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Comment by aierou | Hacker News Reader

It seems that the term "shadow profile" refers to a feature where Facebook retains contact information uploaded by other users in order to recommend them as friends if/when you create a profile [1]. For all the fear associated with the term, that's pretty benign. Is there any evidence for a link between these "profiles" and some of the more egregious claims of privacy infringement?

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles...

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For privacy advocates the simple act of linking people that way is worrying enough. Not much of a concern for me (my government's creepiness is vastly overshadowed by its incompetence) but it could certainly be dangerous to free thinkers in certain regimes.

I find it hard to believe that they can't associate more information with those profiles than just who has who else as a contact (or has in the past), some derived/guessed and some from purchasing access to other data-sets, and I find impossible to believe that they won't if they can. Not just FB but other purveyors of advert targetting stalkerdom too. This isn't "don't trust the man" foil-hat paranoia - knowing as much as possible about as many people as possible is their well documented business model.

And of course, the shadow profiles would have had names, email addresses, phone numbers, and linkages that could help answer questions like "mother's maiden name". If shadow profiles were included in the recent huge leak then people who had not ever touched nor wanted to touch facebook, may have just become easier social engineering targets.

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