User profile

[1] User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn; and serve as voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits.

Most popular user profiles include those on photo and video sharing websites such as Facebook and Instagram, accounts on operating systems, such as those on Windows and MacOS and physical documents such as passports and driving licenses.

Effectively structured user profiles on social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook offer a way for people to form impressions about someone that is predictive or similarly meeting them offline.

[10] Dating apps and websites solely rely on an individual's user profile and the information provided to form interactions and communication with others on the platform.

Influencer user profiles are third party endorsers who shape audience attitudes and decisions through social media content such as photos, blogs and tweets.

[18] Most popular influencers include sport starts such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Hollywood personalities such as Dwayne Johnson and Kylie Jenner each with over 200 million followers respectively.

[21] A study conducted found that user profiles and recommendation algorithms have significant impact on related product sales and overall spending of an individual.

[21] A process known as "collaborative filtering" tries to analyse common products of interest for an individual on the basis of views expressed by other similar behaving profiles.

[30] Features such as automatic data & history deletion after a session is closed, allow guest accounts to save disk space once a user logs off.

[31] Physical user profiles or legal documents such as passport and driving license are widely accepted as an official government record of an individual's details.

[5][failed verification] Much like digital user profiles, these documents outline primary characteristics of an individual such as their full legal name, birthdate, address portrait picture and a date of expiry.

[37] Many news sources documented Cambridge Analytica's exploitation of the Facebook data algorithm, where users not only gave the app permissions to access their "likes", but also information about their contacts and friends.

[36] The amassed data approximating 87 million Facebook users was harvested and exploited legally, to predict and influence the individual voting decisions in the 2016 presidential election.

[36] For many users it was unsettling that social media was being used to influence public opinion, leading to #deletefacebook campaigns on Twitter as a backlash to the scandal and Facebook's inability to guard privacy invasions.

[38] The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) legally required Facebook to acquire explicit consent of the user in use of their data, alongside disclosing appropriate information about the third party identity.

The #deletefacebook movement arose after the Cambridge Analytica Scandal 2018, which fuelled a lack of trust for the service and its ability to protect user information.