San Francisco/Washington — Mark Zuckerberg, under stern questioning by US legislators, said Facebook collects information on consumers who are not registered as users, acknowledging something that has been reported but not publicly spelt out by the company. “In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday in a hearing about the social network’s privacy practices in Washington before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. His questioner, Representative Ben Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat, said the practice created “shadow profiles”. “You’ve said everyone controls their data, but you’re collecting data on people that are not even Facebook users who have never signed a consent, a privacy agreement,” Lujan said. Zuckerberg said the practice was intended to help prevent malicious actors from collecting public information from Facebook users, such as names. “We need to know when somebody is trying to repeatedly ac...
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