Google is Secretly Mining Facebook Data
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 14th, 2007 5:48 PMThe Harmony Guy has posted an interesting article highlighting a vulnerability in the Compare People application on Facebook. This is significant given that the application has close to 700,000 people and close to 10 million people have added the application. This means that Google technically has information about almost 20% of all application users. So what information do they have exactly? According to the Harmony Guy:
The Compare People application on Facebook sends user profile information, such as age, gender, city, ZIP code, favorite music, favorite movies, favorite TV shows, favorite books, “about me,†activities, interests, and political view to Google AdSense when displaying advertisements within the application.
I tried to look through the source code, but when I checked there was a 503 error being displayed. I also took a look at the company’s WHOIS information and found Naval Ravikant’s name pop-up. If you don’t know who Naval is, he is a VC based out in the Silicon Valley area. He is also the founder of Epinions. While I haven’t had the chance to reach out to Naval to get a comment, this is a serious accusation and as the Harmony Guy pointed out, it is clearly a violation of Facebook’s terms of service.
I’m not quite sure what Google would do with this data aside from accessing a significant amount of competitive data. I wonder if we’ll see the Compare People application back up and running soon! If you know anything else, please let us know!
Update
Naval Ravikant has since contacted me about this issue. Perhaps I have less of an understanding of the issue than Naval does. Naval has stated, “To my knowledge we’re not doing anything malicious or wrong - we’re simply targeting Google Adsence using the Google_hits parameter, a widely accepted use of adsense on the net. Google has assured us that they do not store the information and comply with the Facebook TOS. However, we’ve disabled it anyway.” Additionally, the application seems to be back up and running.
The only real question left is if Google stores this data. Isn’t it Google’s job to store as much data as they can? Google has said they don’t store this information but that’s like sitting in front of a screen of competitive data and not looking.
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November 14th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I wish i knew how they are doing that!! I would want targeted ads within my application based on the users profile info as well.. I have been trying to do this with adsense but I do not see how it can be accomplished…
who cares if asense is the software I use to provide my targeted ads? Its the best Ad network out there righ tnow.. and as an application developer i have no way of providing targeted ads on my site using the new facebook ad programs… so they need to step up before more data goes to google…
November 14th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Nick
This is a little overblown - we're feeding random bits of information from the profile (and not personally identifiable stuff, user IDs, or the whole profile, to do ad-targeting via Google_hints. Many apps are doing this with many advertising networks.
Also, Google has assured us that they do not cache or store any of this data.
Still, until we make sure that it's not a real violation, we're disabling it.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I wish i knew how they are doing that!! I would want targeted ads within my application based on the users profile info as well.. I have been trying to do this with adsense but I do not see how it can be accomplished…
who cares if asense is the software I use to provide my targeted ads? Its the best Ad network out there righ tnow.. and as an application developer i have no way of providing targeted ads on my site using the new facebook ad programs… so they need to step up before more data goes to google…
November 14th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Nick
This is a little overblown - we’re feeding random bits of information from the profile (and not personally identifiable stuff, user IDs, or the whole profile, to do ad-targeting via Google_hints. Many apps are doing this with many advertising networks.
Also, Google has assured us that they do not cache or store any of this data.
Still, until we make sure that it’s not a real violation, we’re disabling it.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Thanks to Naval for the clarification; from my research, I'd been led to believe that Google was storing the data. My post has been updated with his comments as well.
I'm still not sure if transmitting the data to another application without notification or consent would be consistent with the TOS to begin with, but Facebook will have to answer that question. I appreciate Compare People's responsiveness to all this, though.
Either way, I think this again shows users how much systems like AdSense can collect and track information about them, so it's good for people to be aware of it.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Thanks to Naval for the clarification; from my research, I’d been led to believe that Google was storing the data. My post has been updated with his comments as well.
I’m still not sure if transmitting the data to another application without notification or consent would be consistent with the TOS to begin with, but Facebook will have to answer that question. I appreciate Compare People’s responsiveness to all this, though.
Either way, I think this again shows users how much systems like AdSense can collect and track information about them, so it’s good for people to be aware of it.
November 17th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
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