Facebook, Shadow Profiles, & Data Brokers

10 minute read | Last updated 28-Sep-2018 |  Social Media, Privacy

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Bad Robot Transcript

Morning, everybody. I’m sorry. I’m a little late to the show. Things are in disarray. You can kind of see the ground framing today. I had actually ordered in one of the new GoPro 7 little device had a 5 before at a seventh definitely made some advancements intention was to stream off of this this morning did not happen.

So in a bid to get things set up quickly, I’m actually streaming from my phone but using my phone as an HDMI input into my laptop, of course, you know as I’m looking into the feed and realizing right behind me is my big 4K DSLR that I just didn’t plug.

So I’m experimenting is the name of the game when it comes to streaming. So thanks for joining the show. This is mornings with Mark already up to episode 114 today. I want to talk about an article that’s floating around about a research study of that was done very very interesting study on I’m just looking here in the background.

So from a professor the study targeted a professor call Alan mislove who was part of the the project I’m in essentially what they were doing was a test to see if the Facebook could Target ads with information that wasn’t directly given to it and that seems kind of really interesting.

I am right. So basically the concept the principal and sorry about the audio hear the principal was simple. Was that provided to Facebook? Information and using his office number, which is not in his Facebook profile. They look to see if they could Target an ad to show him specifically and only him and of course within a couple of hours on me know within the day that ad actually showed up in his profile like on his timeline.

And so it’s a really interesting cuz that’s not supposed to actually be possible, Facebook. I’m and it’s targeting ads in that you have created a profile as a user Facebook then uses that profile and the behavior of you on their Network in order to Target ads at you, right? That’s how they make money and we heard that directly from Mark Zuckerberg in his testimony in front of the US House in the US Congress was that they sell ads and that’s how they make money.

So the common perception was basically what you do and what you provide Facebook they’d be able to Target ads. Will this study proves? What’s long been understood and behind-the-scenes was long been suspected. I’m is that Facebook compiles every piece of information I can get them. That means going out to data Brokers that means going out to on third-party sources.

That means I’m things like the beacon things like comments on third-party website to use Facebook for login to Facebook for comments and pop buying data from other sources and pulling all of this information together to create what’s called a shadow profile. So your profile is what you control. It’s What You See Your Shadow profile is all of this compiled information if your behavioral information Give me anything and everything that the company can get their hands on to better understand you now.

I did this a few months back on where I wrote a little tool and push up a visual of how Facebook had accurately track my location, even though I don’t give it a minute. Does that by scanning all the photos of people do upload to see if there is data for location data in those photos and then linking the log being IP to the photos when it can and cross-referencing and doing all sorts of cool things in the background.

So essentially trying to figure out how to build this geoip database. That’s a glimpse at what it does in the background of trying to compile this additional information. One of the things that was a really troubling was that the profile that they use in this study showed that one of the things they were using was also the second factor, which according to what they say in the you I shouldn’t be that should be a gdpr violation.

Buried somewhere. What is a bottom line is Facebook is a lot more information about you than you know or realize and that’s because there’s an entire ecosystem that’s rarely talked about called. Whoops I called. Where are they going to notifications off for those of you on the podcast notification popped out on my screen because I’m in iOS and it’s mirroring it basically for for these this entire ecosystem underneath called Data Brokers.

And what they do is they compile as much information as they can about you and then they go through and what is I’m pulling these data sources and then sell that profile out in Facebook. Obviously the consumer consumer there is lots of scary stuff behind the scenes are being monetized at some point.

I think that’s extremely true. I think there’s a lot of questions there around you know, what we’re doing who were giving information to have that information being passed around highlights yet again the need for Strong regulation may get strong regulation 2024 doesn’t water down by then have but essentially the US doesn’t have the concept in logs of privacy and data protection.

There is no outside of healthcare. So there’s a lot of scary stuff going on there and a lot of companies making a lot of money from our data behind the scenes. I’m a firm believer in being able to control our own data to clearly understand when companies are using it how they’re using it.

Let me know hit me hit me up to the car. And the start of my day enjoy the weekend. I will talk to you online and I will see you on the show on Monday. Have a good one. Morning, everybody. I’m sorry. I’m a little late to the show.

Things are in disarray. You can kind of see the ground framing today. I had actually ordered in one of the new GoPro 7 little device had a 5 before at a seventh definitely made some advancements intention was to stream off of this this morning did not happen. So in a bid to get things set up quickly, I’m actually streaming from my phone but using my phone as an HDMI input into my laptop, of course, you know as I’m looking into the feed and realizing right behind me is my big 4K DSLR that I just didn’t plug.

So I’m experimenting is the name of the game when it comes to streaming. So thanks for joining the show. This is mornings with Mark already up to episode 114 today. I want to talk about an article that’s floating around about a research study of that was done very very interesting study on I’m just looking here in the background.

So from a professor the study targeted a professor call Alan mislove who was part of the the project I’m in essentially what they were doing was a test to see if the Facebook could Target ads with information that wasn’t directly given to it and that seems kind of really interesting.

I am right. So basically the concept the principal and sorry about the audio hear the principal was simple. Was that provided to Facebook? Information and using his office number, which is not in his Facebook profile. They look to see if they could Target an ad to show him specifically and only him and of course within a couple of hours on me know within the day that ad actually showed up in his profile like on his timeline.

And so it’s a really interesting cuz that’s not supposed to actually be possible, Facebook. I’m and it’s targeting ads in that you have created a profile as a user Facebook then uses that profile and the behavior of you on their Network in order to Target ads at you, right? That’s how they make money and we heard that directly from Mark Zuckerberg in his testimony in front of the US House in the US Congress was that they sell ads and that’s how they make money.

So the common perception was basically what you do and what you provide Facebook they’d be able to Target ads. Will this study proves? What’s long been understood and behind-the-scenes was long been suspected. I’m is that Facebook compiles every piece of information I can get them. That means going out to data Brokers that means going out to on third-party sources.

That means I’m things like the beacon things like comments on third-party website to use Facebook for login to Facebook for comments and pop buying data from other sources and pulling all of this information together to create what’s called a shadow profile. So your profile is what you control. It’s What You See Your Shadow profile is all of this compiled information if your behavioral information Give me anything and everything that the company can get their hands on to better understand you now.

I did this a few months back on where I wrote a little tool and push up a visual of how Facebook had accurately track my location, even though I don’t give it a minute. Does that by scanning all the photos of people do upload to see if there is data for location data in those photos and then linking the log being IP to the photos when it can and cross-referencing and doing all sorts of cool things in the background.

So essentially trying to figure out how to build this geoip database. That’s a glimpse at what it does in the background of trying to compile this additional information. One of the things that was a really troubling was that the profile that they use in this study showed that one of the things they were using was also the second factor, which according to what they say in the you I shouldn’t be that should be a gdpr violation.

Buried somewhere. What is a bottom line is Facebook is a lot more information about you than you know or realize and that’s because there’s an entire ecosystem that’s rarely talked about called. Whoops I called. Where are they going to notifications off for those of you on the podcast notification popped out on my screen because I’m in iOS and it’s mirroring it basically for for these this entire ecosystem underneath called Data Brokers.

And what they do is they compile as much information as they can about you and then they go through and what is I’m pulling these data sources and then sell that profile out in Facebook. Obviously the consumer consumer there is lots of scary stuff behind the scenes are being monetized at some point.

I think that’s extremely true. I think there’s a lot of questions there around you know, what we’re doing who were giving information to have that information being passed around highlights yet again the need for Strong regulation may get strong regulation 2024 doesn’t water down by then have but essentially the US doesn’t have the concept in logs of privacy and data protection.

There is no outside of healthcare. So there’s a lot of scary stuff going on there and a lot of companies making a lot of money from our data behind the scenes. I’m a firm believer in being able to control our own data to clearly understand when companies are using it how they’re using it.

Let me know hit me hit me up to the car. And the start of my day enjoy the weekend. I will talk to you online and I will see you on the show on Monday. Have a good one.