this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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I've heard that, but I've searched for my name on Facebook and I never find anything about myself. My wife has a Facebook account, she has the app on her phone and tablet, and I've had cause to use it. Like she'll tell me to go into her messages and get a recipe or something. I don't read them, but we don't keep secrets from each other. Anyway, I'll be bored in a car ride and I'll start looking up my coworkers, and laugh at the dumb shit they post (that could identify them/their location to strangers). Once in a while I'll look myself up. I'm not a public figure, per se, but I do have imitators, so if you look my name up, first and last, a couple profiles will come up, but they have nothing to do with me and they don't have any information that matches mine. I don't know if those are the "shadow profiles" people talk about, but they are not a threat to me.
Yeah, you won't. That's why they're called shadow profiles. But if one day you do sign up you'll find Facebook already knows who all of your friends are and what your interests are, etc.
Interesting. So would it be better to not sign up at all and let it guess, or sign up and poison it with false information? I'm leaning toward the former.