Is Facebook About to Run Into Privacy Issues Again?

There's always inherent risk—as well as opportunity—when you make it up as you go. Facebook's new plan to work with big data vendors to connect consumers' offline purchasing data with its member profiles for targeted ads has once again put the social network in the crosshairs of the privacy hawks, even as it has potential advertisers excited.

The timing isn't good for Facebook, just as lawmakers and regulators are investigating whether or not offline data collected by data brokers, when combined with online data, may violate consumers' privacy. As soon as next week, Facebook will announce it is expanding its custom audiences ad program that allows advertisers to link their customer lists with Facebook users to include offline third-party databases advertisers contract with including Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon. The three databases—Facebook users, advertiser customer lists and third-party databases—would be anonymously matched via user emails and phone numbers for targeting more relevant ads. While attractive to advertisers, privacy advocates are alarmed.