Facebook Shadow Profiles

Luis Aguiar, Christian Peukert (), Maximilian Schäfer and Hannes Ullrich
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Maximilian Schaefer

No 1998, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Data is often at the core of digital products and services, especially when related to online advertising. This has made data protection and privacy a major policy concern. When surfing the web, consumers leave digital traces that can be used to build user profiles and infer preferences. We quantify the extent to which Facebook can track web behavior outside of their own platform. The network of engagement buttons, placed on third-party websites, lets Facebook follow users as they browse the web. Tracking users outside its core platform enables Facebook to build shadow profiles. For a representative sample of US internet users, 52 percent of websites visited, accounting for 40 percent of browsing time, employ Facebook’s tracking technology. Small differences between Facebook users and non-users are largely explained by differing user activity. The extent of shadow profiling Facebook may engage in is similar on privacy-sensitive domains and across user demographics, documenting the possibility for indiscriminate tracking.

Keywords: Facebook; privacy; user data; web tracking; shadow profiles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D18 L4 L5 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 p.
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.834959.de/dp1998.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Facebook Shadow Profiles (2024)
Working Paper: Facebook Shadow Profiles (2022)
Working Paper: Facebook Shadow Profiles (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1998

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().