Facebook’s
user data gathering prowess has been common knowledge for some time now, but
one journalist’s impromptu experiment suggests it is even more ubiquitous and
pervasive than previously believed. Nick Whigham, a reporter for the New Zealand Herald,
decided to test out a feature on Facebook that allows users to download a
‘secret’ file showing how much personal history the company has gathered about
them. What he discovered is that Facebook not only has disturbingly vast
consumer profiles on all 1.4 billion daily users but also tracks the internet
movement and personalities of people who don’t even log into the website.
A
large part of Facebook’s business model is selling the information it collects
about users to advertisers. It’s free to us because we’re the product. Its
algorithms track your posts, likes, shares, and preferences, of course, but
they also track your overall Internet activity — the websites you go to, your
operating system, your IP address, and comments you happen to leave on random forums
— via social media plugins and cookies on third-party websites. Even if you’re
not logged into Facebook, your browsing behavior is tracked by secret trackers
called Pixels, which are embedded on over 10,000 websites. Sorry,
social media Luddites — even if you’ve never used Facebook, your online
activity is tracked everytime you merely visit a website that contains Facebook
ads and trackers.
Whigham downloaded his
Facebook files and was stunned by the specificity of the information. The 500MB
zip files contained 105 biometric facial recognition files, photo metadata that
includes where and when the photo was taken, his entire iPhone contact list
with names and numbers, old tenancy agreements, photo scans of broadband bills,
bank transfer screenshots, and, naturally, the entire archive of his Messenger
chat logs.
Whigham urges people to
download their file so they can see the extent to which their privacy is being
violated by what he calls “surveillance capitalism.”
How
do its algorithms aggregate so much personal information? There are 98 data points Facebook
uses to size you up, and some of them may stun you. They range from the square
footage of your home to whether or not you’re an early adopter of technology.
They also look for “users who are interested in
the Olympics, fall football, cricket, or Ramadan.”
While
much of the public seems to have become somewhat anesthetized to predatory data
mining and privacy violations, legitimate legal challenges have finally begun
to surface, and Facebook is finally facing some heat. Last month, a Belgian court ruled
that the firm could not collect data on Internet users who do not have a
Facebook account. Elsewhere, a federal judge recently
dismissed Facebook’s motion to dismiss an Illinois class action lawsuit
charging the company with violating constitutional privacy rights.
Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rodd Sims, whose organization is running a
separate investigation into the privacy violations of multiple tech giants,
including Facebook and Google, thinks it’s time for people to really consider
the full ramifications of opting into services that harvest their personal
information.
“Some
people have asserted that consumers know what’s going on and don’t care,” Mr.
Sims stated.
“I
think it’s absolutely crucial we find out what consumers do know and then let’s
see whether they care. My suspicion is Facebook and Google have much more
personal information about people than people realise.”
To
download your ‘secret’ Facebook file, click at the top right of Facebook’s
navigation bar and select Settings. Then click “Download a copy of your
Facebook data” beneath General Account Settings and click the green button.
Then wait ten minutes and you should receive an email letting you know that
“surveillance capitalism” is alive and well.
Happy hunting!
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/03/no_author/facebooks-secret-file-on-you-is-bigger-than-you-think-heres-how-to-view-it/