SocialReach - Reaching into your privacy
June 23, 2009 – 1:12 pm by Griffin Hammond
I’m engaged, so I see a lot of wedding services advertisements on Facebook. Film school ads pop up, because I was a film major. Some simply say, “Are you a 24-year-old male?” to grab my attention. These targeted ads don’t bother me because the advertisers don’t learn any of my personal data; they simply click a few checkboxes to drill down to my demographic. My data is aggregated and anonymous.
So while watching a video at TodaysBigThing.com, a strange image surprised me. Your standard “Test your IQ” ad appeared on the right, but it was REALLY targeted. The ad featured five of my Facebook friends’ profile pictures and names, but I wasn’t on Facebook (or even logged into Facebook). And what really creeped me out was that these aren’t simply five random people from my friend list; these are five of my closest friends!
Without clicking the link, I checked the source of the image: SocialReach.com, the “leading social monetization platform,” according to their website. They write, “For advertisers, we combine sophisticated behavioral and predictive technology that allows you to reach the right people with the right ads at exactly the right moment.”
I have no idea how SocialReach executed this kind of ad or if it falls within the accepted third-party use of Facebook user data. I’ve submitted the incident to Facebook and we’ll see what happens.
In the meantime, I have so many questions about this. I’m half weirded out and half impressed:
- How did they move this personal data outside of Facebook’s walls? Is that allowed? It reminds me of Beacon, Facebook’s attempt to take what we do outside Facebook and bring it in, as a form of internal advertising, but this is the opposite.
- I imagine the source of this must be a rogue Facebook app, which was granted access to my data, but which one? I don’t use many, or involve my friends in many.
- How was it smart enough to differentiate my closest, real friends from my other, assorted contacts? Maybe these are the people I share the most common Facebook friends with, but how would it know that?
Anyway, I’m baffled. We’ll see if Facebook knows what’s up.
