I will tell you how facebook is creating these shadow profiles. I know this stuff, because I am a mobile app developer of 5 years experience and I’ve worked in ecommerce, flight booking, hotel booking and cab booking service provider apps.
So when you are using an ecommerce app and click on a product, the next time you open the FB, you will see that same product from that ecommerce app as an advertisement in your feed. Right?
How this is happening? The ecommerce company has a unique ID associated with each and every one of their products. And this ecommerce company, while the time when they get into the contract with FB for showing their ads will also provide to FB their entire product catalog with id, product name, images, price etc. And when the user clicks on the product inside the ecommerce app, that app will pass that product id along with your email id, phone number and some other ids to detect your device like UDID, IDFA etc to facebook. How these apps are getting your email and phone number? Because you only gave those informations while you signed up for their service. Okay, but how did they collect your device IDs and even your IP address and location? Because iOS and Android OS gives control to these apps to obtain these ID’s. The more information these apps are providing to facebook, the more accurately they can generate ads.
And FB database has email IDs and phone numbers of all 2 billion people signed up for it. Since FB also is an app like every other app, they can mine your device IDs the same way every other app does. So using the email, phone number, device id, location and all those stuff, FB will find out the user profile first. And since FB has that entire product catalog given by the ecommerce app, they will correctly match to the product using the product ID and show it as an ad in the user’s feed.
Similarly if it is a flight or cab booking app, these apps will give your journey starting and destination search to facebook. If it is a hotel booking app, it will give your hotel/place search keys to facebook. So FB will show the corresponding ad.
So what happens if a user of these other apps doesn’t have a FB account? Still these apps will pass these user’s informations like email, phone number, device IDs, along with the product ID to facebook. Facebook will then match this email with their database and find out whether he has a facebook account or not. Even if he doesn’t have a facebook account, facebook still get these user’s email, phone number, device id and most importantly, his browsing history in other apps. Thus, a shadow profile will get created ! Almost all the major apps that you have in your smartphone, like ecommerce apps, food delivery apps, cab/flights/hotel booking apps, even popular games, they are all paying FB for showing their ads, along with providing their customer’s data.
So all these companies, not just facebook, are using or selling your data in one way or another. Even if you ditch facebook, there are many other companies facilitating ads for these apps. And the real elephant in the room, Google, they are making around 40 billion more from ad revenue than facebook every year. Don’t even make me get started on google. Because that is how tech companies work, that is how internet works. So if you are concerned about privacy, the only thing you can do is stop using internet. Ditch your laptop and smartphone. Buy an old nokia 1100 or 6650 and live like you were living a decade before. Just understand, using FB without paying for it and still wants total privacy, that is simply not possible.
So when you are using an ecommerce app and click on a product, the next time you open the FB, you will see that same product from that ecommerce app as an advertisement in your feed. Right?
How this is happening? The ecommerce company has a unique ID associated with each and every one of their products. And this ecommerce company, while the time when they get into the contract with FB for showing their ads will also provide to FB their entire product catalog with id, product name, images, price etc. And when the user clicks on the product inside the ecommerce app, that app will pass that product id along with your email id, phone number and some other ids to detect your device like UDID, IDFA etc to facebook. How these apps are getting your email and phone number? Because you only gave those informations while you signed up for their service. Okay, but how did they collect your device IDs and even your IP address and location? Because iOS and Android OS gives control to these apps to obtain these ID’s. The more information these apps are providing to facebook, the more accurately they can generate ads.
And FB database has email IDs and phone numbers of all 2 billion people signed up for it. Since FB also is an app like every other app, they can mine your device IDs the same way every other app does. So using the email, phone number, device id, location and all those stuff, FB will find out the user profile first. And since FB has that entire product catalog given by the ecommerce app, they will correctly match to the product using the product ID and show it as an ad in the user’s feed.
Similarly if it is a flight or cab booking app, these apps will give your journey starting and destination search to facebook. If it is a hotel booking app, it will give your hotel/place search keys to facebook. So FB will show the corresponding ad.
So what happens if a user of these other apps doesn’t have a FB account? Still these apps will pass these user’s informations like email, phone number, device IDs, along with the product ID to facebook. Facebook will then match this email with their database and find out whether he has a facebook account or not. Even if he doesn’t have a facebook account, facebook still get these user’s email, phone number, device id and most importantly, his browsing history in other apps. Thus, a shadow profile will get created ! Almost all the major apps that you have in your smartphone, like ecommerce apps, food delivery apps, cab/flights/hotel booking apps, even popular games, they are all paying FB for showing their ads, along with providing their customer’s data.
So all these companies, not just facebook, are using or selling your data in one way or another. Even if you ditch facebook, there are many other companies facilitating ads for these apps. And the real elephant in the room, Google, they are making around 40 billion more from ad revenue than facebook every year. Don’t even make me get started on google. Because that is how tech companies work, that is how internet works. So if you are concerned about privacy, the only thing you can do is stop using internet. Ditch your laptop and smartphone. Buy an old nokia 1100 or 6650 and live like you were living a decade before. Just understand, using FB without paying for it and still wants total privacy, that is simply not possible.
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