Shock: Facebook Is Tracking You Even If You Never Signed Up For Facebook
Shock: Facebook Is Tracking You Even If You’re Not on
Facebook
By PHIL BAKER APRIL 6, 2018
Facebook's problems just keep accumulating, drip by
drip—or more like splash by splash. It’s now been discovered that Facebook not
only collects and uses the personal data of its members but also collects the
data of those who never signed up for Facebook.
So if you're one of those who blames Facebook users for
allowing their personal data to be compromised, don't be so smug. Facebook may
be sharing your personal data as well.
Daniel Kahn Gillmor, senior staff technologist at the
ACLU, discovered that, although he never joined Facebook or any other social
network, Facebook has a detailed profile on him.
Facebook obtains information from those not on Facebook
in two different ways: from other Facebook users and by tracking people who
visit other sites on the web.
When people sign up for Facebook, they’re encouraged to
upload their contacts to make it easier for Facebook to connect them with their
friends. That allows Facebook to access personal contact information for people
who never signed up for the platform or gave their permission to share their
information. Facebook knows that these contacts are friends of the new Facebook
user, and can start compiling additional details on these non-members.
Gillmor explained, “I received an email from Facebook
that lists the people who have all invited me to join Facebook: my aunt, an old
co-worker, a friend from elementary school, etc. This email includes names and
email addresses — including my own name — and at least one web bug designed to
identify me to Facebook’s web servers when I open the email." He added,
"Facebook records this group of people as my contacts, even though I've
never agreed to this kind of data collection.”
“Similarly, I'm sure that I'm in some photographs that
someone has uploaded to Facebook — and I'm probably tagged in some of them.
I've never agreed to this, but Facebook could still be keeping track.”
Facebook also tracks individuals when they visit other
websites. Whenever they click a "like" button on the website, that
information often gets fed back to Facebook, along with a list of the websites
visited and any Facebook-specific cookies the browser might have collected.
Facebook calls this a "third-party request." As individuals do this
over time, Facebook is able to accumulate a detailed profile, again, even
though they never signed up for a Facebook account.
Now you might think, so what? Facebook could not possibly
know who the person is. Gillmor notes that “the profiles Facebook builds on
non-users don't necessarily include so-called 'personally identifiable
information' (PII) like names or email addresses, but they do include fairly
unique patterns."
He then conducted a test. "Using Chromium's NetLog
dumping, I performed a simple five-minute browsing test last week that included
visits to various sites — but not Facebook," he wrote. "In that test,
the PII-free data that was sent to Facebook included information about which
news articles I was reading, my dietary preferences, and my hobbies," said
Gillmor. "Given the precision of this kind of mapping and targeting, 'PII'
isn’t necessary to reveal my identity. How many vegans examine specifications
for computer hardware from the ACLU's offices while reading about Cambridge
Analytica?"
In another startling revelation about how Facebook is
reaching out beyond its members, CNBC reported that Facebook has been in
discussions with a number of hospitals, including the Stanford Medical School
and American College of Cardiology, asking that they share data about their
patients, such as illnesses and prescription info, as part of a research
project.
Facebook’s intent was to match this data with user
information it had collected. It said that, while the data it received would
not identify the patients' names, it would allow Facebook to try and help the
hospitals figure out which patients might need special care or treatment.
A Facebook spokesman said, "This work has not
progressed past the planning phase, and we have not received, shared, or analyzed
anyone's data."
Facebook said they avoid identifying patients' names by
using “hashing,” a computer science technique that would match individuals who
existed in both sets of data.
Taking these two new revelations together, we can't
believe much of anything Facebook tells us, especially about protecting a
person's identity. But it does seem clear that Facebook has an unquenchable
thirst for everyone's data, members and non-members alike, at home, at work and
even in hospital beds.
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