Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access To Your Shadow Contact Information

The researchers also found that if User A, whom we’ll call Anna, shares her contacts with Facebook, including a previously unknown phone number for User B, whom we’ll call Ben, advertisers will be able to target Ben with an ad using that phone number, which I call “shadow contact information,” about a month later. Ben can’t access his shadow contact information, because that would violate Anna’s privacy, according to Facebook, so he can’t see it or delete it, and he can’t keep advertisers from using it either.

So a person can have nothing to do with Facebook, but Facebook will still build a profile on them. If that person wants to control that information, they have no choice but to create a Facebook account.

At this point I guess we really shouldn’t be surprised by the things Facebook does.