How Facebook Could Target Ads in Age of Encryption

Zuckerberg promises privacy, but experts warn metadata can be mined to build behavioural profiles

By Hannah Murphy

Mark Zuckerberg believes the future of social networking lies in private messaging.

His convictions are so strong that he plans to merge the messaging services of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram into one encrypted system, meaning only the people who send and receive messages can view them.

But the Facebook founder has yet to say how the world’s biggest social media network, which generated $16.9bn in revenues in the fourth quarter of last year — largely from advertising on its news feed — will make money from such a radical overhaul.

Experts say there is one obvious solution: metadata, the vast amount of context surrounding a message that can be viewed even when the content is encrypted.

Even though Mr Zuckerberg has cast the shake-up as a pivot towards privacy, Facebook could still mine and analyse users’ messaging metadata to help build detailed profiles for targeted advertising, in a move that could irk privacy activists and even regulators.

“By abstracting out and looking at who’s talking to who, for how long, and when . . . you can build up a very statistical picture of people very quickly,” said Alan Woodward, encryption expert and professor at the University of Surrey.

“In many ways, it is the context of what you say in those messages that is more important than the messages themselves,” he added.

Facebook has faced mounting pressure to give users more clarity and control over how their information is handled in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as reports that it allowed device makers to access users’ personal data through special deals.

Earlier this month, Mr Zuckerberg responded to those concerns by announcing dramatic plans to integrate the three messaging services and introduce end-to-end encryption. At present, only WhatsApp encrypts users’ messages.

But the chief executive did not outline the group’s policy around metadata, which was first thrust into the spotlight in 2013…

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