You may never have heard the term shadow profile, but did you know you might have one? Even if you’ve never signed up for any social media accounts, platforms may have obtained and used your data to create a shadow profile for you. So now you’re probably asking, what does that mean?
When someone signs up for a social media account, a common permission that’s asked is access to that person’s contacts in order to connect them with people they know on the platform. While the concept of cross-referencing one’s contacts with existing users is pretty straight-forward, the murkier part is that all of the contacts are uploaded and stored to the platform’s database.
Some platforms use the contact information they’ve gathered to send unsolicited invites to join, but this practice has led to hard feelings in the past. You might not realize that platforms like Facebook and Clubhouse store the information of non-users since they aren’t sending out unsolicited invites, but rather are creating shadow profiles. Shadow profiles store the information of how many users are connected to a non-user so that, should that person choose to join the platform down the road, they are ready to plug them in to their pre-existing network.
For instance, if Sally allows Facebook to access her contacts, they now have the contact information for her friend Jay, who’s not on Facebook. Jay’s other friend, Carrie, has also shared her contacts with Facebook, and now they know that Jay is connected to both Carrie and Sally. Storing this type of information creates a “shadow profile” for Jay. Now if Jay signs up for Facebook, they know to recommend Carrie and Sally as “People You May Know” as soon as he signs up. Where it gets a little weirder is that Facebook also knows that Carrie and Sally are connected to each other, through their mutual friend Jay, and may suggest them to each other as “People You May Know” without Jay ever having to sign up for an account.
Clubhouse similarly aims to build a strong network by prompting you to invite people you know — specifically those who know a high number of members already on the platform. How do they know how well connected someone is on their platform if they haven’t signed up? Once again, allowing the platform access to your contacts is not just for your benefit, it’s for theirs, allowing them to build shadow profiles for not-yet-users to determine who their best next-users will be.
At this juncture it doesn’t seem that platforms use shadow profiles for much more than trying to establish connections between people who know each other. However, without transparency, it’s impossible to know what else they could be used for, or perhaps are already being used for. While the data may ultimately be innocuous, it is still a stark reminder of the need for more transparent practices from those collecting our data.
