Profile Engine is a people profile search engine that started in New Zealand. Partly owned by the Auckland University of Technology, it was originally intended to be a search for Facebook (calling itself the "Advanced Search for Facebook") before being renamed to Profile Engine. In 2008, the search engine acquired the rights to crawl Facebook's backend to index its user data.
Facebook allegedly shut off its access and ended the deal, the ad-supported Profile Engine has gathered more than 450 million user profiles along with their 15 billion friendship connections and 3 billion Likes.
Because Facebook also refused to give any updates on user profiles to Profile Engine, the search engine "cannot automatically delete user data." Therefore, people that have their profile collected by the Profile Engine and want to have it removed, they have to claim their profile first before deleting it.
The method is backed up by New Zealand's privacy commissioner when it said: "Profile Engine lawfully acquired and now holds the user data of around 450 million individuals" and added that its methods do not breach personal privacy.
The majority of the data on Profile Engine was collected between 2007 and 2010. Images were updated whenever possible and less frequent until the end of 2011.
Since then, Profile Engine has been targeted by many users that want to erase their identity online.