It has been widely reported that Facebook builds profile of people even if they have never signed up for its services. However, in a hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wednesday, when New Mexico Representative Ben Lujan asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if he was aware of the so-called practice of building “shadow profiles”, Zuckerberg denied knowledge of it. Here’s the exchange: Lujan: Facebook has detailed profiles on people who have never signed up for Facebook, yes or no? Zuckerberg: Congressman, in general we collect data on people who have not signed up for Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of scraping you were just referring to [reverse searches based on public info like phone numbers]. Lujan: So these are called shadow profiles, is that what they’ve been referred to by some? Zuckerberg: Congressman, I’m not, I’m not familiar with that. Lujan: I’ll refer to them as shadow profiles for today’s hearing. On average, how many data points does Facebook have on each Facebook user? Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head. Lujan: Do you know how many points of data Facebook has on the average non-Facebook user? Zuckerberg: Congressman, I do not know off the top of my head but I can have our team get back to you afterward. Lujan: It’s been admitted by Facebook that you do collect data points on non-[Facebook users]. My question is, can someone who does not have a Facebook account opt out of Facebook’s involuntary data collection? Zuckerberg: Anyone can turn off and opt out of any data collection for ads, whether they use our services or not but in order to prevent people from scraping public information … we need to know when someone is repeatedly trying to access our services.

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Source: Slashdot – Mark Zuckerberg Denies Knowledge of Non-Consensual Shadow Profiles Facebook Has Been Building of Non-Users For Years