I have earlier written about how Facebook resembles a typical Business-to-Consumer customer table in the post Out of Facebook.
Like any customer table the Facebook member table will suffer from a number of different data quality issues like:
- Some individuals are signed up more than once using different profiles.
- Some individuals who created a profile are not among us anymore.
- Some profiles are not an individual person, but a company or other form of establishment.
One type of the latter one seems to be government and other authorities who want to snoop into your daily whereabouts in order to see if you are paying the taxes you should and not receiving welfare services you shouldn’t.
Recently I read a story about a British woman who got jailed on such an account. Link here.
It was not said if the authorities used a special account for the investigation or it was the civil servants personal accounts that were used.
This morning I read an article (in Danish) about the Danish tax authority’s activities in this field. They have realized that they illegally have used personal accounts for such activities, but have stopped that now. However, they will now create an account for the organization to be used for snooping.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 