Mark Zuckerberg Denies Knowledge of Non-Consensual Shadow Profiles Facebook Has Been Building of Non-Users For Years

It has been widely reported that Facebook builds profile of people even if they have never signed up for its services. However, in a hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wednesday, when New Mexico Representative Ben Lujan asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if he was aware of the so-called practice of building "shadow profiles", Zuckerberg denied knowledge of it. Here's the exchange: Lujan: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook, yes or no?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers].
Lujan: So these are called shadow profiles, is that what they've been referred to by some?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, I'm not, I'm not familiar with that.
Lujan: I'll refer to them as shadow profiles for today's hearing. On average, how many data points does Facebook have on each Facebook user?
Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head.
Lujan: Do you know how many points of data Facebook has on the average non-Facebook user?
Zuckerberg: Congressman, I do not know off the top of my head but I can have our team get back to you afterward.
Lujan: It's been admitted by Facebook that you do collect data points on non-[Facebook users]. My question is, can someone who does not have a Facebook account opt out of Facebook's involuntary data collection?
Zuckerberg: Anyone can turn off and opt out of any data collection for ads, whether they use our services or not but in order to prevent people from scraping public information ... we need to know when someone is repeatedly trying to access our services.

Comments

Re:Mental gymnastics

[Ichijo]

How is a non-user different from someone who is neither a user nor a non-user?

Wow

[Chris Mattern]

"Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers]. "

So, then, you're telling us that you're collecting the data to ensure nobody is collecting that data, is that correct?

I'm slow, so how does that work?

[grasshoppa]

How is collecting data on non-users helpful in preventing reverse searches? It would seem to me that by not having that data non-users are best protected from searches?

Re:I'm slow, so how does that work?

[JesseMcDonald]

Zuckerberg was speaking of data which would be relevant for information security—things like IP addresses and access logs—which of course has absolutely nothing to do with these hypothetical "shadow profiles" Lojan was asking about. A simple case of miscommunication, or a well-executed bit of deflection? You decide.

Re:Misleading title - he admits data is collected

[Anonymous Coward]

I myself have never ever signed up for Facebook. I have never wanted it. But, I have several friends that have an account. One photo taken at a Christmas party was tagged with my name even though I have no account. When viewing Facebook from another friend, they get my name on photos from friends we have in common. I know it happens.

Re:Misleading title - he admits data is collected

[Sarten-X]

It seems to me that the congressman had a particular narrative he wanted to fit.

"Shadow profiles" sounds scary and mysterious. In a previous big-data job, I used the term "unassociated data" to describe when we had a connected set of records that didn't match any known individual. They still existed as records, and we didn't discard them... but they weren't anything personally identifiable until we stumbled across a record that tied them to known individuals (and when that happened, our term for that connecting record was the "decoder ring").