Facebook is 'building shadow profiles of non-users'

London:‘Facebook’ is gradually building"shadow profiles" of non-users of the social networking site, a privacy watchdog has claimed.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) claims thatusers are encouraged to give out personal details of non-users,like names, phone numbers and email addresses, which Facebookuses to create “shadow profiles” of those people.

[caption id=“attachment_115833” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) claims thatusers are encouraged to give out personal details of non-users,like names, phone numbers and email addresses, which Facebookuses to create “shadow profiles” of those people. Reuters”] [/caption]

Ciara O’Sullivan, an IDPC spokeswoman told _FoxNews.com_that its audit of Facebook Ireland’s privacy policies was partof a “statutory investigation” that the office anticipateswill lead to immediate changes.“The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner will commence a comprehensive audit of Facebook Ireland beforethe end of the month,” O’Sullivan said.

However, Facebook, with 800 million users, has refutedallegations that it is tracking information of non-accountholders too. “The allegations are false,” Facebook’s spokesmanAndrew Noyes was quoted as saying.He added, “we enable you to send emails to your friends,inviting them to join Facebook. We keep the invitee’s emailaddress and name to let you know when they join the service.This practice is common among almost all servicesthat involve invitations - from document sharing to eventplanning. The assertion that Facebook is doing some sort ofnefarious profiling is simply wrong.”

The social network also said information from users isnot used to target advertisements and information is not soldto other people.

PTI