Facebook Building 'Shadow Profiles' of Non-Members, Experts Allege

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Mojave

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This could well be true. I don't have facebook ,but being in high school I probably get almost daily invitations. XD (seriously, I think my peers are playing a game to see who can get me to finally sign up!) One recent E-Mail from facebook said:
Other people have asked to be your friend on Facebook. Accept this invitation to see your previous friend requests
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When I saw that I was like; Ok :uhh:
 
"We enable you to send emails to your friends, inviting them to join Facebook. We keep the invitee's email address and name to let you know when they join the service. This practice is common among almost all services that involve invitations -- from document sharing to event planning."
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Absolutely no fake profiles were cited or linked to in the article. Where's the beef? :2cents:
 
Even this part bothers me:

"The allegations are false," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told FoxNews.com. "We enable you to send emails to your friends, inviting them to join Facebook. We keep the invitee's email address and name to let you know when they join the service. This practice is common among almost all services that involve invitations -- from document sharing to event planning."
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It's hard enough to control what information gets posted online and stay in control of that info (being able to delete it). Facebook and others grabbing onto everything they can find on everyone is annoying.
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---------- Post added at 22:27 ---------- Previous post was at 22:16 ----------
jangofett287 said:
This could well be true.
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Knowing Facebook and its record? Sure. But don't take any online news article at face value. Ever.
Maybe your friends aren't re-sending those invites, but Facebook sending them over and over. In any case, there should be a link allowing you to unsubscribe from those emails.
 
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Facebook is nothing but a massive personal data sales scam. They get people to voluntarily give up information on themselves and neighbors, then package it up and sell it to anyone with the money. And as a side bonus, it functions as the greatest law enforcement database on the planet, making police mugshot, associate, and arrest databases look like the Dewey Decimal System.
 
Just great, and I thought I was safe from Zuckerberg by not having an account and blocking anything even vaguely related to facebook through hosts/adblock/noscript.
 
Ark said:
Facebook is nothing but a massive personal data sales scam. They get people to voluntarily give up information on themselves and neighbors, then package it up and sell it to anyone with the money. And as a side bonus, it functions as the greatest law enforcement database on the planet, making police mugshot, associate, and arrest databases look like the Dewey Decimal System.
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This is the most extremist point of view I've seen about Facebook. People who sign up willingly give up their info to share with their friends and family. You have the option to opt out of ad sharing and you have controls over who can see your information. I find it much easier to share things happening in my life with friends and family than any other outlet as I can't be there in person to see them all of the time.

Granted, if this article is true it would be upsetting to even me. I think anyone who didn't sign up for it should not have to unsubscribe in the first place. The biggest reason to not believe this article is the first 3 letters in the url.
 
You are a product, a saleable commodity. You don't have to register or be a member to any site, social or not to be on the "for sale list" around the world. You don't even have to be on the net, ever have a net connection to be targeted. No body in the system escapes the tag. They make money tradeing your details however personal, however minor. They own a piece of you every time they do this. Your not going to escape and theres no place to hide.

It's the twenty first century. Orwellien style. I don't like it either but I, like you have to suffer it.
 
PennyBlack said:
It's the twenty first century. Orwellien style. I don't like it either but I, like you have to suffer it.
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Wrong. We have privacy laws for a reason. If you want to sell your data, it's your call but a private entity cannot gather data on me without my consent and, in some case, without a license. If European governments had any spine, they would have arrest warrants issued for Zuckerberg & co, and any of their property in Europe confiscated.
 
Ghostrider said:
Wrong. We have privacy laws for a reason. If you want to sell your data, it's your call but a private entity cannot gather data on me without my consent and, in some case, without a license.
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I agree.
It may be wrong, but it is happening all the time. Where money and the possibility of making is concerned, right and wrong is a flexable line.

Ghostrider said:
If European governments had any spine, they would have arrest warrants issued for Zuckerberg & co, and any of their property in Europe confiscated.
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Spineless European governments are what is keeping the EU together at the moment I think. And who knows how governments are profiting by Zuckerberg & co and others. It isn't always for the money is it. But an information file that is based on you telling them about you, your politics, religion any basic beliefs and contacts, your links ect is called... intelligence.
 
PennyBlack said:
But an information file that is based on you telling them about you, your politics, religion any basic beliefs and contacts, your links ect is called... intelligence.
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It's called bad intelligence. The sources are unreliable, and wouldn't pass any serious reliability check. It's as valid as gossip.

Of course, if there's a file like that on some PM or president, then it's zomg terr-ow-rism! and anyone who contributed to it may get accused of molesting some Swede.:lol:
 
Ghostrider said:
It's called bad intelligence.
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:lol:

How many bombs get dropped by the allies because of bad intel. They still act on it, on the chance it maybe right. Often with a "Team America" action style too.

Here's a thought...
Someone could go through every thread stored on Orbiter Forum that a perticular member has posted in and formulate a profile. In many cases a professional profiler can acuratly detail you from that alone. What ever the forum, what ever keypresses on the net you have done is stored and they use that to profile us, so it's not just social networks which are gathering data, Orbiter Forum is retaining records, with your concent I might add, but is adding that massive profile, that footprint that is easy to exploit. I could read your comments and target you with Sci-Fi links just because you surf this site or email you products that have a connection to any number of topics you may have posted in here. A search engine can do this and they are getting very advanced. The ammount of scam/spam I delete from my spam folder is also growing and my interests on the net haven't changed. The ammount of sites I go to haven't increased. The http in my address bar when I'm logged in here hasn't the "s" in to tell me it's secure (should be https), but I'm still logging in.

The way I look at it, we make a comment, not just here but in the real world and we are instantly judged and a frame of reference is formed within the mind of the reader as to who or what the person is and is like. We form a perception and keep a file within the mind. An intel file which we also tell others about. The content of the comment and then possible "what I think of them" by gossip without asking the person we are tranfering the information about. What we have done since the development of language, we now do it electronically, only with a miriad of other things (stuff) included.
Only a few out of all the spam mails I get, have I been interested in one. But those who send them believe I maybe interested and therefor may have the potential to earn a buck from it. Who's to blame...! I haven't a clue and if I'd thought of it, free enterprise dictates I should do it, hmm... maybe.

However there are files, information that is more personal that I understand people don't want flashed around the net. But often that information isn't released by you at all. Medical records, insurance, financial account details ect, are out there to assess your potential as a customer ect. This includes your current location if your useing a smart phone, even when it's turned off. It's enough to make you pull the plug and wear a foil hat and camp in the northern Canadian woods.
But at the end of the day, I do think the Borg structure is coming. I don't fear it. I do fear somewhat the people who can use it.
 
PennyBlack said:
Someone could go through every thread stored on Orbiter Forum that a perticular member has posted in and formulate a profile. In many cases a professional profiler can acuratly detail you from that alone.
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That "professional profiler" then should find another job - who guarantees that 1) the posts reflect the actual frame of mind of the person 2) that it is an actual person and not a whole group posting under one name?

As long as you want to spam someone with ads, it can work and nobody is losing anything - I have blockers and ads on the web are el cheapo. But anything more than that is a shot in the dark. We already have way too many bad investigative procedures without people relying on random posts to build garbage out of garbage.
 
Perhaps some of you have seen this, perhaps you haven't. It's worth a look.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LS6Jj4o-g"]Facebook, not what you think. PLEASE SEE THIS - YouTube[/ame]
 
Ghostrider said:
That "professional profiler" then should find another job - who guarantees that 1) the posts reflect the actual frame of mind of the person 2) that it is an actual person and not a whole group posting under one name?

As long as you want to spam someone with ads, it can work and nobody is losing anything - I have blockers and ads on the web are el cheapo. But anything more than that is a shot in the dark. We already have way too many bad investigative procedures without people relying on random posts to build garbage out of garbage.
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It's true. A professional can profile you from such and it carries wieght with many a security force who employs them. It isn't just the handwritten word that can betray you anymore, the formation of the word and the position of the slanted charactor. Now it's across the internet, across the globe.
And those random posts can be sorted. They have tags, a username and have an IP address, not to mention the ISP (Internet Service Provider) connection and account ,which can be found out through investigation.
And I wouldn't consider the words in peoples posts as garbage. I take the mass majority of peoples opinions, views and "frames of mind", which through myown self determination, take either with a pinch of salt or seriously, based upon my own method of personal profileing. Otherwise it would be a waste of time to read and reply to them, wouldn't it.
 
Someone could go through every thread stored on Orbiter Forum that a perticular member has posted in and formulate a profile. In many cases a professional profiler can acuratly detail you from that alone.
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That's why I post contradictory personal information all over the internet. It makes the occasional dive into the spam folder that much more fun.
 
PennyBlack said:
It's true. A professional can profile you from such and it carries wieght with many a security force who employs them. It isn't just the handwritten word that can betray you anymore, the formation of the word and the position of the slanted charactor. Now it's across the internet, across the globe.
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Can you prove with absolute certainty that it's your subject who wrote those posts? You could try to trace the IP - but you would need the cooperation of the ISP, which isn't exacly granted. And then, without forensic examination of the subject's computer(s), you still wouldn't be able to prove your subject wrote those posts - only that they were posted from that machine.

Happens that identity theft is one BIG problem over the interwebs. Profiling is so totally not like what you see on Criminal Minds. Any security force that holds this kind of information above gossip level deserves to have their netherlands handed over to them.

Of course, there still are the clueless teenagers who post drunk pics on MyFace (guess the quote) and then find themselves in some difficulties during job interviews, but nobody ever ordered anybody to be stupid. However, this use of data by employers is just a couple of lawsuits away from becoming unviable.
 
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