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Facebook Buys Data From Third-Party Brokers To Fill In User Profiles (ibtimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from International Business Times: According to a report from ProPublica, the world's largest social network knows far more about its users than just what they do online. What Facebook can't glean from a user's activity, it's getting from third-party data brokers. ProPublica found the social network is purchasing additional information including personal income, where a person eats out and how many credit cards they keep. That data all comes separate from the unique identifiers that Facebook generates for its users based on interests and online behavior. A separate investigation by ProPublica in which the publication asked users to report categories of interest Facebook assigned to them generated more than 52,000 attributes. The data Facebook pays for from other brokers to round out user profiles isn't disclosed by the company beyond a note that it gets information "from a few different sources." Those sources, according to ProPublica, come from commercial data brokers who have access to information about people that isn't linked directly to online behavior. The social network doesn't disclose those sources because the information isn't collected by Facebook and is publicly available. Facebook does provide a page in its help center that details how to get removed from the lists held by third-party data brokers. However, the process isn't particularly easy. In the case of the Oracle-owned Datalogix, users who want off the list have to send a written request and a copy of a government-issued identification in the mail to Oracle's chief privacy officer. Another data collecting service, Acxiom, requires users provide the last four digits of their social security number to see the information the company has gathered about them.
Really?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yes, my little piggies, soon I'll know EVERYTHING about you!
-Mark Z
Zuck on It.
the third party data is gathered from re sellers of data grabbed by the "win prize" folks and oil change places, and pert damn everywhere where they ask you for name/address/phone - as well as trawling public records.
Then to make sure they have a monthly supply of fraction of a cent commodity they mingle the data by moving names/numbers/addresses.
I found that out when I started to data mine the stuff our business bought and didn't find myself, but found a few references to my address being owned by different people.
Most of the data out there is worthless garbage. People like me sign up as Tripod McBallsington, living at an address in the zip code of 98210, with a phone number of 1-800-555-1212.
And my email address is always on somethingmadeup@mailinator.com.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Never given out any real data and cutting back my internet usage all the time, fuck this shit, time for real life with my family, cash only, don't need debt or credit
Zuckerberg's mission at this point is to literally be Big Brother, from surveillance to media censorship to policing thoughtcrime. (Obviously Trump is Goldstein.) The face-cages with the rats are next.
And since FB is a private entity there's no pesky Constitution to worry about.
I don't use the site, so I don't care what they do with your personal information.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
And since FB is a private entity there's no pesky Constitution to worry about.
Yes, because private companies never have to worry about running afoul of Constitutional issues.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
What if the Facebook is a front for an intelligence agency?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
What do I do? Make a profile and delete it?
No search or seizure is "unreasonable" if you've voluntarily submitted to it by clicking a ToS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If your not completely blocking Facebook domains they will also stalk you as you move from website to website thanks to globally pervasive social media bugs installed on websites throughout the Internet.
nice link, i enjoyed it...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Isn't it time for a distributed, open source, facebook competitor? One where you can _choose_ which FB-provider you want to use (or just run on your own server if you want), and migrate your account if need be. One where you retain ownership over your comments and your data and your f'ing life?
I really hope this serves as a wakeup call.
Zuck is Big Brother end of.
Come off Facebook after editing your profile so that it is full of errors.
Stop using any Social Media. They are just data spies.
Don't use credit cards, debit cards or even worse, store cards, use Cash. Far harder to track you and your spending habits.
Then you can sleep safer in your bed at night knowing that you are making BB and the rest work harder to get a line on you.
But you won't will you????
Oh it goes FAR deeper then that. Many of these companies know a lot more about you than even YOU know about you. Forget browser fingerprinting. Forget tracking. Every piece of information you give away to every advertiser or company allows them to individually put together pieces of information about you. What you don't realize is that even if you use incognito mode all the time, change your user agent, etc. they can track your HABITS. They can track your LOCATION via the IP address you use to visit. They can even track you based on on the type of porn you look at. This information might not be worth much by itself, but it all gets fed into a system that grades it on it's quality and uses the results to identify you, profile you, and then find you (I say 'a system', but there are several competing products out there) and sell personalized products/services to you or worse. Even if you use a VPN 24/7/365 someone likely has a handle on you. It might not be a good one at first, but they will build a profile, and combine it with other data/profiles...and eventually they'll be able to tie it all together. You might think that staying off the internet can help you, but at this point, the world has become so connected that anyone can be found and identified. Have a drivers license? You are on the radar. Get a ticket/go to court/sue anyone/get sued? On the radar. Use a credit/debit card or checking account/ACH? DEFINITELY on the radar (even if your bank has a decent privacy policy, Your transaction crosses several different boundaries, so it's impossible to guarantee your privacy when doing a financial transaction of any kind except MAYBE cash...and even then...)
CCBYSA NC
Do that and this entire market dries up.
I assure you, blocking the ads doesn't change the data collection aspect of most adservers. Disabled javascript (80%) and image loading (19%), you eliminate most of the tracking....excepting your cellphone. Nothing stops collection on that device. Having worked on a host of adservers, I'm surprised at how the biggest problems are scaling and manipulating large data, not the complexity of gathering data.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
It is/was called partner categories - "Available Targeting Types" should tell you what kind of data are available.
Especially data from credit cards operators seem to be quite scary: you even may target people with expiring car insurance.
And if you wonder: "Moms" are "green moms", "techno moms" and so on.
So many conspiracies, so little medication.
Pretty much, yeah.
The US constitution restricts the government, remember?
Delete Facebook, delete Google, delete Microsoft, delete Apple. If you cannot easily handle every single person on the planet shilling for them one on one, delete yourself, too.
I think Charlie Brookers Black Mirror got it depicted right as to the effect these unsocial networks will have on the real world: See episode one Nosedive ..
The real fun is the private contractor or private detective like services who kept all the images and material from early social media in near real time.
An image removed/hidden within 12 hours a few years ago might still exist.
That material is then packaged to Fortune 500 brands to look back over the top resumes that get considered. Did a person party? Drink? Drugs? Are they political on the left or right? Any links to undercover journalism? Any interesting people in group photos years ago?
Other nations are buying the same data within the US private sector on US gov staff as resume services.
The CIA and State department can never really be sure what their newer staff did at university years ago and what got kept by a third party and is now for sale and indexed.
University images that got saved by a third party and can be recovered for a fee and can undo any classic CIA or State Department digital cover story expected to hold up to a normal background searches.
Even criminal groups are using commercial detective services to see who a stranger is and if their cover story is real at city and state levels.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is what RMS warned us all about. I just thought Oracle was annoying before, but now I want them to fail.
Track this.
Only reason to what is claim in the article is to enrich... aka verify data.
The irony is that if your just a little bit more honest .... people will give your their data. You just have to show reasonably that it won't bite them in the ass.
If your a marketer then advocate stronger banking regulation. Actually if your totally honest then you should be devising the next replacement for cash and selling it to the world governments.
Advertising has always been grey on both ends yet it might equal 40 percent of every economy.
Load a custom ROM with a firewall.
The US constiturion has very few rrestrictions and the state routinely ignore them. It's a worthless document.
Pretty much, yeah.
The US constitution restricts the government, remember?
So I can refuse service to blacks, or refuse to hire women, or put up a calendar of sexy women? Hmmm. Maybe all those companies and bosses that were punished for those actions should call you for expert legal advice.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If it is available, install Firefox as your mobile browser, then install uBlock Origin. Enable your favorite filters and enjoy much less mobile advertising and tracking.
...or put up a calendar of sexy women?
You might run afoul of workplace policies, but I don't think you'll find anything in the constitution about that.
To require a person to provide their identification card (name, birthday, driver license number, hair color, eye color, address...) in order to get their private details REMOVED from a list.
The law should require companies to honor removal requests with ONLY name and one other distinguishing factor (because multiple John Smiths) based on their dataset. If they have phones and addresses then either last 4 of phone or street address, etc.
Host your own vpn and squid ssl proxy and block ads and scripts via that then point your mobile phone to it. If you're on ios, use ios configuration profiles to force vpn always on for both wifi and cellular.
Repeat for all family members.
You apparently don't understand even the first thing about the US constitution.
Again, it imposes restrictions on the government, not on private corporations. The only way the constitution relates to your ability to refuse to hire racial minorities, is in whether or not it's unconstitutional for the government to ban you from doing it.
If it is available, install Firefox as your mobile browser, then install uBlock Origin. Enable your favorite filters and enjoy much less mobile advertising and tracking.
tor is available for android.
Who needs a front when you can make all that profit selling to both advertisers and intelligence agencies as a business?
At what point do these perverted stalking companies stop tracking with unique identifiers?
Is it when it is noted it is a child that is being tracked? Does the UID get deleted when true?
I bet not. I bet the most profitable UID is that of a child.
Makes me sick.
I admit I was not thinking straight on that one.
In my brain, I was thinking of the private sector anti-discrimination suits, and tying them into the government anti-discrimination suits. Private sector anti-discrimination is of course set by laws, federal and state. The Constitution prohibits various discriminatory practices for governments, or government run institutions like public colleges. Somehow, those two different situations got mingled in my brain in my first post.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
F, FB, FBI, I see where this is going...
chris watts íë¦ìS ì(TM)ì
You apparently don't understand even the first thing about the US constitution.
Again, it imposes restrictions on the government, not on private corporations.
Pot, meet kettle. It is a myth to claim the US constitution only applies to government.
Nothing in the Bill of Rights - in general - prohibits its application against third parties. Specific items, such as the 1st Amendment, limit specific government entities, but others are open-ended.
Hence, rights "retained by the people" (9th Amendment) or "reserved to the people" can be asserted against third parties such as corporations if the people decide this is reasonable - such as a strong right to privacy and to not have personal information kept in corporate databases without explicit permission, and that separate from contracts regarding the user of services.
Further, many government actions derive their authority from such rights. For example, when the federal government has laws on business ethics issues such as insider trading, truth in advertising, and many other things that go beyond the scope of mere interstate commerce, that is NOT merely an application of the interstate commerce power, but rather an application of a 9th Amendment right to ethics in business to include businesses that are not themselves interstate in nature.
James Madison and other key Founding Fathers well understood the dangers posed to liberty by private entities, such as the East India Company - founded in 1600, practically a government in it's own right, with it's own army and navy. Recall that this was an era in which it was common for private entities to operate armed ships and sometimes hire mercenary forces - and thus had the power to threaten liberty by force.
This is why the Bill of Rights was worded to not limit the application of rights to ONLY limit government.
If this had not been the case, the government could infringe any rights desired simply by using third party agents to act on their behalf - and government at various levels in the USA has been caught more than once doing this, so it's not just a theoretical concern. If you like, think of this in terms of a generalization of the Law of Agency.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but that statement does not apply just to vigilance over government. Private entities can be every bit as much a threat to individual rights as government. This is especially true in the presence of a largely unethical legal profession, which - in its illegal attempts to make contract law superior to the Bill of Rights - has opened up the door to many infringements of fundamental liberty.
The Bill of Rights is frequently ignored - but it has the tools needed to deal with a wide variety of problems. We simply have to use those tools.
Gotcha. Forgive my snark.