Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

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Want to know what's funny? The email address I use for Facebook was created only for Facebook. I have never given it out to anyone else, ever.

Yep. Me, too. I use the e-mail address facebook@domainiown.example, so it would never be accepted by any of my actual contacts. They all use my real e-mail address.

But somehow Facebook says that e-mail address was uploaded by Maserati of Scottsdale (never been to that part of Arizona, and can't afford that kind of car), Mini of Freeport (I've never heard of Freeport), Sunrise Ford NoHo (I have no idea where this is. North Hollywood, maybe? If it is, I don't even live in that state), Crain Kia of Bentonville (Arkansas, maybe? Never been to Arkansas), Bernard's Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram (No idea where that is), Drive Toyota (Is that Toyota corporate? I've never owned a Japanese car), Land Rover of San Antonio (I've been to San Antonio once, and that was before Facebook even existed).

So I second the OP's suspicion that Facebook is giving out my e-mail address to advertisers/spammers/partners.

I sure hope they didn't pay a premium for Facebook's "targeting," because it is evidently atrocious.

I see two options here: Data leaks and/or lying about where the data came from.

This seems like a really good starting point for an investigation against Facebook!

Anyone else wants to steelman Facebook before I and other become too excited? Because right now I don't see any other options.

Why would Facebook lie about the data source? They released this information voluntarily.

It's possible that Facebook has been hacked or the above posters used Facebook connect to login to a third-party service that leaked the email addresses.

i wouldn't call that voluntarily. they have been pressured to be more transparent for quite some time. if it was up to facebook, they would hide these kind of information even more.

There's a third possibility: The advertiser guessed the email address.

Create unique email addresses with a password generator and don't distribute them. I don't buy into they just guessed them, tbh.

There's a third possibility: The advertiser guessed the email address.

Well, in this case probably not. Though I wrote "facebook@domainiown.example" above, it's really more like "myrealfirstandlastnamefacebook@domainiown.example." So the chances of it being guessed are infinitely small.

Sounds like a class action lawsuit might be in order

I would guess that there are 3rd party companies who's business is to match cookie values behind the scenes to email / phone / address / demo data and re-sell it, or sell access to the aggregate db.

Hopefully a federal privacy law will clarify if this is legal at all.

That is basically LiveRamp's business model. There are other companies who do this as well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_onboarding

Maybe it's OAuth revealing that facebook only email address, if "login using facebook" is ever used in a 3rd party site? (I somewhat doubt anyone who goes to the lengths of using a FB-specific email address would fall for the privacy scam of using login with facebook through...)

I’ve never set foot in Arizona but I have Maserati of Scottsdale, too. I’m guessing some idiot working in their ad department doesn’t understand targeted advertising and uploaded a leaked list of emails.

Me too. I have a facebook@mydomain email address that I only use to log into Facebook and my "advertisers who use a contact list" has all those same car dealerships (and no other advertisers). There must be one company that paid Facebook for email addresses and then resold them to auto dealerships.

It could be some third party ad firm trying to generate "lookalike" audiences. They could run some algorithm on their random email lists based on known customers, then upload the resulting list to Facebook.

I noticed the exact same thing on mine. TONS of car dealerships in places I’ve never been or are even remotely close to.

Me too. My guess is car companies bought or collected a large list of email addresses and distributed the whole list out to every dealership.

Weirdly, I have a lot of the same ones: Maseratti of Scottsdale, Mini of Freeport, Sunrise Ford NoHo, etc.

Is it possible for any of those that a friend connected their Facebook, or their email account, and your connection to them was disclosed?

> So I second the OP's suspicion that Facebook is giving out my e-mail address to advertisers/spammers/partners.

It's much more likely that Facebook has a shadow profile for your actual email address and has connected with yours due to your friends/connections syncing their contacts.

I don't see it since I don't have any friends in any of those locations.

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