There’s an easy way to find out what Facebook knows about you—you just have to ask.
In 2020, the social media giant launched an online portal that allows all users to access their historical data and to request specific types of information for download across custom time frames. Want to know how many posts you’ve made, ever? You can find that. What about every photo you’ve uploaded? You can find that, too. Or what about every video you’ve watched, every “recognized” device you’ve used to log in, every major settings change you made, every time someone tagged you to wish you “Happy birthday,” and every Friend Request you ever received, sent, accepted, or ignored? Yes, all that information is available for you to find, as well.
But knowing what Facebook knows about you from Facebook is, if anything, a little stale. You made your own account, you know who your Facebook friends (mostly) are, and you were in control of the keyboard when you sent those comments.
What’s far more interesting is learning what Facebook knows about you from everywhere else on the web and in the real world.
While it may sound preposterous, Facebook actually collects a great deal of information about you even when you’re not using Facebook, and even if you don’t have the app downloaded on your smartphone. As Geoffrey Fowler, reporter for The Washington Post, wrote when he first started digging into his own data:
“Even with Facebook closed on my phone, the social network gets notified when I use the Peet’s Coffee app. It knows when I read the website of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg or view articles from The Atlantic. Facebook knows when I click on my Home Depot shopping cart and when I open the Ring app to answer my video doorbell. It uses all this information from my not-on-Facebook, real-world life to shape the messages I see from businesses and politicians alike.”
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast, host David Ruiz takes a look at his own Facebook data to understand what the social media company has been collecting about him from other companies. In his investigation, he sees that his Washington Post article views, the cars added to his online “wishlist,” and his purchases from PlayStation, APC, Freda Salvador, and the paint company Backdrop have all trickled their way into Facebook’s database.
Tune in today.
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Show notes and credits:
Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)
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