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> Facebook provides OpenGraph APIs that app developers can access personal data that is granted by a user. Previously to OpenGraph v2 you could access all frien

> Facebook provides OpenGraph APIs that app developers can access personal data that is granted by a user. Previously to OpenGraph v2 you could access all friend data and pull down the whole social graph for any friend level shared data through one initial person, those were shadow profiles. So you're saying if someone uploaded their phone's contact list to Facebook, you used to be able to access that data (about their contacts) from Facebook's API? Just to be clear, the person with a "shadow profile" doesn't necessarily even have Facebook account. I still think you're mistaken and trying to map "shadow profiles" to the profile scraping that was done by Kogan and Cambridge Analytica.

drawkbox 9y ago
'Shadow profiles' are anything that Facebook got without asking for direct permission to get. It could come through a friend list on Facebook back when you could do that or through harvesting the contact lists on mobile. Both are shadow profiles and both weren't granted access but Facebook got to it (or app developers did) via a friend permission or from the native mobile apps contact list harvesting and tracking. The most you could get about a user that wasn't part of Facebook was their email, name and anything in their contact list and they probably eventually tracked that user through various means, many companies still do this and other bigs did as well such as LinkedIn. Even on LinkedIn though, one initial user had to use their app or their import feature to get to the 'shadow profiles'. Most 'shadow profiles' came from initial granting by a 'friend' or associate. They are both 'shadow profiles', anyone that got their data pulled without being directly asked is one. Facebook shut down the friend list and global user id tracking/correlation nearly 5 years ago. Most of the problems were back in 2007-2014 when app development on Facebook was bigger and games were huge there because of this.

drawkbox 9y ago

'Shadow profiles' are anything that Facebook got without asking for direct permission to get. It could come through a friend list on Facebook back when you could do that or through harvesting the contact lists on mobile. Both are shadow profiles and both weren't granted access but Facebook got to it (or app developers did) via a friend permission or from the native mobile apps contact list harvesting and tracking. The most you could get about a user that wasn't part of Facebook was their email, name and anything in their contact list and they probably eventually tracked that user through various means, many companies still do this and other bigs did as well such as LinkedIn. Even on LinkedIn though, one initial user had to use their app or their import feature to get to the 'shadow profiles'. Most 'shadow profiles' came from initial granting by a 'friend' or associate. They are both 'shadow profiles', anyone that got their data pulled without being directly asked is one. Facebook shut down the friend list and global user id tracking/correlation nearly 5 years ago. Most of the problems were back in 2007-2014 when app development on Facebook was bigger and games were huge there because of this.