11 ms·

“I don't have a Facebook account and would like to request all personal data...”

64 points by pdog 9y ago

KarenSatantsby 9y ago
Not working for me - says there is a problem...
celticninja 9y ago
I would be horrified if they have any data on me give I have never had an account, but I expect it is there all the same.
- arcbyte 9y ago
  Why?
  - uuuyno 9y ago
    Why on earth wouldn't you be horrified by a company creating a shadow profile of you?! Bizarre question. What possible good could ever come of it???
    - istorical 9y ago
      Think about this. Any business that has a CRM solution (customer relationship management for anyone unfamiliar) like Salesforce for example has a database of prospective customers (who never opted in to create a profile) and as much information as they can collect or infer about you as they can. They want your name, your company, your title, your industry, your email, your phone number, your address or city or state. They want to segment you and identify which piece of spam (cough, I mean marketing) will appeal most to you based off your demographic or your pain points or your interests. They want to figure out which of their regional events they should invite you to based off where you live. They want to figure out if your company might be a good customer (based on criteria like company size, employee size, annual revenue, goods and services offered, etc) if they are B2B, or they want to figure out as much about you and your income, interests, and background if they are B2C and want to sell to you. These companies already have these systems, they try to collect as much about you as they can, and there's billions of dollars of investment and spending/revenue in these areas. You didn't sign up to have an account with them, but they will create one for you as soon as they are able if it helps them better sell to you. Any time you give your email to a website to sign up, any time you are asked for some personally identifying info at a retail business or swipe a card, a new "shadow profile" about you is created, or your existing "shadow profile" is updated. So really this practice has been going on for forever. Before CRM there were files and file cabinets. Do I support this practice? No. But if we think more openly about whether shadow profiles are a new invention we can quickly realize they are not.
      - otakucode 9y ago
        The new thing is what can be done with the data. Rather than simply deciding how to market your service to the customer, you can use machine learning systems to conjecture the likelihood of that person being, say, a criminal, or an adulterer, or a political dissident. For each category of 'bad person' you can imagine, you can gin up some (almost completely nonsensical, but that doesn't matter) analysis profile and assign a probability score. You can then take the top couple of categories they score in and use that data however they please. For awhile I've wanted to take all publicly available data about politicians and train a machine learning system on it to predict which pols are cheating on their spouses or engaged in other sorts of elicit activities. I have zero confidence in the ability of such systems to predict human behavior, but that doesn't mean they can't be tremendously powerful tools of intimidation and manipulation. You'll notice after the Snowden leaks, each and every single statement the government ever made was extremely focused on the notion of human analysts reading the fulltext of peoples conversations. Not a mention was given to the automated systems profiling, categorizing, targetting, and producing "summaries" about people. Personally, those blind systems cobbled together by people with too few scruples ('just doing my job' is identical to 'just doing it for money' and those engineers deserve to have their faces spit in) and deployed by those with too much faith in oracular technology scare me far, far worse...
    - pharrington 9y ago
      "Why on earth wouldn't you be horrified by a company creating a shadow profile of you?!" While we know the general class of such malicious activity is happening, the specific domain and scope is unknown to non-insiders. More importantly, the mammalian response actions to the emotion of horror are completely unsuited to the threat model in question. We need to be -completely rational- to have a decent chance of responding to this in a way that serves our general interest.
    - arcbyte 8y ago
      Because why would I be? What possible good would ever come from demanding nobody know anything about me without asking me every single time? From having other people threaten me with weapons adn throw me into cages for DARING to remember something about other people or having a company that remembers things about its customers or potential customers, or offering information services. Sounds like a fascist nightmare.
- thsowers 9y ago
  Yes -- Sadly this was "confirmed" this week when Zuckerberg said "In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes,"... “We need to know when somebody is trying to repeatedly access our services,”[0] When a congressmen asked about collecting data on non-users and building "shadow profiles" > Zuckerberg said he was not familiar with the "shadow profiles" term [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/zuckerberg-says-facebook-collects-internet-data-on-non-users https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/zuckerber...
  - erulabs 9y ago
    Right - you'd want to use a fingerprinting technique (collecting data) to identify machines for rate limiting (security, read: intrusion detection) purposes. Almost every API of any consequence does this, and it was done as a defensive tactic to reduce costs/load/outages caused by spammers, ddos attacks, crawlers, etc etc etc. Not sure at what point access logs with cookie data in them becomes a "shadow profile"
    - closeparen 9y ago
      The “shadow profile” scandal has to do with Facebook’s records of your visits to other pages that embed a Like button.
      - erulabs 8y ago
        Well, right, the embed is hosting on facebook servers, and like I said, they collect access logs... So they are necessarily "collecting information on non-users" if they implement any sort of rate limiting based on fingerprinting for non-users... Which is more or less industry standard... Not saying any of this is how things _should be_, it's just a little bizarre to make it seem like some sort of stealthy data harvesting scheme.
- incompatible 9y ago
  It's what entities like DoubleClick have always done. They'll try to track an individual, knowing their name is just a bonus.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jwilk 9y ago
You have to enable JS to see the form. It looks like this: Please provide us with the following information and we'll follow up. Alternatively, you can email datarequests@support.facebook.com Full name: ________ Country of residence: ________ Email: ________ Confirm your email address: ________ Please summarize the type of information you'd like to find: ________ Please note that all fields are required in order for us to process your request. We reserve the right to request further information where a request is incomplete or inaccurate. By submitting this notice, you represent that all of the information you submit is true and accurate. [ ] I agree
- microwavecamera 9y ago
  I coincidentally requested mine this morning. Haven't got a response yet.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    What did you put in "Please summarize the type of information you'd like to find"?
    - sincerely 9y ago
      I sent a request. I used to have a Facebook account but deleted it about a year ago. I asked for the standard data they give to people who still have accounts as well as any information about me that exists separate from the information I willingly provided.
    - jboles 9y ago
      I also sent a request. I put “All of it, thanks.”
      - jboles 8y ago
        ...and they replied. With the stock answer to “log into your account”. weaksauce.
- 9y ago
OscarCunningham 9y ago
What happens if I fill in the name of someone who doesn't have Facebook and isn't me?
- jwilk 9y ago
  That poor soul will get an unsolicited email from Facebook that will make them sad.
  - OscarCunningham 9y ago
    Obviously I put in an email address that I control.
trhway 9y ago
somehow reminded about procedure of requesting your files from, at least in some aspects, the pre-computer age incarnation of FB : https://www.fbi.gov/services/records-management/foipa/requesting-fbi-records https://www.fbi.gov/services/records-management/foipa/reques... I mean it is is pretty easy to imagine that FBI functions these days may be contracted out to FB who would carry them out probably more efficiently :) And another scary piece of imagination - watching/listening to Mark in front of the Congress commission, i basically felt like i'm witnessing Octavian in front of Senate from Rome ... The same situation of logic without moral restraints. The same mismatch between illusory and real power balances. Hail Augustus Caesar ... err ... the 50(or even high 40ies)-something President of US. And if we're lucky, there will be another after him...
Arbalest 9y ago
Is it time to start creating shadows for Facebook to track of people that don't exist and don't have facebook accounts?
artichokeheart 9y ago
My suspicion of Facebook is so strong I do wonder if this is not some honeypot in itself.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
How did we get in to this position...

64 points by pdog 9y ago

Not working for me - says there is a problem...

I would be horrified if they have any data on me give I have never had an account, but I expect it is there all the same.

arcbyte 9y ago
Why?
- uuuyno 9y ago
  Why on earth wouldn't you be horrified by a company creating a shadow profile of you?! Bizarre question. What possible good could ever come of it???
  - istorical 9y ago
    Think about this. Any business that has a CRM solution (customer relationship management for anyone unfamiliar) like Salesforce for example has a database of prospective customers (who never opted in to create a profile) and as much information as they can collect or infer about you as they can. They want your name, your company, your title, your industry, your email, your phone number, your address or city or state. They want to segment you and identify which piece of spam (cough, I mean marketing) will appeal most to you based off your demographic or your pain points or your interests. They want to figure out which of their regional events they should invite you to based off where you live. They want to figure out if your company might be a good customer (based on criteria like company size, employee size, annual revenue, goods and services offered, etc) if they are B2B, or they want to figure out as much about you and your income, interests, and background if they are B2C and want to sell to you. These companies already have these systems, they try to collect as much about you as they can, and there's billions of dollars of investment and spending/revenue in these areas. You didn't sign up to have an account with them, but they will create one for you as soon as they are able if it helps them better sell to you. Any time you give your email to a website to sign up, any time you are asked for some personally identifying info at a retail business or swipe a card, a new "shadow profile" about you is created, or your existing "shadow profile" is updated. So really this practice has been going on for forever. Before CRM there were files and file cabinets. Do I support this practice? No. But if we think more openly about whether shadow profiles are a new invention we can quickly realize they are not.
    - otakucode 9y ago
      The new thing is what can be done with the data. Rather than simply deciding how to market your service to the customer, you can use machine learning systems to conjecture the likelihood of that person being, say, a criminal, or an adulterer, or a political dissident. For each category of 'bad person' you can imagine, you can gin up some (almost completely nonsensical, but that doesn't matter) analysis profile and assign a probability score. You can then take the top couple of categories they score in and use that data however they please. For awhile I've wanted to take all publicly available data about politicians and train a machine learning system on it to predict which pols are cheating on their spouses or engaged in other sorts of elicit activities. I have zero confidence in the ability of such systems to predict human behavior, but that doesn't mean they can't be tremendously powerful tools of intimidation and manipulation. You'll notice after the Snowden leaks, each and every single statement the government ever made was extremely focused on the notion of human analysts reading the fulltext of peoples conversations. Not a mention was given to the automated systems profiling, categorizing, targetting, and producing "summaries" about people. Personally, those blind systems cobbled together by people with too few scruples ('just doing my job' is identical to 'just doing it for money' and those engineers deserve to have their faces spit in) and deployed by those with too much faith in oracular technology scare me far, far worse...
  - pharrington 9y ago
    "Why on earth wouldn't you be horrified by a company creating a shadow profile of you?!" While we know the general class of such malicious activity is happening, the specific domain and scope is unknown to non-insiders. More importantly, the mammalian response actions to the emotion of horror are completely unsuited to the threat model in question. We need to be -completely rational- to have a decent chance of responding to this in a way that serves our general interest.
  - arcbyte 8y ago
    Because why would I be? What possible good would ever come from demanding nobody know anything about me without asking me every single time? From having other people threaten me with weapons adn throw me into cages for DARING to remember something about other people or having a company that remembers things about its customers or potential customers, or offering information services. Sounds like a fascist nightmare.
thsowers 9y ago
Yes -- Sadly this was "confirmed" this week when Zuckerberg said "In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes,"... “We need to know when somebody is trying to repeatedly access our services,”[0] When a congressmen asked about collecting data on non-users and building "shadow profiles" > Zuckerberg said he was not familiar with the "shadow profiles" term [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/zuckerberg-says-facebook-collects-internet-data-on-non-users https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/zuckerber...
- erulabs 9y ago
  Right - you'd want to use a fingerprinting technique (collecting data) to identify machines for rate limiting (security, read: intrusion detection) purposes. Almost every API of any consequence does this, and it was done as a defensive tactic to reduce costs/load/outages caused by spammers, ddos attacks, crawlers, etc etc etc. Not sure at what point access logs with cookie data in them becomes a "shadow profile"
  - closeparen 9y ago
    The “shadow profile” scandal has to do with Facebook’s records of your visits to other pages that embed a Like button.
    - erulabs 8y ago
      Well, right, the embed is hosting on facebook servers, and like I said, they collect access logs... So they are necessarily "collecting information on non-users" if they implement any sort of rate limiting based on fingerprinting for non-users... Which is more or less industry standard... Not saying any of this is how things _should be_, it's just a little bizarre to make it seem like some sort of stealthy data harvesting scheme.
incompatible 9y ago
It's what entities like DoubleClick have always done. They'll try to track an individual, knowing their name is just a bonus.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jwilk 9y ago

You have to enable JS to see the form. It looks like this: Please provide us with the following information and we'll follow up. Alternatively, you can email datarequests@support.facebook.com Full name: ________ Country of residence: ________ Email: ________ Confirm your email address: ________ Please summarize the type of information you'd like to find: ________ Please note that all fields are required in order for us to process your request. We reserve the right to request further information where a request is incomplete or inaccurate. By submitting this notice, you represent that all of the information you submit is true and accurate. [ ] I agree

microwavecamera 9y ago
I coincidentally requested mine this morning. Haven't got a response yet.
- jwilk 9y ago
  What did you put in "Please summarize the type of information you'd like to find"?
  - sincerely 9y ago
    I sent a request. I used to have a Facebook account but deleted it about a year ago. I asked for the standard data they give to people who still have accounts as well as any information about me that exists separate from the information I willingly provided.
  - jboles 9y ago
    I also sent a request. I put “All of it, thanks.”
    - jboles 8y ago
      ...and they replied. With the stock answer to “log into your account”. weaksauce.
9y ago

OscarCunningham 9y ago

What happens if I fill in the name of someone who doesn't have Facebook and isn't me?

jwilk 9y ago
That poor soul will get an unsolicited email from Facebook that will make them sad.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  Obviously I put in an email address that I control.

trhway 9y ago

somehow reminded about procedure of requesting your files from, at least in some aspects, the pre-computer age incarnation of FB : https://www.fbi.gov/services/records-management/foipa/requesting-fbi-records https://www.fbi.gov/services/records-management/foipa/reques... I mean it is is pretty easy to imagine that FBI functions these days may be contracted out to FB who would carry them out probably more efficiently :) And another scary piece of imagination - watching/listening to Mark in front of the Congress commission, i basically felt like i'm witnessing Octavian in front of Senate from Rome ... The same situation of logic without moral restraints. The same mismatch between illusory and real power balances. Hail Augustus Caesar ... err ... the 50(or even high 40ies)-something President of US. And if we're lucky, there will be another after him...

Arbalest 9y ago

Is it time to start creating shadows for Facebook to track of people that don't exist and don't have facebook accounts?

artichokeheart 9y ago

My suspicion of Facebook is so strong I do wonder if this is not some honeypot in itself.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

How did we get in to this position...