Shadow profile describes the situation when users' or non-users' information is collected without their consent. One of the most discussed cases of shadow profiling is on Facebook, which is reported to collect information on people that they did not provide.
Shadow profile's history
Early in 2012, a data breach of over six million Facebook users' personal information indicated the existence of shadow profiles, since the leaked information was not provided by users themselves. After this, Facebook started to combine users' shadow profiles with their public profiles. The combined profiles were then further shared with the users' friends if they used Facebook's Download Your Information (DYI) tool.
Shadow profile's influence
Positive influences
Benefits brought by shadow profile related behaviors include a more efficient way of data collection and anomaly behaviors detection. Some other researches show that integrated...