Facebook is repeatedly criticized for being too careless with its users' data. But is the social media giant using data that was never given to it?

As meedia , Futurezone and W&V report, studies show that Facebook is using data that was not even handed over to the company.

The online portal Gizmodo relies on a group of academics from Princeton University who analyzed Facebook's advertising strategies in detail.

For example, if you provide your phone number as part of two-factor authentication, it will not only be used for security purposes, but will also be used for matching purposes for advertising purposes.

Even if the number is not stored in the “general account data”, it is used for comparison. According to Klaus Gorny, Facebook spokesman, this is neither a surprise nor a secret. Because when it comes to authentication it also says: “Add a phone number to your account to get started”.

This leads to another topic or method that Facebook has been denying for months: shadow profiles.

Marvin Schade from meedia explains:

Facebook does not use cell phone numbers and email addresses to provide users directly with advertising messages, but rather for comparison purposes. A well-known model is: Customers who want to advertise on Facebook can upload the contact details of their target group that they have collected themselves to Facebook in order to create a so-called “custom audience”. Facebook compares the data using the contact details with those existing in the social network. If the email or number matches, the user is an advertising-relevant target group. However, it is important that an advertising message cannot only reach a single user. It takes “at least 100 matches, otherwise this custom target group cannot be used,” a spokesman explained to Spiegel Online .

Researchers tried something:

They created several Facebook accounts and checked whether Facebook, for example, pulls the cell phone number from another source:

The suspicion: Facebook could, for example, extract telephone numbers from the contact information provided by other users. This would be the case if a user shared their phone book with Facebook. This would give Facebook access to numbers without their owners knowing anything about it.

As Kashmir Hill from Gizmodo writes:

I directed the ad to display to a Facebook account connected to the landline number for Alan Mislove's office, a number Mislove has never provided to Facebook. He saw the ad within hours.

I directed the ad to a Facebook account associated with the landline number for Alan Mislove's office, a number that Mislove has never provided to Facebook. He saw the ad within a few hours.
[* translation deepl.com]

Conclusion:

So how can the original question be answered? Does Facebook really use data that was not given to the company?

The researchers' experiments show that Facebook can at least obtain the telephone number from other sources and certainly uses it for advertising purposes. In return, Facebook denies exactly this method.

In the end, each user has to decide for themselves how much risk they want to take and whether the platform is still trustworthy or not.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )