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Facebook Buys Data From Third-Party Brokers To Fill In User Profiles (ibtimes.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the few-different-sources dept.

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.

3 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. I've worked with that data by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!
  2. Re:Don't be afraid of the NSA, be afriad of Facebo by mysidia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What if the Facebook is a front for an intelligence agency?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  3. Re:They all do it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    > Many of these companies know a lot more about you than even YOU know about you
    bullshit, paranoid I'm-clever-than-you-can-possibly-think-look-how-much-secret-stuff-I-know post.
    > they can track your HABITS
    No they can't.
    > They can track your LOCATION
    No they can't if you disable all the stuff they use for tracking and have a nonfixed IP - duh.
    > They can even track you based on on the type of porn you look at
    lie
    > and sell personalized products/services to you or worse
    being as I never see an advert (gee, how did I manage that?) how are they selling to me?
    Shut up with your pathetic we-can't-win crap.You - personally - lost because you can't be arsed to fight back. Idiot.