Facebook uses your phone's contacts to sell ads to your friends

Facebook does not just disperse your personal information into its strong network of advertisers to sell products and services online. According to a report from Gizmodo, it also offers advertisements to all users of your mobile address book, provided that they use the social network.

Reporter Kashmir Hill is looking into what she calls "shadow contact information," or the company's practice of targeting your mobile phone contacts with ads. Per Hill's report, which reviewed a paper by professors from Northeastern University and Princeton, states:

The researchers also found that if user A, whom we will call Anna, would share her contacts with Facebook, including a previously unknown phone number for user B, which we'll call Ben, advertisers will be able to target Ben with an ad using this phone number, which I call "hidden contact information" about a month later. Ben can not access his details because it would violate Anna's privacy, according to Facebook, so he can not see or delete it, nor can he prevent advertisers from using it.

You may think that this does not apply to you, but this can happen in different ways, including via the "Find My Friends" feature launched by Facebook in 2014. This feature analyzes the phone book of your phone. a user to establish connections and create a profile. . These phone numbers do not remain inactive data on a server–They are distributed to advertising partners who then target your contacts.

Facebook is arguing for transparency in its advertising preferences, which tell you how many advertisers your identification information has been provided to. My page, for example, contains an overabundance of advertisers to whom I have never provided personal information. Facebook says that all "information was collected by the advertiser, usually after you have shared your email address with them or with another company with which they are partners".

Screen Capture / Facebook

Advertisement – Continue reading below

Ironically, securing your account with two-factor identification can make you more visible to hawk-eyed advertisers. At the macro level, the report written by Giridhari Venkatadri, Piotr Sapiezynski and Alan Mislove breaks bad news:

Phone number e-mail addresses added as profile attributes, those provided for security purposes such as two-factor authentication, those provided to the Facebook Messenger application for messaging and e-mail. those included in the friend's downloaded contact databases are all used by Facebook. Allow advertisers to target users.

Facebook shared several statements with Hill, always stopping a categorical denial of his reports and conclusions of the researchers.

"We describe the information we receive and use for the ads in our data policy and give users control of their experience, including personalized audiences, through their advertising preferences." For more information about the management of your preferences and type of data to see the advertisements, see this article, "said a spokesman.

Source: Gizmodo

[ad_2]
Source link