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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Facebook is Essentially Evil

April 24, 2018

Shocker! Facebook doesn't clearly define what information it possesses about you. It was "busted" in 2012 by an Austrian law student who requested that Facebook give him all of the data it held about him. What he got back was a disc containing 1,222 pages of information. According to a NY Times article, "The disc, Mr. Schrems said, showed that Facebook was routinely collecting data that he had never consented to give, like his physical location, which he assumes was determined from his computer's unique address identifiers, which can be traced geographically. Facebook was also retaining data he had deleted, Mr. Schrems said. As a result, Facebook created the 'Download Your Data' feature and claimed that the user could download all of the user's data that Facebook holds.

You make the request by going to the General Account Settings page and clicking on the "Download a Copy of Your Facebook Data." The theory is that Facebook then creates a Zip file of all of your data. Wrong. What's not included is:

  • information Facebook collects about your browsing history
  • information Facebook collects about the apps you visit and your activity within those apps
  • the advertisers who uploaded your contact information to Facebook more than two months earlier
  • ads that you interacted with more than two months prior

Granted, the downloaded Zip file does contain a lot of data about you, but it is only a fraction of the information Facebook possesses. Unfortunately, even if you are not a Facebook user, there is no mechanism to even come close to knowing that data it may hold about you. So much for transparency.

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