever algorithm confirms it based on your last name, which you actually only acquired when your father remarried into your stepmother's caffeinated yogurt family enterprise. Local, infiltrated gov't decides to launch a pogrom against $x. They come and get you.

You apply for a job at $q. All of your friends have been telling linkedin you're good at $r. You have no profile at linkedin. You show up at the interview. They say, "Well you have lots of $r experience, but we consider that wasted time, you probably picked up bad habits doing $r. We want someone who's spend more time on $q than $r and who doesn't lie about fermented dairy and alkaloids."

How do I come up with these scenarios? What is my formula? It's based on an article I once read by a Canadian politician who described the right to privacy as simply the right to not be known before someone actually meets you, to have no false representations before you. (And then I added details about yogurt and caffeine b/c that's what I'm consuming this morning and afternoon.)

VMG2• 13 years ago

You present a compelling case for having profiles on major social network platforms, with you controlling the shared information.

I also don't know why I should desire to work at company $q which is has a completely incompetent hiring department.

And governments are pretty good at progroms and determining ethnicities without using social media platforms - they've done this literally since dawn of time. If you add this scenario, you'll need to add the increased sharing of information about the government that is happening through facebook and the fact that governments are banning access to social media whenever they are up to something shady.

the right to privacy as simply the right to not be known before someone actually meets you

Then you need to ban gossip as well.

throwaway420• 13 years ago

This debate isn't about online ads or even spam anymore.

I actually like to see good ads online too and often find them useful. For most people, trading some data for better ads and free services is a deal that they're willing to make - most people don't have the mentality of RMS. I might be willing to trade some data about myself voluntarily so I'll see some ads about products I might actually buy instead of ads for viagra and other penis-related things.

What Facebook and Google is doing here would not be nearly as troubling without this NSA data collection stuff. As annoying as online advertising can sometimes be, generally that information that companies gather about people from online ads isn't going to wreck anybody's life in any serious way and there are always ad-blockers and things to use to limit that if a site is annoying you.

But if the NSA's algorithms use some random meta-data and Facebook likes and search keywords to somehow determine that you're a potential "terrorist sympathizer" or something and you get placed on some no-fly or watch list with no recourse, that can put your livelihood or ultimately even your life in danger. We don't yet know the full extent of these programs or how the data is used and I'm not trusting the same politicians that hid this from us and lied to us and have always lied to us for more power.

The groundwork is in place for the next politicians that come into power that are unlimited by ambition to create a nearly perfect political dictatorship. This isn't a situation we should be in.

pdkl95• 13 years ago

This debate isn't about online ads or even spam anymore.

While privacy and the mess regarding the NSA are problems, to be sure, I'd like to suggest the real problem with facebook is trying to be the ultimate middleman in society. They have the potential to become the worst "rent seeking" business we have ever seen.

Crap like their embed-in-any-webpage login and comment services are good examples of how they seduce people into their walled garden. I've already seen websites that only supported facebook logins, and one "trendy" restaurant in SF that only accepted their payment service.

Worst of all, most people seem to be able to separate the middleman threat (when it is acknowledged at all) from the privacy threat. Even when talking to friends that should know better (several engineers, one bio PhD), any time I bring up the subject. The response is _always_ something about how they don't give facebook their REAL information anyway or similar privacy-based argument. They are assisting in the creation of yet another long-term barrier-to-entry and can't even see it.

jonknee• 13 years ago

Pinterest and Twitter too. It has gained some mainstream attention recently, I remembering seeing it in the New York Times within the past month.

ddalex• 13 years ago

Oh my god, this is it.

I posted a story a while back saying that I receive messages from a FB account created with my email. I suspected that somebody may have made an account with my email by mistake, but FB keeps on sending messages with "you know this guys?" etc, and it's about people I know.

So I had a FB shadow account created, it inferred my email (probably through looking up some of my friends address books on their email), and now it keeps trying to make me join FB with that account.

This is both creepy and scary. Yet, I'll leave it be because it adds to the noise in the data they have.

junto2• 13 years ago

You need to make sure you mark every single email like this as spam. Eventually, f we all do this, they will be permanently marked as spammers.

junto2• 13 years ago

This kind of practice just makes me aggressive against the company that practices it. It builds negative connotations towards Facebook.

I guess I am the kind of person that is becoming aggressive in general to invasions of privacy, including personalised advertising. In the long run I'm just going to become deliberately blind to it, even extra negative to companies that use such techniques.

As an example, I recently used SkyScanner.net to search for flights. Shortly after I kept being shown ads for the exact flights I searched for on third party sites. Bam, I shall never use skyscanner.net again.

These companies will only learn when it affects their bottom line. Period.

morgante• 13 years ago

I really don't see how this is an issue. Your friends have access to your contact information. When the delegate that access to Facebook, of course Facebook would log in. In fact, I've implemented systems similar to this in any number of apps—it helps to improve the onboarding experience of future users, and honestly isn't giving up any information which wasn't voluntarily shared.

NicoJuicy• 13 years ago

I'm wondering... If someone requests his data of facebook without him having a facebook account.

Facebook has to give him all the information they have about him, right?

So, i have facebook :-S, who will request their data.

PS. I see a class action lawsuit coming up:)

pit• 13 years ago

Yeah, no shit.

dylangs1030• 13 years ago

Title is sensationalist and the article is melodramatic.

In terms of threat-level to privacy, this isn't all that egregious. The term "shadow profile" is not one that Facebook itself espouses, it's just added for flair. Clearly, this is making a lot of noise about something that's actually fairly harmless.

I would place more blame on the people sharing my data with Facebook than I would blame Facebook for "mapping" interpersonal data. It's really not that big a deal people.

GoodIntentions• 13 years ago

If there was a browser plugin that would surf some random innocuous crap in the background for me, with an eye to messing up the data scrape, I'd install it. ( Fly fishing? sure. Country Line dancing? OK. Fancy goldfish? sign me up. ) A three for one ratio of random to real would make the data set pretty much crap for advertising purposes.

The only drawback, so far as I see, is wasting bandwidth of sites I don't really visit.

JanezStupar3• 13 years ago

I joined Facebook last year and my profile was 80% done and waiting for me to claim it.

It was beyond creepy.

skeletonjelly3• 13 years ago

That is creepy. To be fair that 80% metric is something that Facebook has "measured" and told you, and is probably gear to coax people into finishing things that are unfinished. Some smart social engineering.

JanezStupar3• 13 years ago

Oh no... 80% is my own estimate. I even had pictures of me in the gallery.

jschuur• 13 years ago

Could Facebook be storing the email addresses/phone numbers in hashed form? They should not need to hold onto the cleartext one, and if it's hashed, there's no temptation (or danger) of it being used to send unsolicited emails.

thehme• 13 years ago

aha! there is the term I have been looking for all along, "shadow profile"!. I just knew there was something going on in the back ends that seems to keep me connected even when I was not even connected. Sadly, they (FB) are not the only ones who keep this information around, building up your profile with crumbs left by others. The problem is that we are interconnected and while we can be friends with people who respect our privacy and do not opt in to allow "contacts access" in all apps they install, they themselves may not have friends who think the same. Therefore, you are talking about your friends' friends allowing access to their contacts, which in turn probably exposes you as well and this probability just keeps on increasing with the number of friends/acquaintances you have. It almost seems useless to try to avoid it, but we can hopefully at least push for way to have our shadow profiles cleared completely when requested - by law.

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

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