• Here is what Facebook knows about you - and how to download it
    40 replies, posted
"I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007, at 10:59 am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analyzed." Quite simply, Facebook never deletes anything. Unfriended friends, past relationships, former employers, previous names, address book: you name it. I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007, at 10:59 am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analyzed. Every time you open Facebook, the time, location, IP address, browser & device have been recorded. If you’re part of the 1.4B people that use Facebook on a daily basis, they have enough data points to determine your everyday life patterns with great accuracy: home and work address, daily commute, wake up & bedtime, travel duration & destination, etc. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*KVHbkQcrREtehWvnI5oVVA.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*7xOGE-j1i61gXMgyziZ4uA.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*kQJ9rs-wA4h9s6q36D2ucw.png Kind of a click-baity source but really interesting read to discover the amount of detail of information Facebook has on you. I highly recommend downloading your own archive to see how much intel they have on you. I checked mine and hated myself. All past messages, attachments, photos, videos, status updates...you name it. Top right corner of Facebook next to the ?, click the arrow and go to settings. Accessing your data will be available at the bottom of the first page. Here’s how you access the super creepy data Facebook has on you
Regulate big data
This will be interesting since I only used Facebook for a couple of months playing Mafia wars 10 years ago.
This isn't really surprising tbh. Deleting data is a big no-no usually as it removes audit trails and if you're a total fuck up, ruins data integrity. Of course Facebook will remember every friend request, relstionship change, etc. The photo stuff is just EXIF data, you should be able to strip that off before uploads (every image host on the planet likely inadvertently keeps this data). Short of explicitly requesting Facebook deletes your data and forgets you (new data protection legislation like GDPR should allow this), just assume they never delete stuff. Every website that collects data tends to follow that rule after all.
Well nobody is fucking surprised. Google keeps track of data, and so does many major companies. The clear and unfortunate solution today is, if you don't want them to keep track of what information you had posted, then just never use in the first place. I mean it sucks, but what the hell are you going to do? Sue the company? Sure, but they aren't the only ones violating people's privacy. Remember all the google apps you download, they request access to your email, photos and location and whatnot when you are about to install the app? Same shit different app. Either you install it and suck it up unfortunately, or you just don't download the app at all. It sucks, because governments could potentially use it as evidence against you, but really, what could you do? Facebook comply with local laws depending on which country you are from, and if your government is more of a control freak, then well good luck.
I always see people on my feed posting constantly about their daily personal lives. What they're eating, their constant personal struggles ... it's insane how much detailed shit people post. I use facebook mainly to keep in touch with my friends. You'll never see me posting much about my personal life on there. People need to stop posting so much of their personal lives onto the site - and the amount of detail people voluntarily post about themselves can be scary if facebook ever has a security breach.
eh I've been careful. they don't have much on be besides one picture from high school and a bunch of shitty old interests from years ago that I am not actually interested in anymore
I post maybe once a month to humorously complain about something in my life. Have a few photos up there as well, but I refuse to give Facebook any information about my school or many of my interests. I don't really need to use Facebook to read about stuff I like since I already have FP and Reddit.
Ive known about this for a long time, I take time and look through all settings on my social media and have seen this year's ago. I only wish I had done it for Myspace so I could saved my messages
Internet giants are going have fun time with GDPR and EU in general, as EU is starting to be pretty fed up with them. And GDPR is just begining. They're even planning to ban social media for children under 16.
To be honest, 99% of the data that Facebook shares with advertisers is information that's 100% public on your profile regardless. I just can't get that mad over anonymous data being used to advertise to me. It's not linked to the "real you", it's linked to your advertiser ID.
Honestly, unpopular opinion, I think this is super cool. Advertisers can get a hold of this, but I don't really mind. If ads are catered to my interests, that's fine by me. I'd rather have ads that I'm actually interested in than ads for something I couldn't give less of a shit about. But as for the data itself, that's the cool part. Assuming Facebook isn't going anywhere anytime soon, imagine how cool it would be 40-50 years down the line, to download an archive like this. Everything, right there. 40+ years of your life in an easily accessible databank. It's like the ultimate journal. I dunno, I just think that's really neat.
For 10 years, they really didn't have much. Of course they have my chats and locations and stuff. but even so, i seem to have been less open about myself on FB than i expected. They had 15 photos, 5 videos and no idea what devices i'd been accessing them from, apart from 2 iphones. I know they gave me an undigested format and that they probably know that i use FB when i poop or that i have this account on this forum, depending on how close to spyware they dare fly. But it's still less than i expected.
I don't post too much on Facebook but I'm probably easy to find even from here as you can tell.
Took a few hours but got my archive. Kind of disappointed pictures don't retain EXIF information. Would've been nice to sort out all my photos into photos my month/year etc, but the data is completely empty, which is weird since it's listed in text - just not embedded to the pictures or videos themselves.
Hopefully GDPR will properly kickstart the advent of mandatory deletion of user data, whether it's by user request or simply by regulation. In Estonia, a lot of laws are already in place that restrict retention of certain customer/user data to a certain period of time. I hope other countries adopt schemes similar to what we have in place.
The issue with the EU is regulatory power. The EU lets individual nations handle the enforcement of the regulations, which leads to a scenario in many different fields and industries of the companies shopping around for who will have the most lax enforcement of the rules. It'd be nice though ideally.
What I want to know is how I, as someone who doesn't use Facebook, can pull the data they have on me.
It would be next level if they associated that anonymous profile they had on you when you register
I make it a general rule when it comes to Facebook. If I wouldn't say it in public, Don't put it on Facebook.
I wouldn't put it past their capabilities tbh. The Facebook buttons dotted around the web are really good at building quite comprehensive profiles based on browser fingerprints. Probably wouldn't take much effort to realise "oh shit you came here from that browser huh? You must be x!". Though doing that would be super creepy and drive a decent number of potential users away I expect.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/238009/587b93b1-0c90-4e8c-9dbd-2cee85589d7e/lmao.png if this isn't symbolism I don't know what is
Could this perhaps be related to the EU's Data Protection Directive?
I bet if I did they'd have no trouble with it, even though I go out of my way to try to avoid them harvesting data on me it's unavoidable that they'll have enough to do it. Especially with that real name bullshit.
I did the download and it is pretty much just the stuff that is out open in my profile. Nothing internal, no connection details.
Doesn't Facebook also supposedly know about other sites you've visited by looking at your cookies and by having their widget everywhere?
Carpet boming of Facebook intesifies: Snowden
What I personally would like to see are required partial opt-ins for certain kinds of information that are legally barred from impacting any functionality that doesn't absolutely need it if declined.
It is actually against German law to have those widgets without a 2nd step to activate them. At least for German sites, so it is not much of a help for the most part. https://i.imgur.com/hrcezbT.png https://i.imgur.com/RVF5ucY.png Without pressing the button/slider it can not collect or send anything.
Interesting! Does it actually work? Afaik merely serving the content is enough for them to get your IP and implant the cookie. Correct me if I'm wrong
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.