What Is Facebook Shadow Profile?
Facebook has a secret profile for you. It's called a "shadow profile," used to recommend friends and new connections and for social data analysis/mining. There's no reason to be afraid! Your shadow profile won't judge you for those drunken Snapchats you sent on spring break. It might even help protect you from phishing scams by flagging suspicious messages or links that look like they came from someone in your network of friends (but came from someone else). You can't see your shadow profile, nor can anyone else—it's hidden by default. If you're ever curious about what Facebook knows about you… well, let us know! We're happy to give you a rundown of the cool things they've discovered so far! Your shadow profile is everything you didn't know about yourself. That's right, and Facebook maintains a shadow profile for all its users, full of the information you didn't even know you had. You might be thinking "I don't have any friends on Facebook" that doesn't matter you still have a shadow profile. According to Facebook's terms of service, the company reserves the right to use any content you post on its site and the information you provide in your profile, marketing research, and surveys. Since shadow profiles are based on all user activity and data, they can be used to generate a risk profile of each user. These profiles may predict the probability of each user becoming a customer or how likely each user is to click on an ad. In addition to the data gleaned from your account on Facebook, it also has access to your friends and their friends. If one of your friends posts something interesting on their timeline, it might show up in your feed without you ever knowing it happened!
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