A shadow profile is a collection of information pertaining to an application's users, or even some of its non-users, collected without their consent.[1] The term is most commonly used to describe the manner in which technological companies such as Facebook[2] collect information related to people who did not willingly provide it to them.[3]
History
In 2012, a data breach of over six million Facebook users' personal information indicated the existence of a number of shadow profiles, since the leaked information had not been provided by the users themselves.[4] Consequently, Facebook began linking users' shadow profiles to their respective public profiles.[citation needed] The combined profiles were then further shared with the users' friends if they used Facebook's Download Your Information (DYI) tool.[ambiguous][citation needed]
