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The url should point to the Gizmodo article; not the sensationalizing tweet. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-182847

The url should point to the Gizmodo article; not the sensationalizing tweet. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051 https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to... The actual story is FB enriching your profile with shadow contact information about you when you or third parties provide it with details it wasn't aware about yet. For instance when a friend of yours has your landline number in their address book and gives FB access to the latter; or when an advertiser provides FB with the same as part of targeting an ad campaign.

B-Con 8y ago
Is this any surprise? Just a few hours ago the Acton article on the front page[0] talked about them doing this in WhatsApp: > Later he learned that elsewhere in Facebook, there were “plans and technologies to blend data.” Specifically, Facebook could use the 128-bit string of numbers assigned to each phone as a kind of bridge between accounts. The other method was phone-number matching, or pinpointing Facebook accounts with phone numbers and matching them to WhatsApp accounts with the same phone number. > Within 18 months, a new WhatsApp terms of service linked the accounts and made Acton look like a liar. Companies like this, and Facebook in particular, are desperate to connect identities. Phone numbers are an incredibly useful way to do so. Most people only have a couple of them, their re-use rate is slow, they get entered into forms all over the place, and they're usually valid (because they were provided as a primary method of contact). In this case advertisers have an identity (and phone number), Facebook wants to match on that value. They're going to do it any way they can. It may not be ethical, but the carrot is right there and it's naive to think you can give them your identifying number and they're going to turn a blind eye to it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690
- close04 8y ago
  Wasn't one of the conditions to get the deal approved by EU regulators to NOT share any data between services? [0] Did they just restart it because they found reprieve or simply decided to ignore the regulation? Edit. Also this [1]. Does GDPR suddenly open the door for sharing this data "legitimately"? [0] https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122 https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp-sharing-user-data-facebook-illegal-ico-gdpr https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp-...
  - B-Con 8y ago
    According to the article it was one of the conditions and they paid ~$100-200M (IIRC) in fines for breaching it. Which furthers my point, that Facebook will jump on any carrot in front of it.
- mtgx 8y ago
  I remember FB doing that with WhatsApp at least 6-9 months before announcing it officially and pushing the new "terms of service." It's a shame the EU didn't punish them more severely over that, because they were basically already using the feature without mentioning it in their ToS for almost a year, if not longer.
Illniyar 8y ago
Oh, that's troubling. Not the fact that they are adding 2FA phone numbers to their collected data, but rather that custom audience is a thing. I thought they were taking pains to limit the ability to directly target individuals. They limited audience size to at least 1000 people previously when doing regular targeting. How is it that I've never heard of custom audience until now?
- dalbasal 8y ago
  They limited as targetting to 1,000 people because (a) people were using it in very noticeably creepy ways, highlighting thing FB wanted less attention on and (b) it wasn't making money. Targeting 1 person is not the advertising business. Custom audiences though, is why FB are profitable. The platform before those tools were intriduced (5-8 yes ago) made a lot less.
  - mellow-lake-day 8y ago
    I am guessing part of the reason that the Instagram co-founders left is that Mark kept adding in all of these "features" to Instagram

B-Con 8y ago

Is this any surprise? Just a few hours ago the Acton article on the front page[0] talked about them doing this in WhatsApp: > Later he learned that elsewhere in Facebook, there were “plans and technologies to blend data.” Specifically, Facebook could use the 128-bit string of numbers assigned to each phone as a kind of bridge between accounts. The other method was phone-number matching, or pinpointing Facebook accounts with phone numbers and matching them to WhatsApp accounts with the same phone number. > Within 18 months, a new WhatsApp terms of service linked the accounts and made Acton look like a liar. Companies like this, and Facebook in particular, are desperate to connect identities. Phone numbers are an incredibly useful way to do so. Most people only have a couple of them, their re-use rate is slow, they get entered into forms all over the place, and they're usually valid (because they were provided as a primary method of contact). In this case advertisers have an identity (and phone number), Facebook wants to match on that value. They're going to do it any way they can. It may not be ethical, but the carrot is right there and it's naive to think you can give them your identifying number and they're going to turn a blind eye to it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18074690

close04 8y ago
Wasn't one of the conditions to get the deal approved by EU regulators to NOT share any data between services? [0] Did they just restart it because they found reprieve or simply decided to ignore the regulation? Edit. Also this [1]. Does GDPR suddenly open the door for sharing this data "legitimately"? [0] https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122 https://www.ft.com/content/951d650e-abf5-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp-sharing-user-data-facebook-illegal-ico-gdpr https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/whatsapp-...
- B-Con 8y ago
  According to the article it was one of the conditions and they paid ~$100-200M (IIRC) in fines for breaching it. Which furthers my point, that Facebook will jump on any carrot in front of it.
mtgx 8y ago
I remember FB doing that with WhatsApp at least 6-9 months before announcing it officially and pushing the new "terms of service." It's a shame the EU didn't punish them more severely over that, because they were basically already using the feature without mentioning it in their ToS for almost a year, if not longer.

Illniyar 8y ago

Oh, that's troubling. Not the fact that they are adding 2FA phone numbers to their collected data, but rather that custom audience is a thing. I thought they were taking pains to limit the ability to directly target individuals. They limited audience size to at least 1000 people previously when doing regular targeting. How is it that I've never heard of custom audience until now?

dalbasal 8y ago
They limited as targetting to 1,000 people because (a) people were using it in very noticeably creepy ways, highlighting thing FB wanted less attention on and (b) it wasn't making money. Targeting 1 person is not the advertising business. Custom audiences though, is why FB are profitable. The platform before those tools were intriduced (5-8 yes ago) made a lot less.
- mellow-lake-day 8y ago
  I am guessing part of the reason that the Instagram co-founders left is that Mark kept adding in all of these "features" to Instagram