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when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user’s account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks

I’ve been trying to get Facebook to disclose shadow contact information to users for almost a year now. But it has even refused to disclose these shadow details to users in Europe, where privacy law is stronger and explicitly requires companies to tell users what data it has on them.

To test the shadow information finding, the researchers tried a real-world test. They uploaded a list of hundreds of landline numbers from Northeastern University. These are numbers that people who work for Northeastern are unlikely to have added to their accounts, though it’s very likely that the numbers would be in the address books of people who know them and who might have uploaded them to Facebook in order to “find friends.” The researchers found that many of these numbers could be targeted with ads, and when they ran an ad campaign, the ad turned up in the Facebook news feed of Mislove, whose landline had been included in the file; I confirmed this with my own test targeting his landline number.

“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and were even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”

There are certainly creepier practices happening in the advertising industry, but it’s troubling this is happening at Facebook because of its representations about letting you control your ad experience. It’s disturbing that Facebook is reducing the privacy of people who want their accounts to be more secure by using the information they provide for that purpose to data-mine them for ads.

When I asked the company last year about whether it used shadow contact information for ads, it gave me inaccurate information, and it hadn’t made the practice clear in its extensive messaging to users about ads

might want to think twice, or even thrice, before making the leap. The new tool is intended to help brands, local business, organizations or public figures create a new Fa

Facebook told me that this is a tool meant for businesses, not individuals. The company doesn’t encourage users to convert their profiles to Pages because content doesn’t move over, only connections.

Here is what converting a page actually means, in terms of user content:Only your profile photo transfers, no other profile photos or intricate profile information carries over.Any uploaded photos, wall posts, comments and likes disappear.Facebook messages disappear.Any applications linked to a Facebook account lose that connection.The username you have on your profile may or may not transfer over. In my case, it didn’t, and now http://www.facebook.com/christina.warren serves up a big fat, not found page, rather than my profile. The kicker? The name has been “used” so I can’t claim it again.The resulting account is known as a Business Account and can only be used to create and manage pages, not to engage in personal contact. This means that even if you do create a brand new Facebook profile (more on that later), you have to consistently switch between the two accounts for different tasks.

 we tend to absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline. If you want to maximize the chance that your entire headline gets read, keep your headline to six words.

MailChimp published the following headline on its blog: Subject Line Length Means Absolutely Nothing. This was quite the authoritative statement, but MailChimp had the data to back it up. Their research found no significant advantage to short or long subject lines in emails. Clicks and opens were largely the same.

Organizers of TED have found that 18 minutes is the ideal length of a presentation, and so all presenters—including Bill Gates and Bono—are required to come in under this mark.

By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really think about what they want to say. … It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.

The ideal length of a domain name is 8 characters