Facebook Shadow profiler – hvad er det?

Vidste du at selvom du ikke har en Facebook profil, så har Facebook stadig registreret en del data om dig? Læs her om Facebook Shadow profiles. 
Det kommer nok som en overraskelse for de fleste, men faktisk har Facebook sandsynligvis en profil af dig, uanset om du har valgt at have en Facebook profil eller ej. Fænomenet kaldes for shadow profiler og handler om hvorvidt der udfra data der registreres om personer, der ikke er på Facebook, også dannes en profil af disse personer.
Det var i dagens høring af Facebooks stifter Mark Zuckerberg, at han fik et spørgsmål om Shadow Profiles. Spørgsmålet kom fra repræsentanten fra New Mexico Ben Lujan, som spurgte ind til shadow profiles på Facebook. Det er en betegnelse for de data som Facebook indsamler om folk, der ikke har en Facebookprofil samt andre skjulte data som Facebook besidder, men ikke viser åbent til alle folk.
Her er et udpluk af korrespondancen mellem Ben Lujan og Mark Zuckerberg:

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.
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.
Lujan: It may surprise you that we’ve not talked about this a lot today. You’ve said everyone controls their data, but you’re collecting data on people who are not even Facebook users who have never signed a consent, a privacy agreement.
And it may surprise you that on Facebook’s page when you go to “I don’t have a Facebook account and would like to request all my personal data stored by Facebook” it takes you to a form that says “go to your Facebook page and then on your account settings you can download your data.”
So you’re directing people that don’t even have a Facebook page to sign up for a Facebook page to access their data… We’ve got to change that.

I første omgang benægter Mark Zuckerberg altså kendskabet til begrebet “Shadow profiles”, formentlig fordi det ifølge hans overbevisning er en forkert betegnelse. Men der bliver altså også registreret data om folk, der ikke har en brugerprofil på Facebook og dermed har givet samtykke til at Facebook må indsamle data.
Mark Zuckerberg forklarer fænomenet med, at de på grund af sikkerhedsgrunde er nødt til at vide, hvorvidt en person forsøger at angribe Facebook konstant, også selvom de ikke har en profil.
Hvis du downloader dine egne data fra Facebook, vil det heraf da også fremgå kontakter fra din kontaktliste, på personer der ikke har en Facebookprofil. Disse er formentlig indsamlet ved at du har synkroniseret med dine Facebook kontakter.