Shadow Profiles is the industry term for the dossiers that Facebook compiles on billions of people, including people who don't have Facebook accounts, merging data from Facebook Like buttons and tracking pixels, outside data brokers, and data entered by Facebook users about their friends, including harvested address-books, tagged photos, and other personal information that can pertain to Facebook users and non-users alike. Read the rest

Gizmodo's Kashmir Hill continues her excellent investigative work on Facebook's mysterious "People You May Know" system, which has caused consternation among users by making seemingly impossible (and often disturbing) connections, such as "A woman whose father left her family when she was six years old—and saw his then-mistress suggested to her as a Facebook friend 40 years later." Read the rest