Another insight into the watchers in the tower from Rob Price of Business Insider. Facebook “unintentionally” harvested millions of peoples contact emails.
Price’s report exposes a contradiction from Facebook. They “disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people’s contacts were collected”. This was apparently unintentional, a hangover from another protocol, that automatically uploaded new users email contacts.
These contacts were “fed into Facebook’s systems, where they were used to improve Facebook’s ad targeting, build Facebook’s web of social connections, and recommend friends to add”.
If that’s true, what’s the point of Facebook assurances that “these contacts were not shared with anyone and we’re deleting them”. The contacts have already been fed into Facebook’s system. Deleting them makes no difference, the damage is done, the ad targeting has begun.
Darrin // Nightingale 