Every time you browse the web, you're being tracked. Most websites contain invisible tracking code that allows companies to collect and monetize data about your online activity. Many of those companies are data brokers, who sell your sensitive information to anyone willing to pay. That’s why EFF created Privacy Badger, a free, open-source browser extension used by millions to fight corporate surveillance and take back control of their data.
We now know that this data is also sold to Talent Acquisition software companies to build shadow profiles.
Once scraped or uploaded, your data is run through an LLM/NLP engine that performs the following steps:
Entity Extraction – Pulling your name, employers, job titles, school, location, and dates.
Sentiment Analysis – Detecting tone in your blog posts, cover letters, or even Slack messages.
Psychometric Inference – Mapping text to traits like agreeableness, openness, or conscientiousness using frameworks like OCEAN.
Trajectory Forecasting – Predicting your future performance based on your writing style, gaps, job hops, and metadata.
Cultural Fit Score – Comparing your profile to internal “top performers” and organizational values.
Each layer adds another layer of fiction to your shadow résumé—except this one carries real-world consequences.